HebrewGrade 3ages 8–9
🏷️ Noun and verb
A noun and a verb feel obvious once you know them, but a child who is still sorting a moving sentence into parts often calls everything a verb — because in her ear, the whole sentence is “doing something.”
Try this lesson freeNo card needed. The first lesson is free.
Download on the App StoreWhat your child learns
- A noun is a thing, person, place, or animal.
- A verb is what you do: run, read, sit.
- כלב is a noun. רץ is a verb.
- Ask: can you touch it, or is it a doing?
The mistake most kids make here
Every word looks like an action because the sentence moves.
Try one question
The word כלב is…
כלב
- a noun
- a verb
- a period
Answer
a noun — That's it. כלב is an animal — a noun. רץ would be a verb.
How Maya teaches it
Your child tells Maya what they did in class. She teaches this topic at her desk, asks questions with tappable answers, and when the answer is wrong she explains why that answer was tempting instead of saying “try again”. She remembers what did not land and comes back to it.
Your child has it when they can: Say for כלב and for רץ — which is a noun, which is a verb.
How to help at home
The mix-up is rarely about not knowing the words — it’s about not having a test to sort them with. “The dog runs” has one thing (the dog) and one action (runs), but a child watching the whole sentence move can lose track of which word is which.
Tonight, point at three objects in the room — a cup, a chair, a spoon — and ask “can I touch it?” Yes means noun. Then act out three verbs — jump, read, sit — and ask the same question. No means verb. The touch test works for almost any word at this age.
When your child mislabels a word, don’t just supply the answer. Ask her to try the touch test out loud on that exact word — she’ll usually correct herself mid-sentence once she runs the check herself.
A good sign she has it: given any short sentence, she can point to the noun and the verb separately, and explain why using the touch test — not just guess from memory.
Questions parents ask
- Why does my child think every word in a sentence is a verb?
- It usually comes from watching the sentence as a whole — something is happening in it — rather than sorting each word on its own. A simple per-word test, like “can I touch it?”, breaks the sentence apart for her.
- What's an easy way to teach noun versus verb at home?
- Use the touch test: things you can point to or touch are nouns; things you do are verbs. Practice on objects and actions around the house before moving to full sentences.
- My child gets confused when a word can be both, like 'run' the noun and 'run' the verb. Is that normal?
- Yes, and it's worth waiting on until the basic noun/verb sort is solid. At this age, sticking to clear examples (a ball vs. to throw) builds the foundation before tackling words that switch roles.
- How does Maya teach this differently from a grammar app?
- Maya has the child apply the touch test to her own example out loud, so she notices her own mistake, instead of marking a multiple-choice answer right or wrong.
No card needed. The first lesson is free.
Download on the App StoreMore Hebrew lessons
- A close wordGrade 3
- A comma in a listGrade 3
- An adjectiveGrade 3
- A closing sentenceGrade 3
- Who said itGrade 3
- Who what whereGrade 2
- A period at the endGrade 2
- Beginning middle endGrade 2
Sources: Israeli Ministry of Education – Hebrew language curriculum, elementary (in Hebrew)