Kateryna Ivanova
Most mothers teaching English at home build a good pile of nouns and then quietly stall. The child can name twelve animals, eight foods and every colour in the box — and still cannot tell you where the cat is. That gap has a name, and it is the smallest, least glamorous class of words in the language: in, on, under, behind, next to.
These words do something no noun can. They are the hinge that turns a list of objects into a description of the world, and — more practically — they are the words that turn two-word phrases into three-word ones. If your child is stuck saying "ball" and "box" separately, the missing piece is very often in.
Almost everything written about teaching prepositions to toddlers is a list of five party games written for English-speaking families. That is not useless, but it skips the two things that actually matter for your child: the order these words arrive in, and the fact that Ukrainian solves position with case endings while English solves it with the preposition alone.
Quick answer
Teach position words in the order children acquire them: in and on first (usually understood around two), then under, then behind, in front of and next to (three to four), and only later between, above and below. Teach them through your child's own body and real objects during tidying up, bath and dressing — never from a picture card. Expect comprehension months before production: a child who correctly puts the bear under the chair has learned the word, even if they cannot yet say it.
Why these small words matter more than another twenty nouns
A noun names a thing. A position word states a relationship between two things — which is a genuinely different and harder cognitive act, and the reason these words arrive later than objects.
They also do disproportionate work. Six position words attach to every noun your child already owns, which means each one multiplies the existing vocabulary rather than adding to it. In alone gives you in the box, in the bath, in my mouth, in the car, in your hand — and it does that with words your child already has.
This is the same reason verbs outperform nouns at this stage. If you have already read my guide to why a child knows English words but never puts two together, position words are the concrete next step: they are one of the eight relations that first phrases are built from, and the one that lives most obviously in everyday routines.
The order they actually arrive in
Prepositions are not learned as a set. They come in a broadly predictable sequence, driven by how physically obvious the relationship is and how easy it is to demonstrate with a body and an object.
| Usually understood | Words | Why here |
|---|---|---|
| About 2 years | in, on | Containment and support are the two relationships a toddler physically experiences hundreds of times a day. |
| 2–3 years | under, off, out | Still directly visible, but require the object to be hidden or removed — one step more abstract. |
| 3–4 years | behind, in front of, next to, beside | These depend on a viewpoint. "Behind" changes depending on where you stand, which is why they take longer. |
| 4–5 years | between, above, below, around | Require holding two reference points at once, or a vertical relationship without contact. |
Two practical consequences. First, teaching them all at once fails, and the failure is usually read as the child not being interested. Second, if your two-year-old cannot do behind, nothing is wrong — that word is a year away.
The specific collision for a Ukrainian-speaking family
Here is the part no general guide will tell you, because it depends on your first language.
Ukrainian expresses position with a small number of prepositions plus a case ending. The ending carries a large share of the meaning. На столі and на стіл use the same preposition and mean two different things — resting on the table, versus onto the table — because the noun changes shape.
English has no cases. All of that information sits in the preposition itself, and English therefore needs more of them, used more precisely.
| Ukrainian | English needs | What usually comes out |
|---|---|---|
| в / у covers a wide range | in, at, to — three different words | "in home" for at home, "in school" where English wants at school |
| на covers a wide range | on, at, to | "on the concert" for at the concert |
| під дощем — literally under the rain | in the rain | "under the rain" |
| No articles | in the box | "in box" — the small word goes missing |
| Ending marks direction | Same preposition, different verb | Confusion between put it in and it is in |
What to do about it is less than you think. At two and three, your child is not learning a system — they are learning specific phrases attached to specific moments. If the phrases you use are correct, the system assembles itself later without anyone teaching it. Which means your job is to get eight or ten phrases right and repeat them, not to explain anything.
Teach the body before the object
The single most effective change most mothers can make is to stop putting the word on an object and start putting it on the child.
A two-year-old understands under when they are under the blanket long before they understand it as a fact about a teddy and a chair. Position words are learned from the inside out: first as something your body does, then as something an object does, and only much later as something in a picture.
| Stage | What it looks like | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Your child's body | The child is the thing in the position | "You're under the blanket!" · "Get in the bath." |
| 2. Objects your child moves | The child puts something somewhere | "Blocks in the box." · "Cup on the table." |
| 3. Objects your child watches | Describing without acting | "The cat is under the car." |
| 4. Pictures | Two-dimensional, no movement | Book and card work. Last, not first. |
Most published activities start at stage four, which is why they feel like they are not working with a two-year-old.
How position words make the jump to three
There is a specific reason these words are worth prioritising over more nouns, and it is structural.
Two-word phrases are mostly a thing plus something about it: more milk, big dog, my cup. To get to three words, a child needs a word that can sit between two others and hold them together. Position words are the most common such word in a toddler's life.
| Stage | What your child says | What you model back |
|---|---|---|
| One word | "Box." | "In the box." |
| Two words | "In box." | "In the box." |
| Three words | "In the box." | "Put it in the box." |
| Four and beyond | "Put in box." | "Put the blocks in the box." |
Notice that each row adds exactly one word. That is not a coincidence — it is the same add-one-word principle that governs every stage of this, and it is the reason a position word is worth more than a noun: it is the piece that lets the sentence keep growing.
Six words, four moments, no new activities
You do not need a lesson. You need the same six words in the same four moments, every day, until they become the words those moments simply contain.
| Moment | The phrases | Why it works here |
|---|---|---|
| Tidying up | "In the box." · "On the shelf." | Dozens of repetitions in five minutes, with the child doing the moving. |
| Bath | "In the water." · "Out you come." · "Duck under!" | The child's own body in the position, and no distractions. |
| Getting dressed | "Socks on." · "Arms in." · "Hat off." | Twice a day, fixed sequence, visible on the body. |
| Meals | "On your plate." · "In your mouth!" | Naturally repetitive and genuinely funny to a two-year-old. |
Six words. Nothing added to your day. This is the same structure the whole method runs on, described in full in my guide to daily English rituals at home.
