We employ the homotopy analysis method(HAM)to obtain approximate analytical solutions to the heat-like and wave-like equations.The HAM contains the auxiliary parameter h,which provides a convenient way of controlling the convergence region of series solutions.The analysisis accompanied by several linear and nonlinear heat-like and wave-like equations with initial boundary value problems.The results obtained prove that HAM is very effectiw and simple with less error than the Adomian decomposition method and the variational iteration method.