Fun Ways to Improve Your Child's Grammar Skills

As someone currently employed in the field of education and working on a degree in Communication, I understand the importance of developing strong grammar and writing skills at an early age. Being realistic, it is obvious that many children find it less than thrilling to do repeated grammar drills or worksheets. Although there is a time and place for that approach to learning, there are ways you can make learning language rules a little more entertaining. The following methods worked very well in helping my own little sisters develop stronger writing skills.

1. Using their favorite book, have the kids select a page (or a few, depending on the amount of text on each page) and read it aloud to you one time. Next, go sentence by sentence and have them identify the different parts of speech. You can have them identify the words out loud or have them write out their answers. My sisters chose to read one of their favorite funny stories, "The Stinky Cheese Man," from a collection of tales. By allowing them to focus on a story that they enjoy rather than boring worksheet text, their interest will be held longer. You can change up this activity by sometimes having them find only the nouns or have them figure out how many adjectives are used on a page.

2. Write various words that represent the different parts of speech onto index cards or even pieces of construction paper if you want something bigger. Choose various nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and articles. Have them pick a word from each category to make a sentence. For example, they may pick the following out of each pile:

proper noun: Leo; common noun: pond; verb: swims; adjective: turquoise; adverb: slowly; preposition: in; article: the

Sentence: Leo swims slowly in the turquoise pond.

Obviously, if the child creates a sentence that reads, "The Leo swims turquoise in pond slowly," you will know more extensive study on the parts of speech and how they relate to each other to form complete sentences will be needed. You can also make this exercise as basic or as advanced as you feel is appropriate.

3. If you have more than one child you are working with, they may enjoy a little game. My sisters love to complete against one another and one way we brought that into studying grammar rules is by having me call out various words and having them yell out what part of speech those words represent. For instance I may say "monster" and whoever identifies the term as a noun first get a point. Make sure you have already created a list of several words so that the game will go quickly; whoever has the most points after you finish calling out the list is the winner. You can also flip this around by saying a part of speech and having them come up with a word that matches. Not only does this give some variety, but it lets the kids use their imagination by coming up with their own ideas.

4. Another game that is always a hit with kids is bingo. I created decorated bingo cards that have various words on them, and I called out questions that corresponded with the bingo card answers. I used this game to help my sisters practice identifying tenses. I may call out "past tense of run" and they would have to find "ran" on their cards. This was the probably the girls' favorite way to practice their grammar skills.

5. Writing instructors love to give a particular subject and have their students write on it, and this exercise can also work with kids. I created a few different index cards with writing prompts on them and had the girls pull one out of a hat. Because they were just starting to try out their developing writing skills, I kept the writing assignments short: a 5-8 sentence paragraph. After doing these a few times over a period of weeks, I had them try it again but allowed them to exchange papers to see if each child could recognize any grammatical errors in another's writing.

6. One of the final projects I gave my sisters after they had a good handle on their writing was to have them work together to perform a short skit. I guided them through the writing process, and being able to take a project from the brainstorming stage to the actual performance gave them a real sense of accomplishment. They worked together on developing a topic (they're very comedic so they chose to act out a scene from recent family gathering), writing the skit, editing it for errors, gathering materials, and finally performing it. Not only did the project allow them to utilize their developing grammar and writing skills, but it also gave them the opportunity to really be creative and let their imaginations fly.

I hope that some of these suggestions will be useful as you work with your children on their language skills. Not everything they do in school can be exciting, but if you can find ways to make certain topics a little more interesting and interactive, you might just be surprised at how well kids respond.