Summer review - Parts of Speech

In establishing our schedule for this summer, we included some time to review important topics. This helps keep the kids from losing information over the summer, keeps us from too many days of boredom, and even helps us sharpen some skills that can use it.


One area that I felt all of my children could benefit to spend some time on concerns parts of speech. Of course, they all have their own areas of strength and difficulty, but this project easily lent itself to a group study.


First, I made up cards with each of the parts of speech:


We spent one day reviewing what each word meant and listing examples. I only expect my third grader to know about half of them, but fifth grader should know six or seven of them, and my seventh grader should know them all.


We played a game naming nouns and then verbs that the kids enjoyed, and it provided us some fun in the midst of review. One person would name a noun (could also be done with any part of speech), then the next person needed to name a noun that started with the last letter of the previous word.


For example, one might say, "ear" and the next "rabbit." Then, on to "tent" and "turtle" and "elbow." Simple and fun, and it got the job done. Inadvertently, this touched on spelling skills as well. :-)


Sometimes they named a word that was not a noun, or that someone thought was not a noun and it gave us some casual opportunities to talk about what is and is not a noun.


Once we had the review day we headed into this:


I simply wrote a sentence on our whiteboard (could easily be done on paper as well), and we identified the subject, verb, and then all of the parts of speech for each word of the sentence. We used the slips of paper set on the rail below each word and then diagrammed the skeleton to reinforce the finding of the subject and verb which all of my kids benefited from.


To keep it relevant to their level, I always started with the youngest and she found the nouns, the next oldest found the adjectives and adverbs, and the oldest found the prepositions and conjunctions.


We took turns a bit so they weren't always doing the same thing, but they were each stretched a bit and kept engaged during this simple exercise.


With just about 15 minutes we kept up on our English, and will continue the habit a few days this coming week as well.


More Thirsty Thursday

Comments

Anonymous said…
What a fun idea! I may borrow this one. If you don't come up with something you'd rather submit instead, I think this would be a great post for the next Homeschool Showcase!
6intow said…
Thanks, Kris, I was debating where/if to send it in. It's yours. :-) I'll send it in officially in the next day or two.
Blessed Mommy said…
hi erin, thanks for sending your blog! i am also glad we got to chat quickly the other day and it will be nice to keep up a bit w. your homeschooling! we are still praying about what we will do for school w/ our kiddos - thankfully we still have a couple years to decide!!!
Annie Kate said…
I think I'll be doing that in the next few weeks with some of my children. Great idea.

Annie Kate
Dustine said…
That is a great idea. This approach helps the kids to use grammar in "real" way (make sense?) vs just filling in worksheets.
Thank you for sharing. I also find it amazing how much can be covered in just a 15min lessons. :)
Kristenph said…
Wonderful idea. Simple but effective review.
6intow said…
Dusti, I am definitely all about "real" ways to learn. We use textbooks as well, but I agree that they have to see stuff outside their school books at least now and then.

Kristenph, Thanks. It was definitely easy, and it kept them all interacting through the process, too. Best way to have it.

~Erin
Joy @ Five J's said…
Fabulous idea! That'd made a nice "car" game. This year we're going to be in the car a lot traveling to and from classes, so I might have the kids play the game while commuting. Great idea!
Unknown said…
Quick and easy grammar idea! Wonderful. This is how I teach grammar too -- using real sentences. I like the last letter gimmick, though. I'll have to remember that one. :-)

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