First Grade, Grammar, Set Five

• In order to make learning about the parts of a book fun, I decided to make a lapbook. This was my first attempt, and it was a learning attempt, but I think the end result met my goal.
• Karl and Carolina Uncover the Parts of a Book by Donovan -- this is a story book about two children learning about dinosaurs. Carolina shows Karl how to use the parts of a book to help them choose a book at the library.

I made a book character to walk us through the learning. When I was finished I noticed I didn't give her a mouth!

Here is how the first page looked when K. opened it.

We talked about the Cover, Spine, Title Page, and Table of Contents. I showed her one of each in different books, then let her find her own. We scanned them into the computer and printed them out the right size to fit on each pocket, then glued them in place.

The next day we went to the next page.

Here we learned about the Appendix, Glossary, Index, and Bibliography. We did the same process, letting K. choose the ones to scan, print, and glue in the book.

After reviewing the first pages, we went on to the last.

I had labels of all the parts, and had K. put them in alphabetical order (by first letter only). Then we glued them on. Next she matched them to their definition (on the left) and their location in a book (on the right).

• I downloaded and printed The Child's Own English Book by Ball (copyright 1920) through Homeschooling Freebie Of The Day. We started part 1 "The Noun" this week. There were a few pages about what a noun is. It discussed how a baby learns to talk and all the words they start with (Daddy, cup, dog, etc.) are objects and a noun is the name of an object. Then it has five games and two written exercises to reinforce the concept of nouns.
• One game has us see who could name the most objects in the room you are in, or outside in the garden (or any location).
• Another game has us write all the names of people we could think of.
• Another had us list cities, streets, oceans, rivers, countries, etc.
• Friday we played My Ship Has Come In. The first player says, "My ship has come in and it is loaded with apricots" (any noun that starts with an A). The second player says "My ship has come in and it is loaded with apricots and beads" (any noun that starts with a B). We did change the game a bit from the book to suit two players, but it was fun. Our ship had a pretty interesting load as we added canaries, doughnuts, elephants, fans, grapes, hatboxes, ice cream, jaguars, etc.
• We thought of pairs of words that mean the same (or close to the same) thing; example: woods/forest, blossom/flower, brook/stream, etc.
• The book had some sentences where we underlined the nouns. We took turns. K. found the first and I found the second, and so on.
• This week we have been reading books (very simple ones) and finding the nouns in them. One book was about God making the world and another was about animal's homes.