Preposition Resources

Learning about prepositions presents a few challenges. Individual prepositions can have multiple different meanings. For example, “on” can refer to resting, like “on your head” or membership, like “on a team.” Some concepts can use more than one preposition. Time is particularly difficult, like “at 4pm,” “in two days,” or “on Saturday.” It’s difficult for your child to memorize rules when it comes to prepositions. Here are some general tips to help your child learn:

• Act out the meaning of a preposition. Physical actions will reinforce your child’s memory. For example, when learning “over,” have your child put a book over their head. When learning “by,” have your child act out “by the couch,’ and “written by an author.”
• Try mapping it out. A handwritten diagram is another great memory trick. Use a pen or pencil to visualize the meaning of the preposition. This can be very helpful with prepositions about time. For example, draw the meaning of “in two days,” “for two days,” and “after two days.”
• Learn prepositions in clusters. Focus on prepositions of time, space, relation, instrument, agent, etc. This will help your child associate prepositions with a group of similar type.
• Come up with lots of examples. Challenge your child to think of other phrases that use the same preposition. This is a good way to explore the multiple meanings of a preposition.
• Keep it simple and just say it out loud. The best way to learn prepositions is to hear and say them repeatedly. This is good news! Repeating phrases with the correct preposition is very easy to do anywhere.

After you’ve got prepositions down, challenge your child to correctly identify prepositional phrases in our resources on complete sentences vs. fragments.