On Your (Punctuation) Mark!

As the kids get into harder readers, they have encountered a something new – punctuation marks beyond the period. Briana understands how to sound out the word, ouch, for example, but seems perplexed by all of the “swiggles in the air” and the “line with the dot underneath” after it. (“Ouch!”) She’s also encountered commas, question marks, and apostrophes a lot lately and is endlessly intrigued by them. The final push to focus on punctuation this week came from a letter Bree wrote. She didn’t know how to make a comma between the city and state.

Most times there is a more fun way to teach than lecture style, but sometimes lectures are just the best thing.

I go over to the chalkboard with the kiddies. I make lines and put a dot in the center. I ask the kids, “If this dot was at the end of the sentence, what is it called?” “A period!” Both girls know. “What does a period mean?” I ask. “It’s the end of the sentence,” they respond.

Here it is almost all done. I thought the picture might make the text make more sense as you read:

I draw another set of lines and another dot. This time I add a tail to the dot. Does anyone know what this is? No one answers though Bree is looking at it like it’s on the tip of her tongue. I draw another curl next to it without the ridiculously large dot. Then Briana recognizes it. “A comma,” she says with a triumphant grin. She’s right. Then I explain that a comma separates equal things in a list. I give examples like, “Mommy comma Briana comma and Abigail sit in the playroom.” There’s some debate on that last comma before the “and” but I leave it in. Then we make more lists of things in the room and the kids have to say “comma” where the comma goes.

I draw something new. “What is it called when the comma is in the air?” Briana guesses “quotation marks”. Nope, but close. “It’s an apostrophe. It is used to indicate possession,” I tell them. “What does that mean?” Abby asks. “It means that if something belongs to someone then you show that by putting an apostrophe and then an s after the persons name.” I point to Abby’s belly and say “This is Abigail apostrophe s belly. This is Abigail’s belly.” I do the same for Briana apostrophe s cheek. Then the kids do a few, claiming certain toys as their own.

We move on. If there are two things next to each other that look like apostrophes what are they? “Quotation marks?” Bree is hesitant this time. Yep. I tell them that first you use open quotation marks before someone speaks and close quotation marks to show that they are finished. The kids quickly put this together and say things like “Open quotation mark this is interesting period close quotation marks”

We add the last two marks for today – the question mark and the exclamation mark. Briana wants to trace over them so this is when I actually go grab the camera, deciding to blog this.

Then I tell the kids that we are going to spend the next few minutes punctuating everything we say or do comma like we’re writing about our day comma end quotes says the Mama period.

At first the kids test whether or not I’m really going to let them do what they want.

“Open quotation mark Aaaahhhh exclamation mark end quotation marks,” Briana screams.

When I reply, “open quotation mark very good comma close quotation marks says the Mama proudly period” I open the floodgates.

The kids “quote meow exclamation mark end quote” and every variety of other screaming noise for a few minutes. The screams are interspersed with their actions, like “I walked up the stairs period.”

When I’ve had a lot of the screams I ask them to try to say aaaahhh with a period or a question mark. They have a blast changing the intonation of their voices to match whatever punctuation they were going to pick. Aaaahhh period sounds much different than aaahhhhh question mark. I love that they kids understand that. I also love that my word editor is hating the way these sentences are phrased with the punctuation spelled out J

Then we practice the other punctuation marks we learned about. “Briana lifts one leg comma twirls comma and falls down period” and Abigail says, “I grab Abigail apostrophe s headband and put it on myself period.” I don’t care today if they are talking in first or third person or some combo of the two like Abby uses when she wants to add an apostrophe.

Briana's godmother calls during this time. I continue right on punctuating my conversation with her. She's one of my best friends. She knew what calling me midday could mean. She went right along with us for about fifteen minutes. Now that's a good friend exclamation point! :)

One important word of advice – this is a great right before naptime activity. When it gets old (and it does, especially with the screaming) then you tuck your newly informed kiddies into bed comma kiss them comma and turn out the lights period. There is a hard stop to the activity. When they wake up from punctuation filled dreams we will write stories or read books to practice what they’ve learned.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife