Teaching Nouns with the Twelve Days of Christmas Song

Listening and singing traditional Christmas songs is one of my favorite holiday activities.  I look forward to the hearing Christmas songs played on a radio station.  When it comes to traditional Christmas songs, there's no lack of material!  The centuries from the past have given us much to enjoy. 

I used the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas to create a packet of first or second grade math and language arts materials.  My previous post was about the math component (adding within 12 and adding within 18) of the file.  You can read about it HERE.  This blog post is about the language arts portion of the resource.  

Grouping Nouns:  When I was in elementary school, I heard over and over again, "A noun is a person, place, or thing."  Since then, my definition has changed to, "A noun is an animal, person, place, thing, or idea. 

The definition of nouns seems straightforward enough (Except abstract nouns like an idea are tricky for kids to grasp.) but for many students it's a hard concept.  I think it's best to introduce nouns in segments instead of attempting to teach all categories of nouns at once.  My experience is that the "animals" category is the easiest for kids to understand.  It's the least hazy of the four groups of nouns.  The "person" group is uncomplicated when words like, boy, girl, man, and woman are used with the children.  Throw in words like, painter, jugglers, cook, and pipers and the confusion starts brewing in their little faces!  Should I mention that the word cook is a noun AND a verb?  Try explaining that to six and seven year old children!  It's no wonder that the concept of nouns takes a while to soak in.

The song, The Twelve Days of Christmas works beautifully with a lesson about nouns.  A new noun is added to each verse as the song progresses.  The sequence of "gifts" in the verses are four animals, one thing, two more animals, and the remaining five verses are people.  Those people happen to be musically or acrobatically inclined!

Pictures (not words) should be used when introducing nouns for the first time.  This is because the CONCEPT of nouns is being taught.  When words are used, there is an additional requirement posed on the children.  That is, their reading ability PLUS learning the concept of what a noun is.  The page shown below is a noun sort with pictures of animals and people.  I used five of the people from The Twelve Days of Christmas song for the sort.  This cut and paste activity is perfect for first graders.  No reading required!

The next photo is a nouns word sort.  Reading is required for success with the worksheet.  It will work well for second graders that are proficient readers.  I used the people, animals and things from the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas.  There needed to be a "place" category in the word sort but there are no places mentioned in the song, Twelve Days of Christmas.  Therefore, I added the word "theater".  

Using Plural Nouns:  The Twelve Days of Christmas is a perfect song for showing examples of plural nouns.  I created a page for practicing one of the spelling rules that is taught with plural forms of common nouns.  The spelling rule is, "Change the letter y to an i.  Then add es." 

Verbs with Inflected Endings:  Verbs are another important part of the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Children can act out the song by moving in accord with the characters mentioned.  I included an inflected ending worksheet in the file using some of the verbs from the song.

Alphabetical Order:  Birds are popular pets in many places around the world.  It's interesting that the author of the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas chose birds as the only kind of pet that was given as a gift to the "true love".  Who knows why?  The birds represent fifty percent of the "gifts" in the song.  I used some of the birds from the song and included some other birds to make a simple alphabetical order practice sheet with nouns.

Words to the Song:  This file wouldn't be complete without copies of the song.  I've included a few different versions.  

Reading Passage:  I've also created a reading passage about birds with a quiz for students to take after reading.

Preparation

The paper dice for the math activity and the pocket chart cards for the alphabetical order practice are the only things that require preparation in advance of using this resource.  The children do the cutting and pasting themselves.  Everything has an ink-friendly, black and white version.  

EduClips did a beautiful job representing the characters to go with the song!

If you would like to view this file at my shop, click on the image shown below!

Here are a few ideas for teaching nouns:

1.  Introduce one noun category and practice it before introducing another category.  This should include one lessons or activity with animals, one with people, one for places and one for things.

2.  Use pictures to group nouns before proceeding to sorting nouns with words.

3.  Borrow a dollhouse from a kindergarten or preschool teacher.  Make word labels such as:  kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room.  Give each child a copy of the labels or make one classroom copy and set the labels next to the dollhouse.  Have the children place the labels in the appropriate rooms of the doll house.  

4.  Create noun lists for things that are relevant to the children's REAL lives.  Make a list of people at school such as:  teachers, principal, nurse, secretary, librarian and custodian.  Make a list of places at the school such as:  gym, library, office, classroom, clinic, and playground.

5.  Avoid teaching proper nouns and common nouns at the same time.

I've made a FREE file that will help with some of these ideas!  Click the image shown below to get all the pages. 

  
© Lessons by Molly 2015.  All rights reserved.