Fourth Grade, Grammar, Set Three

g.u.m. drops pages 27 - 39

• Possessives
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Subject / Verb Agreement
• Subject / Pronoun Agreement

Fourth Grade, Grammar, Set Two

g.u.m. drops pages 14 - 26

• Verbs
• Verb Tenses
• Irregular Verbs
• Contractions
• Pronouns

Fourth Grade, Grammar, Set One

g.u.m. drops pages 1 - 13

• Complete Sentences
• Sentence Types
• Nouns
• Capitalization
• Abbreviations
• Plural Nouns

Third Grade, Grammar, Set Seven

I printed out some worksheets to work on:

• Common and Proper Nouns
• Verb Tenses
• Action and Linking Verbs
• Helping Verbs
• Verb "To Be"
• Pronouns I and Me
• Prepositions

We also worked through a test taking skills book.

Third Grade, Grammar, Set Six

Since we completed the work I had planned for this school year in Set Five, I did not schedule anything for Grammar in this set. This also allowed us more time for Writing.

Third Grade, Grammar, Set Five

We completed the book, Painless Jr. Grammar, reviewing periods, commas, and capitalization. We learned about colons, semi colons, indenting, and abbreviations. I found worksheets on-line to give more practice than the book had.

We also did worksheets on singular possessives, abstract nouns, irregular verbs, and comparative/superlative.

This is our last set of Grammar this year. In the next two sets we will be using our grammar time to work on our writing project.

Thrid Grade, Grammar, Set Four

We started out this set of weeks by completing her essay on the water slide she invented. K. completed a senses word web and used the thesaurus. This is the final copy:

     The big Silly Slippery Slide is the most thrilling water ride in the world! You will go flying down the 20 foot slide, and water splashes on your face as you zoom over the 6 foot hill round two curves, and float, bob, and splash in the pool you land in.
     If you ride the Silly Slippery Slide, you will find it so thrilling, it's the only water ride you will want to ride!

We completed chapter 4 in Painless Jr. Grammar -- prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

Writing Project: Persuasive Letter

• I wrote a letter to K. from a pretend girl telling her that the book club I was in was going to read A Bear Called Paddington. I told her I thought the book silly and wondered if she thought I should read it.
• I had K. write three reasons she likes the book.
• Then she did word webs on two of the ideas.
• She used them to write a persuasive letter back to the girl.

Third Grade, Grammar, Set Three

During the first week, we proofed and re-wrote K.'s roller coaster essay. She didn't have the roller coasters in chronological order, so we used a time-order chart to fix that. She also had problems with it's and its, so I found a work sheet to practice which one to use. Then we used the thesaurus to change find some more exciting words.

We completed chapter three in Painless Junior Grammar. It was about verbs and adverbs. Now she is working on an essay about a water ride she had to invent. Once she had it drawn, I could see that it wasn't realistic, so we got out a couple rulers, a long, clear plastic tube, tape, clay, and a ball bearing. Then we were able to experiment and see how high the hill she had could be and the ball bearing have enough energy to get over it. To get to the scale she wanted, we changed inches to feet and multiplied by two.

Third Grade, Grammar, Set Two

We completed the second chapter of Painless Junior Grammar, on nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. At the end of the chapter there was a project -- to learn about the history of roller coasters and write a report. The report was to include the names of roller coasters (proper nouns) and descriptions of them (adjectives). Below is a list of books we got from the library.

Roller Coasters:

• Roller Coasters by Dana Meachen Rau
• Roller Coasters by Lynn M. Stone
• Roller Coasters by Gil Chandler
• Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee -- story about a girl's first ride
• Incredible Inventions Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins -- I like to add poetry whenever I can

Third Grade, Grammar, Set One

We have completed chapter 1 in Painless Junior Grammar. Learning about sentences. Most of this was review, but that is a good place to start.

We read Grammar Land: Grammar In Fun for Children by M. L. Nesbitt, published in 1878. This was very fun to read and I'm quite sure we will use it as a reference in the future.

