Children will usually respond better to visual stimulus than written words. This is why books aimed at young children are full of bright pictures. You can use this to introduce children to plurals by showing them a picture of, for example, a shark. Ask them to write the plural version of the word underneath. In this case, “sharks.” As the child becomes more confident with these basic plurals, introduce more complicated ones like “glass” and “lolly”, which would be “glasses” and “lollies”.
In this activity, the child must match single words to their plural equivalent. Write a list of singular nouns down one side of a sheet of paper. On a separate sheet, write the plural version of the words. Using scissors, cut the plural words out so that the child can place them opposite their equivalent singular noun. To make the activity more complicated, give the child more options for plurals. For example, “cow” could be matched to “cows,” “cowes” or “cowsies”.
This activity is designed to help children understand where the apostrophe should be placed in a sentence. The parent or teacher should write two sentences, along the lines of “There is a chicken. Its feathers are brown,” The child should then write this as one sentence, as in: “The chicken’s feathers are brown.” Once the child understands this concept, introduce plurals like: “There are three chickens. Their feathers are brown.” The answer would be: “The chickens’ feathers are brown,” with the apostrophe after the ‘s’.
For a more enjoyable activity, magnets can be used to create a fun fishing-based game using irregular plurals. Magnets can be bought in most craft shops, and should each have a piece of paper attached with a word written on it. Now make a fishing rod with a stick, piece of string, and another magnet. The words used should be a mixture of correct irregular plurals and incorrect irregular plurals. Examples could be "children" and "childs," "sheep" and "sheeps,, and "mice" and "mouses," In each case the latter is incorrect. To make the game more challenging, mix in regular plurals as well. For example, you could have "cows" and "cowes". Ask the child to fish for only the correct plurals.