Teaching Your Child the Parts of Speech

Remember the eight parts of speech? They are verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Teaching your child the parts of speech doesn't have to be dull and boring. There are several ways to liven it up and make it so your child doesn't even realize they are learning.

Hot Pronoun:

Just like the game ''hot potato'' give your child a ball, bean bag or small stuffed animal. Go over the definition of what a pronoun (or whichever part of speech your are doing) and sing a song or silly phrase. When you use that part of speech the child has to drop the hot pronoun. For example sing Mary had a little lamb. The child would drop it when you sang ...followed her to school...

Dime a Dozen:

Dig eighty cents out of your pocketbook, car glove box, couch cushions etc and lay them on the table.

Have your child start in one room and find twelve nouns. If they start in the kitchen for example they might find banana, magnet, cup etc. Once they find twelve nouns they earn their dime and move to the next room where they have to find twelve adjectives. If this was my living room they might find a dusty book, brown chair etc. When your child has collected as much as they can of the eighty cents let them keep it and put it into their piggy bank.

Bulls Eye

Using a piece of poster board or large piece of paper. Draw a bull's eye type target with eight circles, one for each part of speech. On small pieces of paper have written between two and four words for each part of speech. Have your child tape the words to the appropriate ring on the target.

Freeze:

This one is good if a child is in a silly mood or has a lot of energy to burn off. Tell the child to listen for a specific part of speech such as a verb. Have the child dance around while you sing a familiar song and as soon as you use that part of speech they have to ''freeze'' in whatever position they are in until you use that part of speech again.

Crazy Cooking:

This one is good for teaching nouns, adjectives and interjections. Help the child write down four words for each part of speech. The sillier the better. Such as lava and banana peels for nouns, slimy and spicy for adjectives and so on. Have the child take two words from each pile without looking and put them in a large mixing bowl. Have the child mix them up and then pull them out to read. See what kind of kooky concoction they came up with.

Making learning enjoyable for children can be fun for the parents and teachers too!

Source: personal experience: