Cut or print out pictures of people, places and things. Make sure the pictures contain people, places or things that easily show how students could describe them as proper nouns. For example, print out a picture of a department store with the brand name clearly showing. Print out a picture of a person with a name tag on his shirt. Cut out a picture of the city in which you teach. Show one image at a time to the students. Ask each student to write down one proper noun and one common noun to properly describe the image. For example, for a man with a name tag, they can write "man" and "Jim."
Put a proper noun lesson into song form. If you can't think of a compelling tune for your lesson, simply sing the lesson to the tune of a popular nursery rhyme or even a pop song. For example, sing a song you make up called "Three Proper Nouns" to the the tune of "Three Blind Mice." Have the students repeat the chorus of the song after you. Stop singing every so often and ask the kids to shout out examples of proper nouns.
Write 20 to 40 short sentences on the classroom board. Include proper nouns and common nouns in these sentences but do not capitalize the proper nouns. Put a board game in the middle of the classroom and divide the classroom into two to four teams. Ask one student at a time to approach the board and circle one proper noun that should be capitalized but isn't. If the student correctly identifies one proper noun, his team gets to roll a die and advance on the game board. Whichever team gets to the end of the game board first wins.
Give every student a piece of paper and a pencil. Tell the children that you will say a common noun aloud and then start a stopwatch. Every student should write as many proper noun examples of that common noun as they can. For example, the common noun "city" relates to the proper nouns "Los Angeles" and "Chicago." After 30 to 60 seconds, tell the students to put their pencils down. Whoever lists the greatest number of correct proper nouns wins the round.