Amy's Phonics Homonym Flashcards

© Amy Jones, 1993, 1998

Directions for making your own homonym flashcards:

1. Start with white paper or cards. Use 5x7 cards for the root of the word, and 3x5 cards for the beginning phoneme.

2. Using a broad black marker, your word processor, a stencil, or the letters you can rub on (available at art supply stores), make a root card and the phoneme cards.

3. Have your cards spiral bound at a copy store, or make them puzzle-style (using pinking shears or wavy scissors or something makes this more fun).

4. The end result is that your child can learn to recognize homonyms and also learn sight-reading by flipping through his flashcards.

Example homonyms:

-at: b, c, f, h, m, p, r, s, t, v, br, spl

Makes bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat, brat, splat

-ash: b, c, d, h, l, m, r, s, cl, cr, tr, spl

Makes bash, cash, dash, hash, lash, mash, rash, sash, clash, crash, trash, splash

-eat: b, f, h, m, n, p, s, t, bl, pl, tr, wh

Makes beat, feat, heat, meat, neat, peat, seat, teat, bleat, pleat, treat, wheat

Notes:

• Be careful to use only homonyms; you wouldn't want any letters to take on a different sound in the middle of the game. For instance, in a group of -as words, you would not want to have g and w, as the -as takes a different sound in each word.

• Feel free to use only words your child is already familiar with or to stretch his mind by using new words. In the examples above, there are words like "teat," "pleat," "vat," and "feat," with which your child may not be familiar. You may choose to leave those words out (such as if you don't want to be explaining to a 4-year-old what exactly a "teat" is...) or introduce them to your child--in which case this also becomes a vocabulary lesson! :-)

• If you want, you could eliminate binding the homonym sets together, so that in the end you have a set of 3x5 phoneme cards (which you could use for countless games and lessons) and a set of 5x7 root cards. You could then create other games:

  • "Is that a word?" Let your child match any phoneme card to any root card and then ask him, "Is that a word?" b matches easily with -at and -eat but not with -as or -on.

  • Make 2 sets of phoneme cards and make a memory-type game. This is a great game for beginning readers, to learn to visually recognize consonants and consonant blends.

  • Make a set of -e cards to introduce the silent /e/ at the end of words...this will turn the nonsensical bon and bas to bone and base.

  If you think of any other variations, email me and I will include them on this page, with credit unless you request anonymity.

Thank you to Al & Pat Robbins of Kamloops, BC, for creating the graphics above for me!

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