Prepositional Phrases

The words above can be used as prepositions. In order for one of these words to be considered a preposition, it must be part of a prepositional phrase. Here are some examples of a prepositional phrase:

over the hill
behind the door
at Mary's house
without your coat
during lunch
atop Mount Everest

Notice that the prepositional phrase contains no verbs. Generally, they contain an adjective, a noun or pronoun and they can also contain a gerund. The noun or pronoun is the object of the preposition. Prepositional phrases can also contain conjunctions to join two nouns or pronouns as in this example: 

underneath sand and rock

The advantage of being able to recognize prepositional phrases in sentences is that neither the subject nor the verb will ever be a part of the prepositional phrase. Consider this sentence: "The coat on the chair is mine." If we eliminate the prepositional phrase, "on the chair" then we can easily see that coat is the subject and is is the verb.
"The coat on the chair is mine."

An activity to learn prepositions is playing preposition bingo. This game was devised by the author of the Easy Grammar series. There are additional printable bingo cards on this web-site on the Preposition Bingo page. Another activity that my children and I would do is to make up prepositional phrases. Using the list of prepositions or our memory, we would make up phrases for the words such as:

after the fall
behind my chair
beyond the sunset
amid the crowd

The children's book, Bears in the Night (Berenstein Bears), is full of prepositional phrases. Your public library might have a copy of this book.