Second Grade, Grammar and Writing, Set Seven

As you can see, I have grouped Grammar and Writing together for this set. We are doing the workbook from National Novel Writing Month during this set. You can download it for free.

 

We just started at the beginning and are working our way through it. Since we did it last year, K. is familiar with the idea of what we are doing, and is more willing to work through the workbook instead of just wanting to write the story.

 

Instead of using the questions in the workbook for developing the main and supporting characters and the villain, I used the What a Personality activity work page from Games for Writing. For her age, this was much better, and since we had played What a Personality a few times this year, it was pretty easy for her to complete. I completed some also, just for the fun of it.

 

We had written the plot, through the climax. It is really neat to have K. come running to the kitchen with a book she is reading for fun and tell me, "Mom, I just got to the climax in this book!"

We completed the workbook during our third week, which left just two weeks for K. to write her novel. This has turned out not to be enough time, so, even though we are technically through with our school year, she is continuing to work on her novel.

Next year we will start the workbook during set 6 so K. has all of set 7 to write her novel.

Second Grade, Grammar, Set Six

Parts of Speech

• We used an old reader and underlined the verbs, pronouns, nouns, proper nouns, plural nouns, and adjectives in one story. The story had four pages, so we did one page each day.

Sentence Structure

• We divided sentences between the subject and the predicate.
• We added subjects to predicates.
• We added predicates to subjects.

Usage

• We learned that 'I' gets used in the subject of a sentence and 'me' is used in the predicate.
• We completed sentences to avoid using double negatives.

Listening and Speaking Skills

• Giving an oral book report from an outline

Writing Skills

• To prepare for writing a descriptive paragraph (she chose to write about chocolate cake), we completed a Word Web and a Senses Chart.
• We practiced combining sentences that had common subjects or common predicates.
• I had K. pick two words from her word web and two from her senses chart that were plain, everyday words. We used the thesaurus to find more interesting words to use. For instance, soft was exchanged for spongy.
• She spent two days writing sentences from the things on her charts. I asked her to write five sentences each day.
• The next day we looked for sentences that had the same subject or predicate and she combined them into one sentence.
• She decided on the order her sentences should be in the paragraph, and wrote the paragraph in her best writing.

Second Grade, Grammar, Set Five

• Mechanics & Sentence Structure
• Punctuation / Capitalization / Types of Sentences -- we read and did the activities in Child's Own, pages 150 - 153a. This has you learning about "stop" and "go" signs in sentences, then capitalizing words and putting punctuation in a story.
• I downloaded a supplemental curriculum called Punctuation Theater. It teaches the use of periods, exclamation marks, question marks, and commas by using percussion instruments when the punctuation should appear in sentences. It has a lot of sample sentences to work through (because it is made for a classroom) so I was only going to do some of them, but K. wanted to do all of them.
• I found a story in an old book that had plenty of opening phrases and extra information. I read the story and K. underlined the opening phrases and extra information.
• Writing Projects
• I let K. pick an envelope (the information she gathered about penguins). Then we work together to write a paragraph.
• All the paragraphs are written. We will do the editing and publishing during our week off.
• Book Report
• K. picked the book A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. I am having her make a book jacket as her book report. I took the jackets off about six books and we looked at what was on them -- illustration, author, illustrator, a paragraph to interest a person in reading the book, etc.
• Writing Skills
• Step-by-Step Chart -- K. wrote the five steps for getting cereal ready in the morning
• Story Map -- K. filled out the form -- the characters, where the story takes place, the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
• Speaking Tips
• We talked about speaking in front of a group
• Look at the audience
• Smile before you start, and while you are speaking
• Talk to the person in the back row so you speak loud enough
• It is important to speak clearly
• Here are a couple books you might want to look at:
• Speaking Up, Speaking Out by Steven Otfinoski
• Speak Up! by Patricia Sternberg

