Learning about adverbs activity using movement

Let’s learn about adverbs quickly, happily and gracefully with this adverb activity that uses movement – includes printable adverb action cards.

Learning about adverbs actvitity

NurtureStore, your teaching fairy godmother, helps you put the fun back into learning and make lessons memorable. In today’s lesson we’re going to use movement and giggles to learn about adverbs.

In this lesson children can:

:: learn about adverbs and how they are used in sentences

:: practice using adverbs to move their bodies – quickly, slowly, carefully…

:: follow and give instructions

:: use the adverb word cards to expand their vocabulary and comprehension

:: move their bodies for an active learning session

Materials needed

:: Adverb Cards printable from the Literacy Printables section of the NurtureStore Free Printables Library (see below)

These adverb cards include 30 adverb vocabulary words that you can use in our movement activity, for spelling practice alongside a sensory writing tray, and in other adverb lessons.

What are adverbs?

Adverbs are words that tell us about how something is being done.

She ran quickly.

He ate his pizza noisily.

They went to school everyday.

Quickly, noisily and everyday are all adverbs. They tell us how she ran, how he ate his pizza, and how often they went to school.

Adverbs can be used to tell us something about verbs (she runs quickly), adjectives (it is very loud), other adverbs (he sang too loudly) and even a whole sentence (Fortunately, I arrived early).

In today’s activity we’re going to focus on using adverbs to describe how we move.

How to use this adverb activity

Introduce the idea of adverbs being used to describe verbs. Today we’re going to think about how we can describe how we move.

Act out a few different ways of walking around the room (slowly, quickly, noisily) and ask your children how to describe them.

Now, using the adverb cards for prompts, have your children move around the room as described by the adverbs. Remind them to always move carefully and not to bang into anyone or anything!

Pick a card from the set of adverb words and ask them to move around… quietly, gracefully, sadly, elegantly, stealthily…

Children can pair up: one child picks an adverb while the other one acts it out. Have them swap and take turns. This gives them the opportunity to read the word on each card and give/follow instructions.

You might like to award honours for the most elegant walk or the stealthiest walk. You can invite a few children to the front to showcase their amazing adverb interpretation.

As a variation, you can have a child act out a particular way of walking and see if the other children can guess which adverb they are acting out.

Each child can draw a picture in their note books of them moving in a certain way. Write a sentence underneath that includes an adverb to describe their movement, as a reminder of how adverbs can be used.

More grammar activity ideas

Learning is much more effective when chidren are engaged and having fun. Use NurtureStore’s ideas for hands-on grammar learning to support your children:

:: adverbs activity using cars

:: a or an lunchbox activity

:: writing silly sentences

:: animal adjectives lesson

:: question marks interview activity