Teach Your Child Prepositions Of Place In 7 Steps

Prepositions of place are an important part of the English language and will enable your child to create more complex sentences. The meanings of basic prepositions and prepositional phrases are incredibly easy to demonstrate at home and your child can often guess their meanings.

How To Proceed

1. Warm up – Prepositions

Use this opportunity to review vocabulary you plan on using in this lesson. In this example words including book, desk, chair, clock, pencil, and teacher would be good to review. Crisscross is an excellent game to start the class with. Ask questions like “What is this?” while holding up the object or pointing to it. Have your child answer the question and if he gets it correct, ask him to ask you a question. Take turns asking each other questions for about 5 minutes.

2. Introduce – Prepositions Pronunciation

Write the target vocabulary on the board. The words below are a good set to begin with:

– in
– in front of
– on
– behind
– under
– above
– between
– next to

Demonstrate the pronunciation of each word or phrase one at a time and have your child repeat it after you. Go through the list 3 times or till your child are well familiar with their pronunciation.

3. Introduce – Prepositions Meaning

Have your child come up with the meaning or translation of each word. Use example sentences such as “I am behind the chair. Now I am behind to you. Now I am behind the table.” and change your position in the room accordingly. Use as many example sentences as you can think of for each preposition, giving your child the chance to guess its meaning before writing it on the board and moving onto the next one. Drill pronunciation and translation before continuing.

4. Practice

To test comprehension, do a short exercise. Tell your child to put his hands on his head, beside his body, behind his back or to put his toy in the cupboard, under his bed, etc. Ask him to give you instructions as well. Take turns giving each other instructions till you have run through all the prepositions in the list thrice at least.

5. Introduce – Preposition Q & A

Ask your child questions such as “Where is my/ your/ the book/ pen/ clock?” Demonstrate the pronunciation of the question and answer. The model dialogue for this lesson should resemble the structure below:

A: Where is (my/ you/ the) (noun)?
B: It’s (preposition) the (noun)

6. Practice

Practice the model dialogue with your child for about 5 minutes, taking turns being A and B. Try to encourage your child to be creative instead of being limited to the vocabulary you’ve already used in the lesson. For example, you can try saying “Where is Daddy’s favourite mug?”. Correct any errors with clear explanations and demonstrations before moving on.

7. Production

Ask your child to write five sentences using prepositions or use a game for further practice of prepositional phrases and sentence construction. Try a game like Jumbled where you need to arrange a set of words into five to ten sentences in a race against one another. This will be the perfect way to end the lesson with your child on a high note.

For over 15 years, Augustine’s English Classes has helped hundreds of students fall in love with the subject and excelling in school exams. If you are interested to know how our classes work, or what our secret winning formula is, do feel free to drop us a message or give us a call.