Montessori Inspired Rhyming Work and Chutes and Ladders

I have an extensive collection of miniatures, and I love them as much (if not more) than the kids :)

I generally start with 4 groups or less, place one object from each rhyming group on the carpet/mat, and Spiderman's job is to find the matching ones.

So I placed bed, chair. oar, hook and swing on the carpet, and Spiderman followed up with the rest...

Montessori inspired Object Box

... of the items from the tray.

Rhyming with miniatures

Bed, head, red, sled, bread
Chair, bear, pear
Oar, door, four
Hook, book
Swing, king, ring, wing  
 
Here is our work from another day. We started out reasonably, but then Spiderman kept on adding more, and the mats got a bit crowded. 

   

As you can see, the bed (with its mattress and pillow, and monsters lurking underneath) and the pirate hook is a hit with Spiderman. They have to make a mandatory appearance every time we play with our Rhyming box!

What I have noticed is that Spiderman is not quite as adept at this yet. Let's say that bee is already placed on the mat or carpet, and he picks up a tree. His first instinct is to say as many words as he can think of that rhymes with tree, like me, he, she, gee... If he also said bee during this rhyming spurt, then it is a snap fpr him to put in the tree with the bee (group), but if he did not, and looks at the groups on the board, then it takes him much longer to match it, if that makes any sense :)

I always have to remind him to match it with what is on the mat/carpet. Yes, "he" rhymes with tree, but it is not on the mat. Is there anything on the mat or the carpet that rhymes with "tree"? And yes, "shy" rhymes with "pie", but we don't have "shy" on the mat.

So I needed to come up with something where in just thinking of a  rhyming word is good enough. 
So I decided to amp up the classic chutes and ladders by adding a rhyming element to it.
This way, all he needs to do is think of a rhyming word, and that's it :)

<Click on the image to view the pdf file>

Chutes and Ladders with Rhyming Fun

<Click here to download the game>

Added benefits:
Spiderman also needs to work on higher number recognition. Along with all this, I have seen more conflicts between Batman and Spiderman, and I thought they needed to take turns, be patient with each other, etc etc.

Linked up to:
It's Playtime, Mom's Library,
Tot School Gathering Place, Link and Learn, Stress Free Sunday