Second Grade, Grammar, Set Four

• Parts of Speech
• I printed out a couple sheets of people doing things (biking, calling, jumping, etc.) we talked about what the first one was doing. Then we talked about how we would say it if we were talking about the person doing it yesterday (biked, called, jumped). If they are doing it now, we call that present tense. If they did it, we call that past tense. We went through one sheet of activities writing the present and past tense of each activity. We completed one sheet on two different days.
• Another worksheet had a crossword puzzle of present tense verbs
• I wrote out a handful of sentences and had K. change them from present to past tense.
• We took turns changing the verb tense in a poem.
• Books we read:
• Kites Sail High by Ruth Heller
• To Root, to Toot, to Parachute by Brian P. Cleary
• We used the book Winter Days in the Big Woods (My First Little House Book series) to review proper and common nouns, plural and singular nouns, present and past tense verbs. I read a page then asked K. to find (for example) three plural nouns.
• We used an Amelia Bedelia book to review in the same way.
• We reviewed pronouns by using pictures to make sentences, then exchanging pronouns for the nouns in the sentence. Below is the sentence: Henry shot an arrow at the rabbit and the deer. Which gets changed to: He shot at them. (Looking at it now, it should have been, He shot it at them.)
• We played the Bag Game to review nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. We played it differently. First we spread out the word cards and then we each made a sentence (of course, every words of the sentence isn't there), but each sentence had to include at least one noun, verb, adjective, and preposition. After reading our sentence, we told what parts of speech each word was and put them in their appropriate bag.

• Writing Projects
• Research report -- K. decided to learn and write about penguins. We looked on the computer card catalog to find out where to look for books about penguins. Then we went to the library and were able to find five books that were interesting to her.
• I wrote each of these categories on a sticky note and put each on a different envelope.
• My home
• What I eat
• What I look like
• How I am born
• What eats me
• How I protect myself
• Fun facts
• Then K. wanted to add
• What I do
• I had her pick one of the books. We take turns reading a page or paragraph and then she decides if there is anything important to remember. We write it (not in complete sentences) on a 3 x 5 card and put it in the appropriate envelope.
• With the rest of the books, I'm letting K. just read them (or we read them together) and when she is all done, think of two new things she learned and make cards on them. We have been doing one book a week. She will finish up any unread books during this week of vacation.
• I decided to have K. write the report in the next set of weeks because we want to take her to the aquarium to see penguins before she writes her report.
• We have started reading the book The Secrets of the Rock by Phyllis Perry. Through a story, the author teaches basic research skills. We are reading two chapters each week and then duplicating the research done in the book. The author has written two other books for younger elementary students to learn research skills (Fribble Mouse Library Mystery), and two books for older elementary students (WHAM Agency Library Mysteries).

Second Grade, Grammar, Set Three

• Listening Skills
• I found an idea on line to make a sheet of paper with pictures of seven different fruits and vegetables printed on it. Then I have K. seven two-part instructions, such as, draw a line from the apple to the pear and color the pear yellow.
• I found a picture on line with instructions. These were three-part instructions, and she did really well.
• We did one more listening skill activity. I found the idea online, but made up my own pieces and instructions, as theirs were just too detailed for a second grader. Here is the picture.

• Sentence Structure
• We added punctuation at the end of sentences and decided if the sentence was a statement, command, question, or exclamation.
• I had K. draw a line between the who and what of sentences.
• K. told whether "sentences" were complete or fragments.
• Mechanics
• I used Child's Own
• Comma, pages 157 - 161
• Apostrophe, pages 163 - 164
• Contractions, pages 164 - 165
• Writing Skills
• Senses Chart -- one day we took a banana and wrote down words for how it smelled, looked, felt, sounded, and tasted. The next day we did the same for a bowl. Then I had K. write a simple paragraph about the bowl from her chart.
• Writing Project
• Shape Poem
• I picked up the book, Doodle Dandies: Poems that Take Shape by J. Patrick Lewis at the library. One day we read the book.
• Another day we googled "shape poems" and looked at the images of all the different shapes of poems.
• The other two days we made shape poems. I discovered that the best way to do this is to print or draw with a very heavy outline the shape you want. Then put a piece of clean white paper over the paper with the shape. Tape them together so they stay together easily. In the picture below, K. wrote a poem around the teddy bear shape and then drew the features of the bear inside.

