Sink or Float, What Rhymes with Boat? Language and Literacy Activities for Home

Our word this week is boat.

Boat is a one syllable word.

Boat 👏

It is also a CVC word (consonant - vowel - consonant).

/b/ /oa/ /t/

This is how you make the word in American Sign Language (ASL).

A boy signing boat next to an illustration of a boat

Background Knowledge

What do you know about boats?

Think about what you know and draw a picture of it.

Don’t forget to add details like people and places.

Share your drawing with someone!


Rhyming

There are a lot of words that rhyme with boat.

Below are six pairs of words.

Four are sets of rhyming words.

Say the words out load and listen to hear if they rhyme.

Can you find the two pairs that don’t?

Six set of boat words, four rhyme goat, note, coat, float, and two don't, fork and duck.

Before we check to the answers (below), let’s think about that last word, float.

Do you know what float means?

The picture of float above is a verb.

It means to “to cause to float in or on the surface of a fluid”.*

Sitting on an inner tube or floatie lets us float in water.

Sink or Float Activity

Have you ever done the sink or float experiment?

Here is how you can do this at home.

Gather a group of objects. Make sure they won’t be damaged by getting wet.

Fill a medium to large-sized container with water.

Guess which items will sink to the bottom and which ones will float on top.

Put them in the water one at a time to see if you were right!

 
Objects, leaf, duck, paperclips, rocks, sponge, and fork, above a bowl of water.
 

Here are the words that rhyme with boat.

Plus a few more!

A boat above six rhyming words, float, goat, note, coat, tote, and wrote.

boat

float, goat, note

coat, tote, wrote


Prepositions

Let’s talk about where the boat is using prepositions.

Make a sentence about each picture using these words.

  • next to

  • below

  • above

A set of three pictures that show boat prepositions, next to, below, and above.

Alike and Different

Now we’re going to talk about these pictures in a new way.

Each picture shows two objects.

We’re going to tell something about how they are both alike, and how they are each different.

A boat and a duck

A boat and a duck both float.

A boat is a form of transportation or a vehicle.

A duck is an animal (maybe a toy rubber duck?)

A boat and an airplane

They are both forms of transportation or vehicles.

A boat moves people across water.

An airplane moves people through the sky.

Can you do the last one?

A boat and a submarine

They are both _________________.

A boat ________________________.

A submarine ___________________.


Illustration Credits: Kari Bolt, Bunny on a Cloud, LittleRed

Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary, June 7, 2025. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/float