At what stage of phonological awareness is a child able to produce spontaneous rhyme?

The ability to produce spontaneous rhyme typically develops during the preschool stage. At this age, children are often engaging in playful language activities, such as songs, nursery rhymes, and playful word games, which help them to become more aware of sounds and rhyming patterns in words. This is a crucial time for phonological awareness development, where children start to notice similarities in sounds, particularly in their own environment, making it easier for them to create and produce rhymes spontaneously.

While kindergarten and later grades further cement and develop phonological awareness skills, such as identifying and manipulating phonemes, the initial ability to create rhymes on their own emerges earlier during preschool years. By the time children reach kindergarten, they might be expected to engage in more structured tasks regarding rhyming, but the spontaneous creation of rhymes is largely a hallmark of preschool development.