Changing Tense

Yesterday we did a random introduction to changing Tense! How it came about, was the other day I printed out THESE WORKSHEETS about Tense from TES Connect. (you will have to sign in, in order to view the sheets - TES connect is a teacher resource sharing site - it only takes a minute to register and you can find some beneficial lesson plans, activities, and worksheets shared by teachers).

Anyway, I thought yesterday we would fill them in - basically the worksheet is just simple sentences asking you to fill in the blank - for example the first sentence would be:

"Yesterday Jack went to the park"
and the second sentence would be "Tomorrow Jack ________to the park".

So the child just fills in the missing word  to show how it changes according to what tense you use.

It may sound silly, but I thought K would be able to just fill this in without much direction - she speaks using Tense naturally so its something automatically she knows how to do (as any child does when they learn to speak!) - however before I gave her the sheet I realised that she doesn't have a clue what "Tense" means in regards to the past, present and future (I've never explained it before), so I thought it would be silly not to give an introduction to this first (obviously!).

So anyway, I drew a table up on the white board, and explained what the Past, the Present and the Future means. It took a bit of time before she understood that "present" in this context, does not mean a gift! I started with "the Past" and wrote a simple explanation as to what that means, before asking K to copy into her exercise book.
Then I moved onto "the future" with its simple explanation and asking K to copy. So in this way, I wrote out and discussed each section so that K could copy in small manageable chunks. (If I asked her to copy the whole table out at the end, it would have been too overwhelming for her).

I didn't give K the worksheets to complete yet - I think I need to do another lesson on this topic first to ensure she has fully comprehended how the tense changes. As I was doing the washing up I kept asking her to explain each tense and mashAllah she seems to have grasped it alhamdulillah - I just want to ensure that it really stays in her memory and understanding though inshallah. (so that when she does the worksheet......there will be no tears inshallah!.....no seriously, I want her to be able to do the worksheet by herself without my help inshallah, so I want to make sure she is fully understands first inshallah.)

During this lesson, I showed K how to use the dictionary. I first introduced the dictionary a couple of weeks ago, and although I explained what it is I looked up the word with her.
This time, I helped K to look up the word with a bit of help. Anyone who reads the comments at the end of some postings will see my spelling is terrible, as there is no spell check!
 So as we were writing on the white board, I wasn't sure of the spelling "tomorrow" so thought best to look up and it was a good opportunity to do this with K using the dictionary.
I explained again how we find a word and once found, I asked K to read out the spelling for me and I copied it onto the board.....she found this quite amusing telling me how to spell! lol.

The dictionary we have is the Collins First School Dictionary for kids. I think I bought it from ebay alhamdulillah in very good condition mashAllah.

K likes looking at this book of words, we have another rhyming dictionary which she looks at and has helped her understanding of rhyming words. (again bought 2nd hand on ebay alhamdulillah).