Write Parts of Speech Acrostic Poetry!

You've packed up the kids, jackets, water bottles, tchotkes and all, and you're off for a special afternoon.  Maybe you'll see a park; maybe a museum; maybe a special friend.  Whatever it is, you know it will be fun, and you'll want to keep some memories.  You might even want to send a few along, perhaps in a letter to a relative, or a thank you to a host.  Here's a creative way to do it...while helping your second grader with some classic parts of the curriculum this year! 

What You Need:

• Camera
• Pencil or pens
• Booklet Paper (download our printable pages here, or make your own!)

What You Do:
1. Next time your child goes somewhere enjoyable--to the park, on a day trip to a museum, explain that to add to the fun, you're going to collect words for what you see, hear, and feel.  On the trip there, you have a perfect chance to review what we call some different kinds of words in our written language: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.  Second graders are studying all of them this year, and if you get a "we already know that!" go ahead and applaud--that's great news!

2. As you're traveling, it helps to review, even if your child feels pretty confident.  Here’s a list, and a brief description to get you going:

• Nouns – a person, place, thing (there are common nouns, which are not capitalized, and there are proper nouns, which are capitalized because they are names of people, places, or things). For example: cat, day, sound, coffee, bone, book (common nouns)

• Verbs – action words. For example: run, read, eat, skipping, jogged, loved, thought

• Adjectives – describing words. For example: green, round, shiny, tall, old, wooden

• Adverbs – words that describe verbs (many end in –ly) For example: quickly, busily, happily, angrily

3. When you get to your destination, do like any typical tourist: take some pictures!  Enjoy everything about your experience!