Grammar. Parts of speech for 2nd grade. Adjective.

Have your kid imagine they went on a field trip to the zoo. There was a lion, a giraffe, an elephant and a monkey. With the help of the worksheet “Adjectives: At the Zoo” provided below, ask them to tell you what they saw at the zoo. You can start by giving them the first example: “There was a tall giraffe and a mighty lion.” And then, ask them to fill in the kids learning worksheet as they see fit. The words “tall, mighty, big and brown” are what we call “Adjectives”, they help bring language to life. Without them, everything sounds dull and boring! In definition, an adjective is a word that describes a noun, be it a person, animal, thing or abstract idea. Find more animal and planet worksheets here. 

As illustrated in the previous worksheet, adjectives can be used to describe different aspects of a noun such as the size of the elephant, or the color of the monkey. They can also describe many other aspects including the number or character of the noun in order to give more information about it.

Most of the times, adjectives directly precede the noun they describe. For example:

“Peter played with the bouncy ball.”

“The school honored the smart student.”

“The teachers gave us three assignments.”

In these sentences, the words bouncy, smart, and three are the adjectives that describe the nouns “ball”, “student” and “assignments”.

To demonstrate, we have the useful worksheet titled “Adjectives in Sentences” in which your kid has to identify the adjective in the given sentences. For example, in the first sentence “We ate delicious peaches”, help your child find the noun first, and then ask them what the word that directly precedes the noun is and if it tells us any information about it.

The usage of adjectives in a text is of great importance and can serve multiple functions. First, it helps the writer convey the degree of specificity. For instance: “Please throw out that rotten banana.” Using the adjective rotten helps the other person know which banana to throw out. If we have simply said: “Please throw out the banana,” they might have thrown out a perfectly edible banana instead! Moreover, using the right adjectives can uplift a text so it becomes more vivid and immersive. For example, using the word juicy to describe an orange makes the reader imagine the orange more vividly and maybe crave some.

You could use this “Adjective Maze” worksheet to give your kid a fun way to practice their adjectives. Ask them to commentate on the heated race using the words they come across in order to identify which word is an adjective and which isn’t. Start the commentary off to give them an idea, it could be something like: “We have the yellow race car taking the lead”. At the finish line, you could end with a crowd cheer to celebrate your child’s achievement.

Kids Academy team hopes this article has been useful both for parents and their children as they move forward in studying ESL or ELA. Just practice these worksheets regularly and you will achieve significant results in learning grammar on adjectives! As well, try these learning videos for kids to enrich their practice with animated characters!