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!

Grammar made super easy (and fun!)

Are you trying to teach your kids about the parts of speech -- the difference between a noun and a pronoun ... a regular verb and an irregular verb ... an adverb and an adjective ? How can you teach them which pronouns to use when and the order of adverbs?

Ruth Heller, who has written tons of cool coloring books, has created series of books we checked out from the library -- these are fantastic! Every book has big beautiful drawings and fun examples of the specific part of speech.

Here are the ones we read today (which will need to be purchased for my own bookshelves -- yes, they're that good):

Mine, All Mine: A Book About Pronouns
Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal!: A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions
Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives
Up, Up and Away: A Book About Adverbs
Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns
Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs
Behind the Mask: A Book About Prepositions

A Cache of Jewels: A Book About Collective Nouns

Check 'em out -- I think you'll find they're quite helpful (and fun!)

I wish grammar had been this fun when I was a kid!

Practicing parts of sentences (and reading) using DK Games' Silly Sentences. They played this game for an hour!