Comma Fun

I have a love/hate relationship with commas.  I think they are fun to teach, but every year I have a hard time understanding why it is so important for first graders to have a solid grasp on how commas work.  The little guys are still learning how to read, so how in the world are they supposed to grasp how commas work?

That being said, I do love teaching commas and this is one of my favorite lessons that I do each year.  All you need is a few beginner comma printables (which I will provide below), some highlighters, bottled glue, and elbow macaroni.  If you are like me, you already have access to most of this stuff at school.  The only thing I had to buy was elbow macaroni and it was pretty cheap.

Before we started the activity, I did the first sentence under a Ladibug.  This allowed my kids to see my expectations.  I always teach my kids to highlight the words that are in the series.  Then, we talk about how many commas they will need to put and I show them how to glue the commas into place.

Here are some pictures of our activity.  Feel free to click on any of the images to go grab the printables I used for this activity.  I know they are simple, but they do the job :)

Disclaimer - I know that some schools don't put the comma before and anymore, but at my school we still do.