What's New with Nouns

Little Angel is a having such a good time identifying nouns, I am having a difficult time coming up with new ideas to practice our skill. We have "gone on a Noun Picnic", we have traveled on a noun scavenger hunt, practiced with our noun cards, written sentences with chosen nouns, found nouns in our storybooks, etc.

Today, she looks up at me and says "What's new with nouns today?" She has been having so much fun, I tried not to disappoint. So, in my attempt to find a new and different practice, that was also self-correcting, I created a couple of puzzle sheets in which she had to identify nouns.
The first one was a "beginner" crossword puzzle. She hasn't actually completed crossword puzzles before, but has seen her older brother and sister having fun with them. I tried to create the puzzle sheet so she will learn what "across" and "down" mean on a crossword puzzle sheet without getting confused with them all being mixed together for her first few attempts.



First, she draws a triangle over each noun as she reads the sentences.



Next, she fills the "crossword" puzzle in with the nouns she found from the sentences. Big sister is looking on, asking for her own noun puzzle.

Here is my crossword creation: 



Pic to the left is the completed puzzle sheet. Pic to the right is the control.

I have written sentences at the bottom of the sheet labeled "across" and "down." She reads each sentence (which gives her extra reading practice) and draws a triangle over each noun. Then, she finds the "1 Across" and then writes the noun from that sentence in the respective box, and so on. She checked her work with the control sheet.

The second puzzle sheet was a mini word find. Once again, Little Angel draws a triangle over each noun in the sentences and then finds the nouns in the word searches. She checks her answers with the control sheet.

I updated the sheets a bit and you can get YOUR copy here....

Updated: Red Level Noun Crossword Puzzles

She had so much fun that her brother and sister are jealous and are asking for some too!

You can find the noun puzzles below:

--- For Pink Level click here (Pink level uses only 2-3 letter phonetic words)

Word Study: Nouns

Parts of speech can be somewhat confusing at times and need to be reviewed on a regular basis in our household so we keep the information fresh in our brains. When we begin our review, we usually begin with the Noun Game. It is a game that can involve the whole family and is lots of fun.

After we finish the noun game, we sometimes complete a "mad-lib." Usually when  we are focusing on one part of speech, I will fill in the other parts of speech that are missing (i.e. going ahead and providing the verbs, adverbs, etc. and just leaving the nouns blank) and they provide the nouns and then we read the stories aloud for a few laughs.

Another activity we engage in is pulling sentences from favorite books (or make up or own) and writing the sentence down on a white board or piece of paper. The montessori symbol for nouns in a black equilateral triangle, so we draw the symbol above the nouns in the sentence.

I have also created noun cards for the pink, blue, and green levels in montessori (phonetic and non-phonetic). Today, my Little Angel worked with the blue phonetic noun set .  I added a black triangle to this set to introduce the symbol to her.

As an extension to our activity, we use the noun cards to create original sentences and then mark our nouns with black triangles.

Find more great montessori materials at Montessori for Learning!

Synonym Fun

Or, I could say, Synonym Cheers, Synonym Enjoyment, Synonym Entertainment… or my personal favorite… Synonym Mirth!

This is just another area that proves I find my fun in odd places. It makes me giggle (snicker, chortle, tee hee) to engage in word play. My children have picked up on this somewhat also…however, sometimes I stand there cracking myself up and they just look at me blankly like “you are so weird!”

I first introduce synonyms by using Montessori materials. They are pictured below. We place the heading cards at the top of the workspace and then separate the cards into their respective columns.

We also have fun with synonyms by playing a version of “I’m Going on a Picnic.” I will start off by saying, “I’m going on a picnic and I am bringing a huge apple.” Then, I will say to one of my kids, “I will go on a picnic and bring a gigantic apple.” If they do not seem to pick up on it, I will say, “I am going on a picnic and I will bring a humongous apple.” I will further explain what I am doing if they still do not catch on, and we will practice again with another round of “slick bananas”, “slippery bananas”, etc.

Another way in which we engage in our synonym fun is using Synonym Bingo. We use popcorn, cereal bits, button, or sometimes even torn paper squares for game markers.

Hope you find these ideas as …helpful...beneficial...advantageous… as I did! Synonym cards and Synonym Bingo can be found on https://insightfulbrain.com/collections/green-level-language

Loving the Noun Game

A long time ago, in a decade called the 90's, I student taught first graders. I loved working with the age and many of the things we did were fun (this was before the standardized testing movement). However, when posed with the task of teaching the children nouns, I thought, "what???!!!!" 


Learning nouns at their age seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. How could these kids that were still learning to write their names and add 2 + 3, learn the complex idea of nouns. I do have to say it was a comedy act the way I was shown to teach it back then. I stared upon a sea of perplexed faces. My lessons looked good from an outsiders point of view, but I knew from the looks on their faces and their answers on their trusty "circle the correct answer" worksheet, they were not getting it.


That is one of the reasons I left traditional education after 2 years of teaching. Something just didn't seem right. I felt like I was standing up in front of the room, force-feeding the kids - and that is exactly what I was doing - I was taught to do it that way. It's not like I didn't try to do things differently, but my search was keeping me up until 1:00-2:00 am  and I was still getting to school by 6:00am. I was exhausted.


When I found Montessori, it seemed so simple.... I couldn't believe that in all my years in college, no one ever mentioned it before. If I had only known then, what I knew now,  learning about nouns would have been not only fun, but easy!

The Noun Game is one of my favorite learning experiences in Montessori. It also takes no preparation --- makes it a double winner in my book!  

This is how you play: 

1.Ask one or more children if they would like to join in the Noun Game.
2.Say aloud to the child or group, “we are going to play the Noun Game.”
3.Say to one specific child, “Bring me the cup.” When they bring you the cup, say thank you and then ask them to return it. If more than one child is playing, say to another child “Bring me the book.” When the child brings you the book, say thank you and then ask them to return it. If more children are playing, go around the circle and ask each child to bring you a specific item, then thank them and ask that they return the item.
4.After each child has had a turn bringing an item, you are going to request things a different way. Say, “Bring me a ……..” without telling the name of the object (which would be the noun). The child may look confused. The child may even start bringing you random items, say “No thank you, I did not want a …(whatever the child brought). Please bring me a pencil.”
5.Continue the game as long as children are interested.

The great thing about this is that all my children love playing, so we can play together, even though two out of three of them are already familiar with nouns. It is such fun!