Humpties: Parts of Speech with “Eggceptional” Personalities

by Ellen Hajek

Builder Books

If you want to introduce recognition of parts of speech to children in the elementary grades, this is the type of tool that will make the job easier. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections are taught. Definitions are very simple. Each part of speech is represented by a cartoon figure that should help children recall its definition. For example, the description of nouns begins, “The noun is the father of the Humpty family parts of speech. You can see by his top hat and glasses that the noun has a very important job. He names everything! Anything that you might point to or look at has a name that is a noun.” This is followed by examples.

After each part of speech is introduced, you cut out the 1” x 1” pictures of the cartoon figures from the back of the book, then students use them to identify nouns (or whatever parts of speech are being studied) in a short set of sentences. This method allows children to learn parts of speech without the pencil and paper work required by workbook exercises. The presentation is definitely for young children both because of the wording and because lessons are strictly introductory. The author suggests using the book with grade levels 3-5, but I think that most fifth graders will find it too young. It can be used with second graders if you choose to teach parts of speech at that level (something I do not necessarily recommend).

A follow-up book, Building Sentences with the Humpties , covers basic sentence structure and introduces diagramming.