Do you study descriptive language with your children? Some people wait until their children are older and are working on higher level writing skills, but I like to start studying descriptive language as early as kindergarten. One, it is fun to talk about!! But, it also helps build comprehension skills, an appreciation for good writing, AND future writing skills. So here is how we study descriptive language!
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Studying Imagery
The first area I like to study is imagery or language that appeals to readers’ senses so that they can imagine themselves in the story. Imagery may be related to sight, taste, sound, smell, or touch. You can point out instances of imagery as you read aloud to your children and have them imagine being in the situation. You could have them then verbally describe or draw a picture of what they are imagining. Here is a drawing my little guy did after listening to a description of the barn in Charlotte’s Web.
To further develop your children’s use of imagery, you could gather a bunch of objects, including food, from around the house and then take turns describing how they feel, look, sound, taste, and smell.
Studying Figurative Language
The second area of descriptive language is figurative language and in the elementary years, I like to target: personification, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and idioms. You could also introduce symbolism in the later elementary school years, but that can be a hard one for younger children to understand. In case you need to brush up on what these are, I have included a ‘cheat sheet’ you can download below. I like to keep this cheat sheet in a 3-ring notebook on our classroom table along with other cheat sheets so we can reference it as needed.
There are many ways to target these concepts and you can find tons of worksheets online, but my favorite ways are by reading good books and then working with quotes to determine which type of figurative language is being used by the author.
Finding Descriptive Language in Books
You can choose one type of figurative language to introduce at a time and then look for it in a book or poem. I talked about this is our Poetry Study Notebooking Pages post. There are many picture books that introduce alliteration and onomatopoeia well. Personification can be taught with any book where the animals are characters with human qualities, although it is fun to look for examples besides animals. One of our favorite books for personification is The Day the Crayons Quit.
Similes and metaphors are often found throughout a variety of children’s books and sometimes whole story lines and characters are metaphors such as Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, where he represents Christ. Hyperbole and idioms can be a little harder to find in literature, but they are sprinkled through a variety of books. The Amelia Bedelia books are good for idioms.
Studying Descriptive Language Quotes
Once, the different types of figurative language have been introduced, I like to have my children look at various quotes and determine which technique is being used. A fun way to do that is with our Descriptive Language Sorting Mats. There is a mat for each type of descriptive type of language and 8 corresponding quotes taken from some of the most popular classic children’s books. You choose how many types of language you want to them to sort. Maybe it is just between similes and metaphors or maybe you want to just pull out the idiom mat and match the quotes to what they really mean. Or if your child has developed their knowledge of descriptive language well, pull out several mats for them to work through. Click the picture below to learn more.
Having to compare and contrast the quotes and think about the definition of each type of descriptive language will cement children’s understanding and build critical thinking skills.
When children start to write with more descriptive language in later years and discuss higher level, complex literature they will have a good understanding of it from years of studying good quotes.
To buy the descriptive language sorting mats:
To help our sorting mats last, I print them on cardstock and slide them into sheet protectors. I then keep an expandable file folder of all of our sorting mats. Here are links to the ones we purchase:
Quotes from the following books are used in the descriptive language mats. You do not have to have read the books to use the mats, but in case you feel inspired:
To download the FREE descriptive language ‘cheat sheet’:
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