Teaching Kids Idioms, Oxymorons, Onomatopoeia & More

Teaching Figurative Language to Kids

This is our first attempt to have a group homeschool project online for our kids, in which we’d like to showcase our kid’s work on one particular topic at a time. This group homeschool project topic is “Figurative Language”. Figurative Language is different sayings that do not express its literal meaning.

Below are some types of figurative language, definitions, examples, websites and pictures we drew to help learn about this topic. We’d like to welcome other children to draw funny figurative languages examples, you can scan and email the picture to us, or post them on your blog and trackback to this original post or comment below.

An idiom is is a combination of words that sound idiotic, but the meanings are typically popular and well-known by native speakers. Non-native speakers (foreigners) find them very difficult to understand.

Online Idiom game.

Examples include: icing on the cake, is there a frog in your throat, dead meat.

idiom-kids-art

An oxymoron is a phrase in which two words that typically contradicts themselves (good & bad, ugly & pretty) are used together to stress the point of the speaker.

Examples include: all alone, wise fool, awfully nice, legal murder.

oxymoron-kids-art

Onomatopoeia is a word used to make a “sound”.

Examples include: meow, woof, bang, tick-tock.

onomatopoeia-kids-art

  • Simile

Simile is comparing two things using the words “like” or “as”.

Examples include: his nose is as cold as ice, the girl ran like a cheetah.

simile-kids-art


  • Metaphor

Metaphor is a comparison between two things using descriptive or symbolic words without using the words “like” or “as”.

Examples include: My bike is my magical carpet, Juliet (from “Romeo & Juliet”) is the sun.

metaphor-kids-art

  • Hyperbole

A Hyperbole is a deliberate and obvious exaggeration to stress your point.

Examples include: The oven must be set at 1000 degrees! I could eat a 100, or 1,000,000 of these!

hyperbole-kids-art

  • Personification

Personification is giving life-like qualities to non-living things; making a something ‘like’ a person.

Examples include: The teapot sang & whistled, the printer ate my paper!

personification-kids-art

We had a ton of fun working on this project one evening. Please join the fun! Grab your crayons, markers and pencils and send your drawing to us via email, or post on your blog & comment below with the link!

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One Comment on "Teaching Kids Idioms, Oxymorons, Onomatopoeia & More"

  1. Ponn Sabra on Fri, 5th Mar 2010 12:06 pm 

    Adding a link for Alliteration http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112392/alliteration.html

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