Juggling Words is a card game designed to give students practice in identifying synonyms as well as developing their vocabulary. Given a pair of words, students should juggle (move one letter in the first word to the second word) a letter to form a pair of synonyms. For example:

Given the words salve, savage, students should juggle the letter "l" to form the synonym pair save, salvage.

Prepare the following cards. Word pairs in black should be written on the front of the card, while blue synonym pairs should be written on the back.

1. lice, recline
   lie, recline
2. lopes, shills
   slopes, hills
3. flat, pump
   fat, plump
4. our, start
   sour, tart
5. whiled, spurn
   whirled, spun
6. died, ante
   dined, ate
7. pest, cares
   pet, caress
8. curt, cave
   cut, carve
9. grove, rout
   groove, rut
10. shred, bad
    shed, barn

Options:

• Prepare the cards and place them in a learning center. Individual students can use them at a specified time or as an extra activity when their class work has been completed.
• Prepare the cards and present one a day to the whole class. You may designate a specific time during the day as Juggling Words time or allow the students to work on the activity throughout the day until a solution is reached.
• Award a small prize to the student or small group who reaches the solution first.
• Encourage students to create their own Juggling Words items.
• Use a database and/or label-making program to create professional looking cards. I like to stick the labels on heavy cardstock that I have obtained from a local printing company for a nominal fee.
• Notch the upper right corner of each card to make for easy sorting.