Whether you prefer tongue twisters or alliteration games, we’ve got you covered with these alliteration activities! Using alliteration in preschool and kindergarten is such a fun way to grab your preschooler’s attention and build critical pre-reading skills.
Alliteration Activities
To help keep literacy learning fun and exciting, we’ve put together some fantastic alliteration preschool activities that we know will be a big hit with your youngest learners!
What is Alliteration?
Alliteration is the repeated initial sounds (beginning sounds) of a series of words. Preschoolers are generally first introduced to alliteration through books, songs, and especially tongue twisters.
Phrases like, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” and “Sally sells seashells by the seashore” are great alliteration examples that will have your kids giggling with glee! You can find many more great examples in our list of alliteration books.
Teaching Alliteration in Preschool and Kindergarten
Teaching alliteration in preschool might sound complicated, but preschoolers are in the perfect stage to start recognizing similar sounds in words. They are primed to begin connecting those sounds to the individual letters of the alphabet.
Get the best learning activities for 3-5 year olds at your fingertips
According to Lexia Learning,
Understanding of rhyme and alliteration helps to develop students’ early phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness is the ability to analyze and manipulate the sound structure of language, and students develop this awareness by engaging in activities that require them to identify, segment, blend, and manipulate syllables and sounds in words.”
Alliteration and rhyming go hand in hand as children learn that words are made up of sounds. Alliteration is the same repeated sound at the beginning of the word, whereas rhyming is the same repeated sound at the end of the word.
Looking for rhyming activities? We have 100+ beautiful rhyming picture cards perfect for use with games, sorting, circle time, and small group time. Check out our store for these versatile rhyming cards. We also have a whole list of rhyming songs, too!
The Importance of Alliteration
Practicing alliteration is very helpful to preschoolers as it helps them hear those repeated sounds over and over and helps to solidify the letter and sound in their memory. The ability to focus on beginning sounds in words is an early phonemic awareness skill and an important step to becoming a fluent reader.
One amazing way to introduce alliteration to preschoolers is to read high-quality picture books with alliteration examples. These books allow young children to hear an experienced reader pronounce all the words that begin with the same letter sound. Plus, preschoolers love to come up with their own alliteration examples as you read!
Our absolute favorite alliteration book in our house is Some Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan Edwards. Trouble awaits the slug as he heads to the top of the slippery slope. The other animals try to warn him but he smugly sludges on with his slimy self. What kind of trouble is waiting for him at the top of the slope? This book is packed with alliteration using the letter S, which makes it super fun and silly to read and so engaging for preschoolers. My four-year-old son absolutely loves this book, plus he loves looking for the hidden letter S on each page!
For an entire book list of alliteration stories, check out our alliteration books for kids list for more tongue-twisting book picks. While you are searching for quality picture books, take a look at our rhyming book list too!
Alliteration Examples for Kids
Preschoolers naturally love activities that infuse alliteration! It often feels like a fun game as you come up with funny-sounding tongue twisters. While it feels like fun and games to your preschoolers, they are secretly building a solid reading foundation that will last a lifetime.
Use these great alliteration video examples that you and your preschoolers can practice and enjoy. Encourage children to follow along and repeat as they go.
Alliteration Sentence Examples
We have included a few preschool sentence examples using alliteration. Feel free to play with words and sounds as you create your own zany alliteration sentences.
Also, it’s very helpful to preschoolers to “bounce” on the beginning sounds as you read each sentence to help them clearly identify the beginning sound that remains the same throughout the sentence. For example, “S-S-Sally s-s-s-lipped on s-s-s-pilt s-s-s-oup and s-s-s-lid into the s-s-s-ea. Invite children to help you make those repeated sounds as you read it aloud the first or second time, and then try reading it quicker with no emphasis on the first sound.
Joey the jogger jumped over the jiggly jellyfish.
My mom is making mushroom and macaroni muffins. MMMMMM!
What is the wiggly and wild worm wearing? Well, winter wear of course!
Sally slipped on spilt soup and slid into the sea.
Alliteration Preschool Activities
There are lots of ways to practice alliteration in preschool! We’ve put together a great list of fun and engaging alliteration games and activities.
- Poems, Songs, Nursery Rhymes, & Fingerplays
Using songs and nursery rhymes that infuse alliteration is a great way to get preschoolers interested in the beginning sounds in words. Fingerplays are always a huge hit with preschoolers as they get to join in on the fun as they practice pre-reading skills. Some great poem and sentence examples can be found in this Scholastic Sing Along ABC Flip Chart. Each letter has its own page and is full of zany and silly poems about each letter and includes awesome alliteration examples. Grab a highlighter, dry erase marker, or better yet- highlighter tape and invite your preschoolers to find all the beginning letter sounds on each page!
If you’re like me and constantly have to look up the words to common nursery rhymes and songs, we have the solution! Bring your favorite songs, chants, nursery rhymes, and fingerplays to life during circle time with these song cards and song sticks. They’re printable from your own printer! You can purchase all these awesome materials in our store.
- Tongue Twisters
Invite children to help with this alliteration preschool activity. Choose a focus letter and encourage children to share words that could be used to make the sentence twist up their tongues in the silliest way. For example, “Bobby’s big bad bug bit Barry’s back…bite, bite, bite! Bobby boo-hooed and Barry bawled as the big bad bug bit his bum.” Invite children to help make other funny examples with a new beginning sound.
- Using Student Names
Find ways to play and engage with your preschoolers’ names and help them think of things that begin with the same beginning sound as their name. Or give them a silly nickname that includes some type of compliment with the same beginning sound. For example, Terrific Tina or Marvelous Maggie or Delightful David. Children will love the confidence boost and it’s a great way to make a personal connection to alliteration.
- Using Puppets
Grab a favorite animal puppet and tell the children that this puppet is feeling quite picky today…she only wants to snack on things that begin with the same sound as the type of animal that she is. For example, using a tiger puppet, she would only like to eat things like toast, tomatoes, and tacos. Allow children to think of other foods that start with the letter T. Then put all their ideas together in one complete silly and fantastic alliteration sentence. Tina Tiger likes to eat toast, tacos, tomatoes, and tangerines!
- Alphabet Picture Sorting Cards
Using alphabet picture cards that all begin with the same initial sounds is a great way to get preschoolers to create their own silly sentences. For example, if a child lined up the monkey and mushroom card, they could create the sentence: The monkey munched on mushrooms.
We hope this list has left you full of alliteration ideas and easy ways to incorporate them into your preschooler’s day!
For other amazing literacy activities for your preschoolers, check out our alphabet sand tray and story stones (a kid favorite!) For other pre-reading support, check out our post about counting syllables in words and our rhyming activities.
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