Who Can Make the Most Onset and Rime Words?

Your students will be begging to play this Onset and Rime Game. This game board has been created by an early years teacher to really capture your students attention, all while blending together onset and rime words. This game allows students to really build their phonemic awareness skills by blending simple onset and rime words. Here are just a couple of skills your students will be practicing by playing this game:

1. Sound segmentation – By focusing on the simplified word structure of onset and rime – students can easily hear how individual sounds combine to form a whole word.
2. Decoding skills – When students look at the dice and the board to blend onset and rime words, they’ll start to recognize patterns that they can then apply to multiple words.
3. Confidence- when students start to master these simple onset and rime words – they’ll start to feel more confident in their own reading abilities.

How to Use this Game Board in the Classroom

Print out the game board and laminate it so that it can be used time and time again, print the dice and make them (you may also like to laminate these to make them last). 

Students will play in small groups, alternatively, you could display the game board on the white board in Google Slides and break the class into teams to create a more interactive experience for the whole class. 

How to Play:

• Roll two onset dice. Identify each onset rolled and the rime on your current space. 
• If you can make a word using either onset and the rime on the space, move forward one space. 
• If you can make two words, move forward two spaces. 
• If you cannot make a real word, your turn ends. 
• The player who gets to the finish line first wins!

Download and Race Today!

Use the dropdown menu to choose between the easy to print PDF version of this resource or the editable Google Slide version.

This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a teacher and Teach Starter Collaborator.

More Onset and Rime Words for the Classroom

Looking for more activities to add to your onset and rime lessons? We have you covered…

teaching resource

Onset and Rime Mini Books

Practice onset and rime phonemic awareness with this set of mini books that each focus on the short vowel sounds (a,e,i,o,u).

teaching resource

Onset and Rime Phonics Search Pack

Practice searching for and decoding onset and rime words with this set of search and find worksheets.

teaching resource

Onset and Rime Flipbooks

Flip through different short vowel onset and rime words with this set of printable flipbooks.