The Most Fun Way to Teach Parts of Speech

A Truly Fun Way to Practice Parts of Speech

So as a kid, I despised diagramming sentences. I felt it was a complete waste of time and I wondered why anyone (other than my teachers) cared what an adverb, adjective, or conjunction was.

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With some perspective and more education, I now understand that knowing the parts of speech help us to better understand what we read and hear and help us to effectively communicate. English can be tricky so the more we know about how words work the better off we are when speaking, listening, reading, and writing. I am still not a fan of labeling sentence after sentence – definitely not my favorite -I’d rather do long division.

Despite my dislike of labeling sentences, we have been talking about adjectives, verbs, nouns, and adverbs constantly at my house. Yes, you read that right, we have been having conversations about parts of speech.

Why the sudden interest?

My kids discovered Mad Libs.

I haven’t touched Mad Libs since I was a child so I had completely forgotten about them. Recently when we were in the bookstore, my daughter saw some and asked me what they were. We sat and talked about them for a few minutes and she seemed really interested in it. (I, however, did not believe that this would be a big interest, so I did not purchase one at the time.)

My daughter received a Mad Libs book for Christmas and we have been doing story after story. My kids find these so entertaining and hilarious. They also love that this is something we do together.

How We Approach MadLibs

My kids are still fairly young to understand the parts of speech so we sit together to complete the story.

First, I tell the part of speech they need to think about. Luckily, there are definitions and examples provided in the front of the book. You can use this to brush up on your parts of speech knowledge or prompt you to think about other examples.

Then, I usually provide a few examples. There have been several times we kept repeating the same word over and over so the front section (with the explanations) helped us use new words.

My kids then provide the word they want to use. Since we do this together, we usually come up with a few we could use and then settle on one that we want to use for that blank (Yay for more practice and extending vocabulary). Depending on whose book we are working out of (my son’s or my daughter’s), they get the final say in which word is selected.

Once a word is selected for that blank, I write it in the blank.

After they have selected all of their words, I write them in the story on the next page and then read to them their silly story. They love it! (admittedly, many of them do turn out pretty funny). Now that my 8 year old is getting the hang of them, she is asking to copy the words from time to time – which I highly encourage (but don’t push)

We have taken these small books (click on images above to order) to restaurants, dentist offices, and on car trips. Surprisingly, they have kept their attention so much that we now have several versions. There are so many versions available that we found it easy to find one on a topic that appealed to both of my children. For example, my daughter has one on unicorns and my son has one one Spiderman.

I recently found Mad Libs Junior. Even though my four-year-old was doing well thinking through the examples we gave him, I thought it might be a little easier to choose from the options provided. Instead of providing the part of speech and a blank for each word needed, The Mad Libs Junior offers a list of words to choose from for each blank. The words are still labeled as adverb, verb, and adjective. Your child chooses a word from the list and writes (or you write) the word on the blank in the story. This requires a little less writing for your child and greatly expands the words they think about. We were getting into a rut with using some of the same words over and over again so the lists in the Mad Libs Junior helps us to all think beyond our typical choices.

Now I fully recognize that as my kids age, they may not remember that they learned the parts of speech when they were little, but I feel good knowing that they have had a fun introduction to what a verb, adverb, adjective, and noun are and, most importantly, they are having so much fun!

Enjoy your ____ Mad Libs! Happy Reading!