The Game of Opposites

We always want to help children improve and increase their vocabularies. Here is another fun word game that will help familiarize your children with antonyms.

To play the game, you will say a word, and they have to think of another word that is very different from the given word, or the opposite of the word. Start by using the word in a sentence, such as “Don’t turn the water on, turn it _____.” “If you jump up, you’ll fall ______.” Continue using sentences to add fun and interest to the game. For added interest, let the children act out the opposites where possible (happy-sad, etc). Once the kids catch on, they may want to dispense with the sentences - just say the word so they can supply the opposite.

Eventually you will want to make the game more challenging, so add some antonym relationships that are more subtle, such as cool-warm, or tiny-huge. Try some of these after the children have mastered the more common or obvious opposites. Here are some common (and then some trickier) antonyms:

long-short rough-smooth same-different clean-dirty

big-little wet-dry boy-girl full-empty

hot-cold wide-narrow up-down hard-soft

happy-sad sick-well good-bad open-close

fast-slow on-off old-new young-old

day-night over-under dark-light fat-thin

mom-dad ugly-pretty awake-asleep left-right

cool-warm loud-quiet huge-tiny clean-dirty

play-work baby-adult forget-remember black-white

city-country laugh-cry run-walk sharp-dull

burning-freezing nice-mean top-bottom whisper-shout

You will find right away that the children will have lots of other word solutions for this game. Many will be synonyms of some of the words on the list. For example, skinny for thin, or grown-up for adult. Or how about gigantic or humongous for huge? This can be a great lead-in to more vocabulary games, such as (you guessed it) a synonym game! I have one for you - next post.