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mamaslearning
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| Posted: Sept 20 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged
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I think I need to breathe, so please tell me to stop worrying about this! My 3rd grade dd does not grasp proper nouns and common nouns, nor does she fully understand people, place, thing classifications. She can recognize a noun, but has problems with saying whether they are a place or thing.
Do I really need to worry about his right now? Maybe it's too soon for this knowledge?
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Lara
DD 11, DS 8, DS 6, DS 4
St. Francis de Sales Homeschool
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Sept 20 2012 at 4:19pm | IP Logged
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I wouldn't worry, she has lots of time to grasp this.
But.. do you have School House Rock? That can be helpful since music can be easier to remember.
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MaryM
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| Posted: Sept 20 2012 at 4:24pm | IP Logged
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JodieLyn wrote:
I wouldn't worry, she has lots of time to grasp this.
But.. do you have School House Rock? That can be helpful since music can be easier to remember. |
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ha ha ...I was just going to suggest that as well. Here is the link
Noun is a Person Place or Thing
I would say that recognizing if something is a noun is way more important than if it is specifically a place or a thing (I have questions about that too - a school is a place, but could be argued that it is a thing, too...a building). So really I don't think that matters. I would still focus on the distinguishing proper and common but wouldn't worry about it at this point. Trying to think of something easy that might help in that area.
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Mary M. in Denver
Our Domestic Church
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JennGM
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| Posted: Sept 20 2012 at 4:30pm | IP Logged
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Also practicing with Mad Libs would help! Bring it along when going out to do together with her....
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Sept 20 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged
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An easy way to figure it out is does it have an article in front of it or not. So if I'm calling my mom "Mom" I wouldn't say to her "hi the Mom".. but I might say "she is the mom" when it's not a proper noun. So that might be fun to play with. (ooops out of time.. hope it makes sense)
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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SallyT
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| Posted: Sept 21 2012 at 7:06am | IP Logged
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Jodie, that's a great idea (though my kids would then *always* say, "Hi, the mom!" to me).
Lara, you might look at The Child's Own English Book -- this is a link to free .pdf files, so you really can look at the whole thing and glean, if you find anything useful. My 3rd grade daughter likes it quite a lot (my 4th grade son thinks it's too babyish -- it's certainly not very he-man!), and what's useful about it from my point of view are the little games/exercises at the end of each chapter. We don't do all of them by any means, but it *was* very useful for us to make lists, in our grammar notebooks, of examples of common nouns -- words that are names for categories of things (chair, lamp, cat, tree, etc) -- and then lists of girls' names, boys' names, place names, and so forth, that are names of something specific.
My 3rd grader still struggles with capitalization issues in general -- I have to remind her to capitalize the first letter in a sentence, or the pronoun "I," for example -- but in making lists and seeing the difference between the word "girl," which could be anybody, and words like "Rachel," "Sarah," "Lizzie," and so on, seems to have helped her begin to differentiate the kinds of nouns in her mind. (Of course, in German, which we're also studying, all nouns seem to be capitalized, so we've talked about that and contrasted it to English usage. Weirdly enough, that's been helpful).
I do think that time and practice help. There's a reason why grammar programs at all levels pass through this territory again and again, just as math programs in grades 1-4, at least, tend to start with basic addition facts. Introducing a concept doesn't necessarily mean that you have to expect the child to master it fully before moving on -- plant the seed, water it some, and then come back later to take care of the tiny plant.
We also love Mad Libs! They are great for teaching/reinforcing parts of speech, and they do call for proper nouns specifically on occasion.
Sally
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SallyT
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| Posted: Sept 21 2012 at 7:14am | IP Logged
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Oh, I want to add that as with just about everything language-arts related, copywork is a very useful exercise. I often use it to point out various language matters. Currently we're doing a lot of noticing related to poems: how they look on the page, whether lines begin with a capital letter, where the rhyme words are if there are any, and so on. Our poem this week had exactly one capital letter, at the beginning of the first word of the poem, and no punctuation, just line breaks, so we talked about how those decisions on the part of the poet made the poem sound in our minds. In general, copywork provides a great opportunity for really all kinds of lessons, and writing after talking seems to cement things in the mind.
You can certainly use it to reinforce learning about kinds of nouns -- choose a short passage with a mix of common and proper nouns and, before she writes, preview the passage together and discuss which nouns should be capitalized and which should not. This provides a good opportunity to ask why -- "Is this word a name for a specific thing, not just any girl, but *that* girl in particular?"
Sally
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CatholicMommy
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| Posted: Sept 22 2012 at 9:01pm | IP Logged
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We use the elementary Montessori for these topics and then play extension games with them - lots of fun :)
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mamaslearning
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| Posted: Sept 24 2012 at 6:54am | IP Logged
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Thank you for your replies, it settles me a bit to hear what is age appropriate (and what is just my imagination). I'm so scared to drop grammar completely!
Love the Mad Libs suggestion! Will definitely try that out on vacation. I also put some books on hold at the library from the above suggestions.
Ah, the learning curve with the oldest! My next children will benefit greatly from her trials!
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Lara
DD 11, DS 8, DS 6, DS 4
St. Francis de Sales Homeschool
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Nouns
