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Prepositional phrases


Tarheel Heather
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We are in the midst of JAG. Is there another way to explain prepositional phrases to my ten year old?

 

Thanks!

 

 

Hmmm the box trick didn't work?

 

"The mouse goes ________ the box(or boxes)"

 

we learned last year in AG that only 9 prepositions do not fit in this catagory.... but, until, than, as, like, during, of, except, since. If she can memorize these and all prepositions.... it will help....

 

 

 

" The package (under the tree) is mine.

 

Prepositions always begin the prepositional phrase.....

 

I hope that helps... but memorizing the list and using the mouse box trick is pretty handy.....

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Hmmm the box trick didn't work?

 

"The mouse goes ________ the box(or boxes)"

 

we learned last year in AG that only 9 prepositions do not fit in this catagory.... but, until, than, as, like, during, of, except, since. If she can memorize these and all prepositions.... it will help....

 

 

 

" The package (under the tree) is mine.

 

Prepositions always begin the prepositional phrase.....

 

I hope that helps... but memorizing the list and using the mouse box trick is pretty handy.....

 

He understand the box, it's trying to explain what they modify that's not clicking. The way they diagram, I guess is confusing to him. The pp is in parenthesis, then is written under the word it modify's. It's not clicking, I wasn't sure if anyone had a handy, dandy trick to explain that.

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Imagine a 30+ yo mom, cooking dinner, and not thinking about anything in particular. When suddenly out of no where, it hits me -

 

"Oh! Preposition has the word "position" in it. So a preposition must tell the "position" of something. Wow!"

 

Nevermind that I didn't need to teach my own children prepositions for another 2+ years...and of course, my family was not impressed.

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Imagine a 30+ yo mom, cooking dinner, and not thinking about anything in particular. When suddenly out of no where, it hits me -

 

"Oh! Preposition has the word "position" in it. So a preposition must tell the "position" of something. Wow!"

 

Nevermind that I didn't need to teach my own children prepositions for another 2+ years...and of course, my family was not impressed.

 

 

That actually may work!:D

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We just came to that exact lesson with my almost 10dd this week. She couldn't really get it either for some reason, and said she didn't like how they did the diagramming, when the book hasn't shown them how to diagram anything else yet. She had completed R&S 3, which had her doing diagraming of subjects, verbs, adj., and adv. She said she liked R&S better, and since I already have the 4th grade book, we are just going to drop JAG and start back with R&S. I thought JAG would be kind of a break for her, but apparently it didn't work. :)

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The easiest way to teach what they modify is by

 

1- seeing if you can shift their location (only adverbs can move location and not change the meaning of a sentence) For example:

In the middle of the night, Jack woke up.

Jack woke up in the middle of the night.

 

2-reword the sentence by removing the prep and seeing what it modifies

The girl with the long hair tripped and fell.

The long haired girl tripped and fell.

 

3-does it tell when, where, how, how often (then it is an adverb)

 

I can't think of the others off the top of my head, but those are the ones that my coffee-deprived brain can think of right now.

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if you are trying to teach him how to "identify" the phrase, this is what we did with my son. First he memorized the most common prepositions (I can't remember how many there were, 40 something) in a song, then he runs through the song and underlines the preposition. From there, you have to look for the noun or pronoun close to it that is included in the phrase. It seems to be working, but so far he has had really easy phrases that are very obvious.

 

Don't know if this helps, but good luck!

Hot Lava Mama

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I thought AG did a great job of handling prepositions, but here's what Write Shop said about it today:

 

A preposition is a relational word, usually telling "where" or when". By itself, a preposition is useless in a sentence. To be a true preposition, and to make sense in the sentence, a preposition must be used in a prepositional phrase.

 

A prepositional phrase always begins with a preposition and always ends with a noun or a pronoun as the object of the preposition. Because a preposition is a relational word, it must relate to, or meet, an object.

 

They have a little exercise with a picture of an island in the midst of the water with a boat pointing towards it, dolphins jumping out of the water, waves on the water, rocks, trees, a cave on the island, the sun setting on the horizon, etc. The word "toward" is between the boat and the island. They have to look at their list of prepositions and figure out phrases for the picture. The one example they give is "toward the island" by the boat.

 

HTH!

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We have always used Easy Grammar books simply because they start out teaching the 40 most common prepositions, and working at identifying p. phrases and crossing them out in a sentence before looking for subjects/verbs etc. A pp. always begin with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun - and will have NO verb in it!!!! If there is a verb after the preposition, it is not a preposition phrase (might be an infinitive form of a verb, if the prep. is the word "to" as in "to walk". My dd is working on this right now ;) ) A p.p. may have more than one object of the preposition (noun/pronoun) as in "...to the lake and hill...." in "The WTMommie took her kids walking to the lake and the hill yesterday morning."

 

Hope this helps.

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I thought AG did a great job of handling prepositions, but here's what Write Shop said about it today:

 

A preposition is a relational word, usually telling "where" or when". By itself, a preposition is useless in a sentence. To be a true preposition, and to make sense in the sentence, a preposition must be used in a prepositional phrase.

 

A prepositional phrase always begins with a preposition and always ends with a noun or a pronoun as the object of the preposition. Because a preposition is a relational word, it must relate to, or meet, an object.

 

They have a little exercise with a picture of an island in the midst of the water with a boat pointing towards it, dolphins jumping out of the water, waves on the water, rocks, trees, a cave on the island, the sun setting on the horizon, etc. The word "toward" is between the boat and the island. They have to look at their list of prepositions and figure out phrases for the picture. The one example they give is "toward the island" by the boat.

 

HTH!

 

 

They do an excellent job explaining, it's the diagramming that has him confused.

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We just came to that exact lesson with my almost 10dd this week. She couldn't really get it either for some reason, and said she didn't like how they did the diagramming, when the book hasn't shown them how to diagram anything else yet. She had completed R&S 3, which had her doing diagraming of subjects, verbs, adj., and adv. She said she liked R&S better, and since I already have the 4th grade book, we are just going to drop JAG and start back with R&S. I thought JAG would be kind of a break for her, but apparently it didn't work. :)

 

I'm thinking of switching over to R&S. I don't need him to be so flustered so soon.

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