Lockdown Day 49 – Verbs and Adverbs
Literacy
Last week, we explored the world of nouns and their fabulous, spectacular, wonderful attachments – adjectives. This week we will add two more branches to the grammar tree, namely verbs and adverbs.
* GRAMMAR – Part 2 *
VERBS
Verbs are action words. Playing verb games is always fun, as you can imagine there will be much opportunity for movement and self-expression.
USING A BALL
- Invite the child to play the Verb Game with you explaining that it is best played outside where there is enough space.
- Ask the child what s/he thinks we can do with the ball.
- Explore various ways in which the ball can be made to move. Expand on the usual words like throw, kick and catch. Use words like toss, roll, hurl, dribble, push, bounce and drop.
Take this opportunity to explain that all of the words that were used to explain the action of the ball are called verbs.
USING YOUR BODY
This is a verb guessing game.
- Invite the child to a place where you can stand/sit opposite each other.
- Think of an action and perform that action for the child to watch.
- Ask the child what the action word is that you were demonstrating. Examples of words here may be jump, dance, sing, whisper, crawl, skip and scratch.
- Give the child a turn.
- For older children, have them write the verbs on slips of paper, and take turns drawing a slip out of the hat to act out for the other person to guess.
- Ask the child if s/he remembers what these action words are called (assuming they have done the previous activity) or use the opportunity to explain that action words are called VERBS.
Having already discovered nouns, it is interesting to note that sometimes a noun can also be a verb! The love in my heart for you is unending. In this sentence, love is a noun. I love my dog. In this sentence, love is a verb. This would only be information for children in the primary classes!
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ADVERBS
Generally, we think of adverbs as ‘adding to the verb’. Let’s explore these versatile words!
- Invite the child to play a game that builds on one of the games above. We will use the game where we used our bodies to demonstrate the actions in different ways for this example.
Explain that you would like the child to perform an action and that you will then give the child more information about the action that you would like her/him to perform. Let’s say the child claps. Ask the child to clap loudly, and then ask the child to clap softly. Loudly and softly are examples of adverbs. They tell us HOW the action was performed.
Explain that these words are called ADVERBS.
Other examples may be to sing sweetly, run quickly, smile happily, cry sadly, tap gently etc.
Older children can once again draw a slip with an adverb written on it from a hat and do the action using the adverb to enhance the performance.
These introductory examples give the child a sense that the adverb tells us HOW the action was performed. Later they will learn that there are also adverbs that tell us how often, when, and where! But those are lessons for another day!
Enjoy exploring these energetic words!