Prepositional Phrases:

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Help your child learn to identify prepositional phrases. Prepositions are words that indicate location. Typically, prepositions demonstrate this location in our physical world. Prepositional phrases help to make a sentence or idea more interesting to read. They also help to clarify a sentence or idea and are often used as sentence openers.

Follow up:

When helping your child learn grammar, show her how to cross out the prepositional phrases in the sentence. This will help decrease the number of words she is working with making the identification of the subject, predicate, direct object and indirect object much easier.

The prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and ends with a noun. The phrase may also contain descriptive adjectives between the preposition and noun. The prepositional phrase will not be the subject or verb (predicate) of the sentence. It will almost never be a direct or indirect object either. Keep in mind that when the word "to" is followed by a verb, it is functioning as an infinitive not as a preposition and should not be crossed out.

Here is a list of the most used prepositions. Have your child memorize these or learn them well enough to quickly identify a preposition in a sentence.

about
above
according to
across
after
against
along
amid
among
apart from
around
as
as for
at
atop

because of
before
behind
below
beneath
beside
between
beyond
but* (used to mean "except" not when used as a connector)
by

concerning

despite
down
during

except

for
from

in
inside
instead of
into

like

near

of
off
on
onto
out
outside
over

past

regarding
round

since

through
throughout
till
to
toward

under
underneath
unlike
until
up
upon
up to

with
within
without