Here’s a fun homophone scavenger hunt that’s great for kids or anyone else who’s learning English.
It’s therefore perfect for English teachers, parents who homeschool their kids or ESL teachers to use, although can be just as fun when played in other environments like a youth group.
About Homophones
Before we describe how to organize this scavenger hunt, you may be wondering what homophones are. A quick description is that they’re words that sound the same but have different meanings. For a more thorough definition, see this explanation on Homophone List.
For example, dear and deer are homophones, as are bare and bear. Homophone List also have further examples of common homophones here.
So here’s how to organize the game:
Resources
- Scavenger hunt list (see below)
- Pens
- Cameras (optional)
Preparation
None
Teams
If organizing this homophone activity for English homework, this should be played individually.
However, it could also be played in small teams with a youth group or even in a classroom at school if you want to have students helping each other.
Instructions
Give each of the players a copy of the list below and a pen. Explain that the list contains 20 different words, each of which have a homophone that’s an item of food.
Their first task is work out what all the food-themed homophones are and write them down.
Further Tasks
You should then set them another task – which one you choose will depend on what will work best for your group:
- Item – Players have to find and collect an example of each food item
- Photo – Players have to find each type of food and take a photo of it (for this option, they’ll obviously need access to a camera – cellphone cameras are fine)
Tip
If choose the first option above and have players physically collect all of the items, set a rule that they can’t bring back any perishable food – that way, food won’t get wasted. The exception would be if you’re playing this at home with your own kids, where you could return food straight to the fridge or freezer.
There are ways that they can get around this. For example, ‘fish’ could be a can of tuna fish, ‘meat’ could be beef jerky, etc. An exception can be made for ‘pea’, as the teams will only need to bring one pea, not a whole bag of frozen peas.
List
Here’s the list of 20 words along with their matching homophones. Beneath this is a link to download a free printable copy of the list – that copy is missing the answers as it’s what you’ll be giving the players.
- Been / bean
- Bury / berry
- Bred / bread
- Cachou / cashew
- Karat / carrot
- Serial / cereal
- Chilly / chili
- Phish / fish
- Flower / flour
- Gored / gourd
- Deuce / juice
- Meet / meat
- Mince / mints
- Mustered / mustard
- Pair / pear
- Pee / pea
- Source / sauce
- Cede / seed
- Tee / tea
- Time / thyme