• Study and Reference Skills
• I found a unit study online called Dazzling Dictionaries Unit.
• One page I used has the child use the dictionary to (1) find correct spelling, (2) find the meaning of words, (3) find a synonym, and (4) find the plural spelling of words.
• The second page has twenty words for the child to put under the correct guide words. K. and I discovered that for one set of guide words there was only one word. The guide words were folk / fool. The words that I think they had planned to go under them were: food, for, foot, and foolish. However, food is really the only word that actually belongs. I had K. look in our dictionary and write three more words that were between folk and fool.

Second Grade, Grammar, Set Two

• We reviewed Verbs
• I read aloud pages 56 - 57 in Child's Own English Book.
• Then it was time to Play Games:
• We pretended that we were sailors (this went well with our history studies) and took turn acting out things sailors would do. K. really enjoyed this and wanted to keep going, even when it was time for lunch! (Game #1 on page 57)
• We played "Dumb Crambo". Player 1 thinks of an action verb (something that can be acted out). They tell player 2 a word that rhymes with the verb they are thinking of. Player 2 then thinks of action verbs and acts them out. Player 1 has to guess the word player 2 is acting out. This continues until player 2 guesses the verb player 1 is thinking of. Then roles are switched. This game was a great hit, too. (Game #4 on page 58)
• We underlined the verbs in one of the stories in the book. (Game #5 on page 58, story #2 is about Columbus, which went really well with our history)
• We underlined the verbs in a story in an old reading text book, Finding New Neighbors.
• I introduced Linking Verbs
• I read pages 61 - 62 in Child's Own (linking verbs are called "copulas" in this book)
• Then it was time to Play a Game:
• I printed out pictures of sets of freight cars. Player 1 writes a noun in the first car, player 2 writes a noun in the second car -- a word that relates to the first. Then the players decide on a linking verb to put in for the coupler between the cars. (Game #1 on page 62)
• We underlined the linking verbs in a story in Finding New Neighbors.
• We reviewed Pronouns
• We practiced substituting pronouns for other nouns in sentences. Example: Sally and Fred went to the store. They went to the store.
• We practiced using "I" or "me" in sentences.
• Then it was time to Play Games:
• We played games on the computer 2Bee or Nottoobee and Balloon Pronoun Game
• We reviewed the Parts of a Book with the lapbook from first grade
• Listening and Speaking
• We practiced what to say when she answers the phone, takes a message, or makes a phone call.
• We reviewed Punctuation
• Childcraft 1969 Edition, Volume 11, page 262 -- has a short paragraph without punctuation, and it talks about the need for punctuation. We copied the paragraph out and K. put the punctuation in.
• Common and Proper Nouns
• We played the game from Set One
• Singular and Plural Nouns
• I picked a story in Finding New Neighbors. On the first page K. underlined in green all the plural nouns. Then I had her find and underline in red an equal number of singular nouns.
• We did the same thing on the next page. Then I decided to expand it by circling the proper nouns in purple and underlining pronouns in orange.

• Writing Skills
• I picked a story in Finding New Neighbors and we picked a word from each paragraph (just on one page) to find a replacement for in the thesaurus.
• We made word webs for a food (donut), activity (swinging), and place (park) -- one each day. The first day I used the words she wrote and wrote out a short paragraph. The next day we did a paragraph verbally. The third day K. wanted to write the paragraph.
• Writing Projects
• We spent a couple days writing and illustrating couplets. Sometimes we would write a complete one by ourselves, other times one of us would write the first line and the other would write the second line.
• A couplet has two lines, the last word of each line rhymes, and both lines have the same number of syllables.
• Usage
• We spent a couple days talking about the difference of can (ability) and may (permission).
• I figured the best way to practice was to use them, so I asked her which she would use if she was asking . . .

