You can use this game as a means to hone rhyming or alliteration skills. Print off six pairs of rhyming or alliterative images. For instance, print an image of a mouse and an image of a house, a car and a star, and so on. These would be positive matches. Alliterative matches would include house and hair, cat and car, and so on. Print off alliterative or rhyming pairs, as many as needed per child, and cut each image separately. Have children place their images face-down on the desk. At your "go," children flip over one image and then another, in an attempt to match the first image with its rhyming or alliterative pair. If he is successful, he places the pair in a separate pile and continues playing. If not, he flips them face-down and flips over two new images. The first child to find all of the pairs wins.
Nickname maker is an activity that will stick. Have children sit in a circle. Go around the circle stopping briefly at each child. When you stop, ask the other children to come up with a nickname for the child you stop at. This nickname must rhyme or be alliterative, depending on which skill you wish to hone. Provide examples, like "Fancy Nancy" or "Happy Hillary." Write the options on the board, and have children pick the one they like the best. The nicknames they choose will be theirs for the whole school year, or until you choose to perform this activity again. Before you begin, make sure all the children understand that this is intended to be fun, and there is to be no name calling or anything negative used. After all children have a nickname, make name-cards of any size that feature their new nickname. Allow them to decorate the name-card before you tape it to the front of their desk.
This activity may be about rhyming words, but you can also easily turn it into an alliteration activity. Place several items in a large basket, such as a piece of chalk, glue, apple, pen, marker and small stuffed bear. Pass this basket around the room. With each child, ask a question such as, "What in the basket rhymes with bapple?" The child will then pick out the item they think is the answer. If they get it wrong, encourage them to try again. After correctly identifying the object, he will then pass on the basket to the next child. To make it alliterative, ask questions such as, "What item starts with the same letter as pig?"
Make alliteration and rhyming lists after reading books that have rhyming or alliteration skills as their focus, such as Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. After reading, focus on whichever skill was discussed in the book by asking the children open-ended questions, such as "Dr. Seuss rhymes anywhere and there. What else rhymes with there and anywhere?" Record on the board the rhyming words children shout out, separating them into two lists: actual words, like bear, and "nonsense" words, like "zare." This way, children can distinguish sense from nonsense, notes SaskEd.gov, an education resource.