Rhyming

I did an exercise with a couple of my kindergarten students this morning on the topic of rhyming. I have little houses with a different picture on the top of each one. The students have to choose a card from a pile and figure out which house it belongs in (or which word it rhymes with). The words have some of the following sounds- "ing", "ed", "ale", "at". It was interesting to follow both student's thought processes. One student could not grasp the concept of the ending of each word having to match. He was only focusing on the beginning sounds. After doing that, I read a Dr. Seuss book to them and they had to raise their hands when they heard rhyming words. The student who grasped it better with the words in isolation did not understand the words in context. It is so hard to figure out how else to teach these concepts. They just don't hear the sounds that are alike.