Second Grade, Grammar, Set One

• I introduced the concept of Common and Proper Nouns.
• First, I wrote "Noun" at the top of a paper. I asked K. if she remembered what a noun was.
• Then I wrote "Person - Place - Thing" underneath "Noun".
• Under that I wrote "Common Noun" and "Proper Noun".
• On the left side of the paper I wrote the sentence: We went to the city.
• On the right side I wrote: We went to Cerritos.
• Then we talked about city being a common noun and Cerritos being a proper noun (a specific person, place, or thing).
• Next, I wrote: "sister" and "Debbie" in the center of the paper. I asked her which was common and which was proper and drew arrows from each word to the left (common) or right (proper) side of the paper.
• We did the same thing with: "fireman" and "Fireman Jones".
• Now it was time to Play a Game:
• I had 14 cards with common nouns written on them. We mixed up the cards and laid them on the table.
• We took turns turning over a card and giving a proper noun for each common noun.
• Example: If I turned over "park", I would give the name of a specific park, such as "Rynerson Park".
• Here are all the card words: park, street, place, holiday, book, language, day, month, city, school, person, church, state, country
• We talked about Singular and Plural Nouns. Theses terms were new to her, but we have talked about "-s means more than one" many times.
• First I wrote "Nouns" at the top of the page.
• Under that I wrote "Singular & Plural".
• I asked K. if she knew what those words meant.
• On the left side of the paper I drew one cat. On the right side I drew two cats.
• I wrote "cat" by the one and "cats" by the two, and explained that singular means one and plural means more than one.
• Now it was time to Play a Game:
• We took turns writing either singular or plural words.
• The other person would illustrate the word.
• Example: She wrote "butterfly" and I drew one butterfly. I wrote "stars" and K. drew five stars.
• I introduced Pronouns.
• I used Child's Own, starting at page 41. It talks a bit about pronouns, then it has a story where they use no pronouns, but they want the child to give other words for the repeated words.
• Example: Billy said, "Billy wants a lollipop." You replace the second "Billy" with "I".
• We made a list of the words we replaced -- the pronouns.
• We learned about Homophones -- words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings.
• Game:
• We made a matching game by putting a word on one card and a picture on its match.
• Example: A card with the word "blue" and another with a blue octopus. A third card with the word "blew" and a fourth with a girl blowing bubbles.
• Some words (to, for, our) aren't easily pictured, so we put the meaning on some (meaning belonging to us) or the part of speech (a preposition).
• Friendly Letters
• I showed K. the form friendly letters should follow (you can Google this if you need to be reminded -- I did).
• Then she wrote a letter to thank a friend for a present.
• She will be writing a letter each week until she has written all the "thank you's" from her birthday.
• Sentence vs. Fragment -- a complete sentence is a complete thought; it has two parts who/what and the action.
• I started by writing "The big green frog" and asked K. if that was a complete thought. She told me no. I asked her to complete the sentence. She wrote "jumped on the tiger".
• Next she wrote "The tiny fish" and we decided that wasn't a complete sentence. I added "swam around the bowl".
• We took turns going back and forth this way.
• Another day I took a bunch of word cards and we made sentences, showing that complete sentences had the two parts.
• The last day we went back to the sentences we wrote down and K. drew a line between the subject and the action.
• Capitalization
• The first day we completed a worksheet.
• Game:
• I took the game board we made and a spinner with numbers 1 - 4. Player 1 dictated a sentence to Player 2. If player 2 capitalized correctly then she got to spin and go that many spaces. Then the roles were switched.
• The second day we played this I printed out a couple worksheets because thinking up sentences made the game drag a bit. Maybe it depends on the age of the players.
• Writing Instructions
• I gave K. a choice of writing how to make the bed or how to set the table. She chose setting the table. However, her instructions were very short. Example: Put plates. Put knives. Put forks. Put spoons.
• She wasn't being receptive to my instructions, and it was lunch time. After we ate, I had her read what she wrote and I acted it out. "Put plates." Well, it doesn't say where, or what size of plate, or how many, so I just put a stack of dessert plates on a chair. Then she worked through rewriting her instructions bit by bit to get something that was usable. "Put one dinner plate on the table at each place a person will sit." We went through each step of setting the table like that. We were able to laugh and have fun while she corrected her work.
• The following day we used the thesaurus to replace all the "put"s with place, set, stick, etc.

