Teaching adverbs activity with word card printable

Grab some toy cars and join in with this playful adverbs activity – includes printable adverb word cards.

Teaching adverbs activities

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 toy cars and play to learn about adverbs.

In this lesson children can:

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

:: practice using adverbs to move toy cars around – quickly, slowly, carefully…

:: follow and give instructions

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

:: have fun playing while they learn

Materials needed

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

:: a selection of toy cars

:: a few materials to make a play town to drive around – paper and pens, play mat or blocks etc.

*These adverb cards include 30 adverb vocabulary words that you can use in our car 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 cars move.

How to use this adverb activity

Set out a simple play town scene. You can draw out a few streets using pens on a large piece or paper or using chalk on the floor. Your children might also like to build a quick town using blocks and toys.

Act out a few different ways of driving a toy car around the town (slowly, fast, backwards) and ask your children how to describe them.

Now, using the adverb cards for prompts, have your children drive a toy car around the town as described by the adverbs.

Pick a card from the set of adverb words and ask them to drive around hurriedly, carefully, noisily, lazily...

Introduce the wider array of adverbs that we can use to describe they cars, using the adverb cards for ideas. A car can drive around the town once, or twice, or backwards, or up the street, or above the street, or everywhere.

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.

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

More grammar activity ideas

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

:: adverbs activity using movement

:: a or an lunchbox activity

:: writing silly sentences

:: animal adjectives lesson

:: question marks interview activity