Play Word Bags to Learn Parts of Speech

Parts of speech can be a difficult and dreary concept for many kids, but you can quickly turn that feeling around by creating this fun, easy, learning game your child will enjoy playing!

What You Need:

• Eight brown paper lunch bags

• A stack of index cards

• Pen or pencil

What You Do:

Step 1
Go over the eight most common parts of speech with your child:

• Noun—a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living creature, quality, or action. Examples: cowboy, theater, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival

• Verb—describes an action (doing something) or a state (being something). Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want

• Adjective— describes a noun. It tells you something about the noun. Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important

• Adverb—usually describes a verb. It tells you how something is done. It may also tell you when or where something happened. Examples: slowly, intelligently, well, yesterday, tomorrow, here, everywhere

• Pronoun—used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they

• Preposition—usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. It joins the noun to some other part of the sentence. Examples: on, in, by, with, under, through, at

• Conjunction—joins two words, phrases or sentences together. Examples: but, so, and, because, or

• Interjection--an unusual kind of word, because it often stands alone. Interjections are words which express emotion or surprise, and they are usually followed by exclamation marks. Examples: Ouch!, Hello!, Hurray!, Oh no!, Ha!
   

Step 2
Prepare for the game by labeling each of the eight brown bags a different part of speech. Then, on index cards, have your child help you think of and write down 10-20 words, any words will do, for each category. Write only one word on each index card.

Step 3
Place the appropriate card in each bag that fits its part of speech.

Step 4
Pick out one word from each bag and use those words to build a long sentence. The first person who can use all the parts of speech wins!  Note: you may need to conjugate the verb tense and/or include articles, such as, “a”, “the”, “an” to make the sentence complete. Is this proving a little tough? Modify the game for your child by omitting some of the parts of speech at first, such as interjection, conjunction and/or pronoun. As your child gains mastery over this concept, slowly introduce the other parts of speech into the game.

Step 5
After you've built a few sentences, reverse the game! Dump all the words onto the table, scramble them up, and correctly replace each word back into its corresponding parts of speech bag.