First Grade, Grammar, Set Seven

We are using games to review the four Parts of Speech we learned this year. I found these ideas on the internet, and then made changes to fit our situation.

• I made paper bags with labels "Verb", "Noun", "Adjective", and "Preposition". On the back side of each label I wrote the definition and glued them on so they could be lifted and the definitions read, if need be. Then I wrote 88 words on pieces of card stock. We took turns sorting the words into their correct bag.

• The next week we took a word from each bag and used them to make a sentence. We each did five sentences.

During this set we are learning about the Writing Process. Since November is National Novel Writing Month, I downloaded the elementary school workbook (it is FREE to download) from the Young Writer's Program and we are working through it.

• We started by putting her inner editor away
• Deciding on some novels she really likes and why she likes them
• Now we are getting to know the characters in her story
• Next we work on the plot of the story.
• The workbook uses the plot roller coaster. K. seemed a bit lost while we were working on the plot, so I drew the roller coaster on a piece of scrap paper and we used it to write out the plot of a book we had just finished reading. Then she seemed to understand the concept and we were able to finish the plot of her story with much better participation and input from her.
• Then she drew a map of where her story takes place.
• After K. wrote her novel, I typed one chapter each day and then we edited it (there were four chapters).
• She only wanted to draw a picture for the cover. I scanned it in and put it on the cover.
• I saved it as a pdf and printed it in the "booklet" format. We will print enough copies for her to give to her aunts for Christmas presents.

I like this novel workbook so much that I am planning on ending each school year using it. It will be fun to see how K.'s novels change from year to year.

First Grade, Grammar, Set Six

We are starting with The Child's Own English Book "The Adjective". Here are the games we played:

• I'm Thinking of Something -- describe an object in the room and see if the other person can guess what it is
• My Grandmother's Cat -- use the sentence "My grandmother's cat is a/an (insert adjective) cat." Go through the alphabet with each player inserting an adjective that starts with the letter A. Then B, C, etc.
• Similar and Opposite -- find adjectives with meanings similar or opposite to a list given.
• Blank Spaces -- The story of Cinderella was in the book with blanks in place of the adjectives. We read the story inserting adjectives.

This week we were learning about maps, concentrating on color coding. I found a worksheet I liked at Super Teacher Worksheets. It was a map of a campground, which gave me the idea of going to the KOA website and printing out a couple maps of different campgrounds -- I found a couple that had good color coding. We finished up the week with making a color coded map of our bedrooms.

 

Now we are learning about diagrams.

• I found one of a piano and one of a shoe on-line and printed them out. The first day we talked about them.
• The next day I gave K. a drawing of an elephant and a list of body parts. She numbered the body parts, and then numbered the parts on the elephant.
• We also made a craft of a flower, and labeled the parts. I saw this one on a teacher's blog.
• We learned about Venn diagrams, and practiced with a selection of her blocks. (Red/Round; Blue/Rectangle; Yellow/Arch) You can use string to make circles on the floor.
• We also played a game on-line to practice Venn diagrams.

We review the rules we have learned this year about using Capitals and Punctuation. Then we spent the rest of the week writing a story, making sure we capitalized and used punctuation correctly. We used the game That's Good / That's Bad from Games for Writing.

This week we practiced using street maps. I pulled out our Thomas Guide and we found where we live. On other days we found where friends or family live, where our favorite park is, etc. Then we would figure out different ways of getting from our house to that location.

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.