Double-Trouble Words — One Word, Two Pictures

A drawing-and-riddle game about words that have two completely different meanings — a bat that flies and a bat that hits a ball. The child folds a sheet in half and draws both, then tries the word out in silly sentences. Discovering that one word can lead a double life is a real “aha” for a 5-year-old.

  1. Start with a surprise. Hold up or draw a cricket/baseball bat and ask “What’s this?” Then show a picture of the flying animal: “And this?” “Wait — they’re both called bat*! Same word, two different things. That’s a double-trouble word.”*
  2. Fold a sheet of paper in half. The child draws one meaning on each side while you chat about each one. Write the word once across the top.
  3. Sentence test. Say a sentence and the child points to the picture it belongs to: “The bat hung upside down in the cave.” “She swung the bat and hit the ball.”
  4. Try a new word each time you play. Good starters: bark (dog / tree), fly (insect / travel through the air), duck (bird / bend down), wave (sea / hand), ring (finger / bell sound), nail (finger / hammer), trunk (elephant / tree), orange (fruit / colour), letter (alphabet / post), park (playground / park the car).
  5. Make it silly. Mix the meanings up on purpose: “I saw a tree with a very loud bark — woof woof!” The child explains what went wrong. Then they invent a mix-up of their own.
  6. Staple the sheets together over the weeks into a “Double-Trouble Book” to flip through.

Variation: Riddle time — “What has a trunk but never packs a suitcase?” (a tree or an elephant). Act both — the child mimes each meaning and you say which one it was. Word spotter — when a double-trouble word turns up in a book or at dinner, whoever notices first calls “Double trouble!” and says which meaning it is this time.

Requirements

  • Space: A table for drawing
  • Surface: Table or clipboard
  • Materials: Paper, crayons or pencils; a stapler for the book (adult use); optional real objects or picture books showing both meanings
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child
  • Supervision: Adult-led conversation; child draws independently

Rationale & Objective

Many of the commonest English words carry more than one meaning, and young children tend to cling to the first meaning they learned: Mazzocco (1997) found that preschoolers and early school-age children often insist on the familiar meaning of a word even when the story clearly calls for the other one. Learning the second meaning is real vocabulary growth — Common Core Kindergarten lists it as a standard: “identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately (e.g., knowing duck is a bird and learning the verb to duck)” (L.K.4a). It also builds the more general insight that a word and the thing it names are separate, which Doherty (2000) showed emerges at around age 4 alongside the understanding of false belief. Zipke (2008) argues that playing with ambiguous words and riddles strengthens this flexibility and supports later reading comprehension, where a reader must pick the meaning that fits the sentence. Drawing both meanings side by side makes the abstract idea visible, and the sentence test gives practice in using context to choose between them.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: accepts only the meaning they already know (“that’s not a bat, a bat is an animal!”); draws one meaning and needs you to supply the other
  • Developing: accepts both meanings once shown and draws both; points to the right picture for clear sentences; laughs at mix-ups but cannot yet explain them
  • Proficient: explains both meanings in their own words; picks the right meaning from the sentence; explains why a mix-up sentence is funny; remembers earlier double-trouble words
  • Advanced: spots double-meaning words in books and conversation without prompting; invents mix-up jokes; begins to understand simple riddles and puns built on two meanings

Safety Notes

  • No physical risk; keep the stapler in adult hands and check that staples are flat before the child handles the book
  • A child who gets upset that “a bat is NOT that!” isn’t being stubborn — holding on to one meaning per word is a normal stage. Stay light and come back to it another day
  • Don’t choose pairs where one meaning is unknown AND abstract; at least one meaning should be something the child already knows well
  • Children learning English as an additional language may know only one meaning, or neither; draw and explain both, and enjoy any double-meaning words from the home language as well
  • Many 5-year-olds do not yet “get” puns, and that is fine. If a child also takes most everyday language very literally and has wider difficulties with conversation or play, mention it to a speech-language pathologist

Hints

  • Playfulness: act outraged at the English language — “Who decided to call them BOTH bat? That’s so confusing!” Children love being the expert who sorts out a muddled adult
  • Sustain interest: grow the stapled book one page at a time and read it back like a joke book; give a small cheer whenever anyone catches a double-trouble word in the wild
  • Common mistake: using words that only sound alike but are different words on the page (flower / flour, knight / night). They are fun later, but start with true same-word pairs so the idea is clean
  • Limited space: skip the drawing and do it as a talking and miming game in the car or a queue
  • Cross-domain: drawing both meanings is fine-motor and art practice; the sentence test is listening comprehension; riddles build humour and flexible thinking (executive function)
  • Progression: two concrete nouns (bat / bat) → noun and action (duck / duck, fly / fly) → child explains mix-up sentences → child invents mix-ups → simple riddles and jokes

Sources

  • Common Core State Standards, Kindergarten Language — L.K.4a: “Identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately (e.g., knowing duck is a bird and learning the verb to duck)”
  • Mazzocco, M.M.M. (1997), “Children’s interpretations of homonyms: A developmental study,” Journal of Child Language, 24(2), 441–467
  • Doherty, M.J. (2000), “Children’s understanding of homonymy: Metalinguistic awareness and false belief,” Journal of Child Language, 27(2), 367–392
  • Zipke, M. (2008), “Teaching metalinguistic awareness and reading comprehension with riddles,” The Reading Teacher, 62(2), 128–137
  • Head Start ELOF — Goal P-LC 7: “Child shows understanding of word categories and relationships among words”