The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Secs. 403–407 · Part 2: Part Second
111. Making plurals
Goal: Your child forms regular and irregular plurals and writes plurals of letters and figures.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- Paper and pencil (a notebook kept just for this book works well)
What's in the book
Section 403 shows that most plurals add s or es. Section 404 asks for a long list. Sections 405 and 406 send the child to find irregular plurals in the reader, sort them into groups, and make rules (knife, knives). Section 407 shows the plurals of letters and figures with the apostrophe (dot your i's, count by 2's).
The lesson, step by step
Change to more than one (Section 403)
Your child reads each sentence in Section 403, changing it to more than one: "The boys were playing in the yard."
The Plural Number of most nouns is formed by adding s or es to the Singular.
A long list (Section 404)
Your child writes as many s and es plurals as they can in three minutes. Any that don't follow the rule go in a separate list.
Find the odd ones (Sections 405 and 406)
Look through a story for irregular plurals. Your child sorts them into groups and makes a rule for each, like the book's example: knife, knives.
Letters and figures (Section 407)
Mind your p's and q's.
Read the examples. Today many writers leave out the apostrophe with numbers (count by 2s) but keep it for small letters (dot your i's), so they can be read.
Check it gently
Check the plurals list. For a wrong one ("mouses"), ask "Is that how we say it?" and let your child find the right form.
What a good result looks like
Example (written for this guide, not from the book):
The bushes grow by the wall.
The wolves howled at the moon.
The children fed the geese.
Answers to the book's problems
Section 403: boys, dogs, brooks, bushes, horses, butterflies, hens, plates. Groups of irregular plurals your child may find: f or fe to ves (knife, knives; leaf, leaves; wolf, wolves); a change inside the word (man, men; woman, women; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; goose, geese; mouse, mice); en (child, children; ox, oxen); the same in both (sheep, deer); y after a consonant to ies (lady, ladies; butterfly, butterflies).
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.