Grammar and punctuationGrades 1–3
Nouns worksheets
Each line is a complete sentence with several nouns in it, and the student circles them all. The sentences mix common and proper nouns. Grades 1 to 3, with an answer key.
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On this page
Hunting for nouns
A noun names a person, place, thing or animal. Children usually spot the easy ones, like dog and cake, and miss the ones that are less concrete or are written with a capital. This sheet gives a page of full sentences and asks for every noun in each, which means a child cannot stop at the first one.
The instructions printed under the title say that some sentences have three or four, so a student knows to keep looking.
What prints
The sentences are drawn from a bank of 36 and appear one per row in a single column with wide spacing for circling. They look like this: "Maya walked her dog to the park on Saturday", "Our class planted beans in small cups", "The moon glowed over Lake Erie". The sheet itself shows plain text; the child supplies the circles.
The answer key reprints the sentences and draws a colored underline beneath each noun. The nouns marked include names of people and places (Maya, Chicago, Lake Erie), days and months, everyday objects and animals, plus group words like family, team and class. Pronouns such as I, we and my are not marked, nor are action words or adjectives.
The settings
- Skill opens on "Find the nouns". The menu also holds the rewrite, capitalization, end punctuation and verbs versions.
- Number of problems can be 6 to 14, and the page starts at 12.
- Paper size and the answer key are picked at download time.
Worked example: Mr. Lopez and the music room
Take the item "Mr. Lopez teaches music at our school."
- Start with people. Mr. Lopez is a person, so he is a noun. Because the sheet marks the whole name, the child circles both words together.
- Look for places. School is a place.
- Look for things or subjects. Music is the thing being taught, and it is a noun too even though you cannot hold it.
- Skip "teaches", which is an action, and "our", which tells whose school it is.
That gives three nouns: Mr. Lopez, music and school. A student who circles only school and Mr. Lopez has found concrete nouns and needs help with the idea that a subject of study counts.
Another good one is "Ava and I read a book about sharks." The nouns are Ava, book and sharks. The word I stands in for a person but is a pronoun, and this is where a short chat about the difference pays off.
Teaching tips
Ask children to sort their circled words into columns for person, place, thing and animal after finishing a page. They will notice that a single word can appear in more than one column depending on the sentence. Capitals are a clue for proper nouns, though the first word of any sentence is capitalized too, so tell them to check the meaning.
For follow-up on spotting the names, see capitalization worksheets. When nouns feel steady, verbs worksheets use the same sentence bank to ask a different question.