I bought a couple of books of Mad Libs for my daughter, and they’re working even better than I expected.  Most of you are probably familiar with Mad Libs but, in case you’re not, they are stories with some of the words replaced by blanks.  Each blank is labeled with the type of word it requires, and you choose the words first, then read the story, so that the resulting story is silly.  Ariel is a fun-lover who hates “boring,” so I thought these might be a good way for her to practice parts of speech without drudgery.  She loves to do them out loud with all of us.  This means that not only is Ariel getting practice, but three-year-old Sophia is starting to (slowly) learn parts of speech, as well.

(Mom: “What is a noun?”
Sophia: “A thing.”
Mom: “Good. Or…?”
Sophia: “A place.”
Mom: “Good. Or…?”
Sophia: “A mailbox.”   Hmmm.  Have to work on that a little bit more.)

Now Ariel is asking to create her own Mad Libs, which is a good thing!  Writing them will require that she not only know the parts of speech well, but also that she be able to identify them in sentences.  (KISS Grammar is the regular curriculum method we use for this.)  I’m not sure she’s quite ready for that, but it will give us a concrete goal to work toward, that she set.  And a means of working toward it, too, as I’m sure we can work on them together before she’s quite ready to do them on her own, and “talk through” them (as we do for Sophia when it’s her turn to fill in a blank).

That works for us. 🙂  Do you have any fun ways of reinforcing important skills or knowledge?