More Grammar Fun

Brian P. Cleary has written a series of books called “Words are Categorical”. Similar to Ruth Heller’s books, these define and give examples of all the parts of speech – but in a fun, silly way which helps the kids really understand. For instance, String Bean was asking in the car yesterday, “is an adjective the one that describes a noun or a verb?” These fun books really do work for the 6-9 year old kids! Here are the ones we’ve read this week:

A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What is a Noun?
A Lime, a Mime, a Pool of Slime: More About Nouns
To Root, to Toot, to Parachute: What is a Verb?
Hairy, Scray, Ordinary: What is an Adjective?
Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely: What is an Adverb?
Under, Over, By the Clover: What is a Preposition?
I and You and Don’t Forget Who: What is a Pronoun?
Pitch and Throw, Grasp and Know: What is a Synonym?
Stop and Go, Yes and No: What is an Antonym?

And once your kids really know and understand words, Cleary has also written a book of really humorous puns and silly poems called Rhyme & PUNishment: Adventures in Wordplay as well as a book of poetry (which is gives cool examples of almost every form of poetry) called Rainbow Soup: Adventures in Poetry.

Other books by this prolific humorist include books about math concepts (in a series called “Math is Categorical”) and a series of poetry books called “It Could be Verse”. We’ll try those out next year!