Rhyming Picnic

What you need

• a blanket for the picnic rug
• three or four soft toys as guests
• play food, or real fruit and packets from the cupboard
• a plate and a cup for each guest

How to do it

1. Spread the blanket on the floor and sit the soft toys round it. Ask your child to give each guest a plate and a cup.
2. Tell them these guests are fussy: they only eat food that rhymes with their name. Bear wants a pear. Ted wants bread.
3. Hold up two foods for the next guest and ask which one rhymes. Snake: cake or apple?
4. Let them pick a guest and you guess the food, then swap. Made-up rhyming foods count too.

Why it matters

Matching a food to a name by its sound turns rhyming into a game with a picnic attached, and serving every guest makes them the host.

What they're learning

Hearing rhymes

Bear and pear end the same way, and the toy's name gives the clue.

One for each guest

A plate and a cup for every toy is counting out without a number in sight.

Being the host

Looking after the guests means talking for them and to them.

What to look for

Notice them trying a word out loud against the toy's name before choosing, like "snake... cake".

A tip

Pick toys with short names you can rhyme easily, and rename one if you need to. A pig called Wig is fine.

More like this

Cushion Mountain Climb from 12 months · 20-40 min Cardboard Box Car from 36 months · 30-45 min Bounce And Catch from 30 months · 5-10 min Cup Skittles from 24 months · 5-10 min