The phrase card: the exact wording, so you only have to get it right once
The article's claim is that you need ten correct phrases rather than a grammar lesson. Here they are, written out in full, because the commonest reason a mother hesitates is not knowing whether her version is right.
| Moment | Say exactly this | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Tidying | "Put the blocks in the box." | Keep the. It is the word Ukrainian speakers drop. |
| Tidying | "Books go on the shelf." | On for a flat surface with contact. |
| Bath | "Get in the bath." / "Get out of the bath." | Out of, not "out from". |
| Bath | "Your duck is under the water." | Not "under water" unless you mean submerged in general. |
| Dressing | "Socks on." / "Coat off." | No article here — these are fixed short forms and they are correct. |
| Dressing | "Arms in." / "Head through." | Both are natural and worth having. |
| Meals | "It's on your plate." | Your replaces the — both are fine, neither can be dropped. |
| Meals | "In your mouth!" | The most repeated one in any house with a toddler. |
| Out | "We're at the park." / "We're going to the park." | The в/на collision lives here: at for being there, to for going. |
| Out | "We're walking in the rain." | Not "under the rain", which is the direct translation. |
Ten sentences. Screenshot them if it helps. Once these are automatic, you will produce the rest correctly without deciding anything — which is how the system assembles itself in a child too.
Four games that are actually worth the five minutes
When you do want a deliberate five minutes, these four are the ones that repay it — because in each, the child's body or hands do the preposition rather than pointing at it.
- Teddy hide. You hide a toy and narrate: "Teddy is under the cushion." Then swap: your child hides it and you guess out loud. Guessing wrong on purpose — "Is he on the chair? No!" — produces more language from your child than guessing right.
- The box game. One box, five objects. "Put the spoon in. Put the sock on. Put the ball under." This is a comprehension test disguised as a game, and it tells you exactly which words have landed.
- Obstacle course. Cushions and chairs. "Go under the table. Climb on the sofa. Jump off." The whole body is the instrument, which is why this one works when nothing else does.
- Where is it? Around the house, one question: "Where is your cup?" Accept any answer at first, then model the full one back — "Yes, on the table."
More games in this format, for other purposes, are in my guide to learning English through play.
The missing "the", and what to do about it
This article has mentioned the dropped article three times, so it deserves a straight answer: ignore it, deliberately, for a long time.
Ukrainian has no articles, so there is no slot in your child's first-language system for the. It is also unstressed, quick, and carries almost no meaning of its own — three properties that make a word very hard to notice in speech. Children acquiring English as a first language leave it out too, and go on doing so well past three.
What resolves it is not correction but volume: hearing the full form thousands of times, in phrases the child is already using. Which is precisely what the phrase card above delivers, if you keep the article in every time you say those ten sentences.
| Child says | Do not say | Say |
|---|---|---|
| "In box." | "In THE box. Say the." | "Yes — in the box." |
| "On table." | "You forgot a word." | "It's on the table." |
| "Under rain." | "No, not under." | "We're walking in the rain!" |
The pattern is the same one that governs everything else here: your correct version, delivered warmly and without comment, is the whole of the teaching. There is more on why direct correction backfires in my guide to whether to correct your child's English mistakes.
Test comprehension, not speech
Here is the measurement mothers get wrong, and getting it right usually removes a lot of unnecessary worry.
A child understands position words months — sometimes a year — before they produce them. If you judge progress by what your child says, you will conclude nothing is happening while a great deal is happening.
The one-minute check. Put a small toy and a cup on the floor. Say, without gesturing and without looking at the answer: "Put the bear in the cup." Then "on". Then "under". Say it once, naturally, and wait.
| What happens | What it means |
|---|---|
| Follows all three | The words are in. Move to the next group and start expecting speech. |
| Follows in and on, not under | Exactly the normal sequence. Keep going; nothing to fix. |
| Puts the bear anywhere, cheerfully | Not yet. Return to stage one — the child's own body — for a few weeks. |
| Follows them in Ukrainian but not English | The concept exists; only the English label is missing. This is a vocabulary gap, not a developmental one. |
That last row matters. If your child can do it in Ukrainian, the hard cognitive work is already done and English needs exposure, not intervention.
What to expect at each age
| Age | Realistic in English | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 18m–2y | Follows in and on in familiar routines, says neither. Often needs the gesture. | Stage one only — the word on the child's body. No questions, no cards. |
| 2–3y | Follows in, on, under without a gesture. Starts producing in and on, usually without the article. | Add under. Move to objects. Start the box game. |
| 3–4y | Behind, next to and in front of arrive. Answers "where is it?" in short phrases. | Add the viewpoint words. Hide-and-seek and obstacle courses earn their keep here. |
| 4–5y | Between, above, below. Uses position words to give instructions to you. | Let the child direct you — being the one who follows instructions is the strongest practice there is. |
One family, three weeks
A mother wrote about her son, two years and seven months. Around eighty English words — animals, food, vehicles, colours — and no combinations at all. She had bought a preposition flashcard set, worked through it for three weeks, and he could not do a single one.
The problem was not the child and it was not the effort. It was that a card asks a toddler to judge a relationship between two drawn objects, which is stage four of four, and he had never done stages one to three.
We put the cards away. For two weeks the only rule was that in and on had to happen to his own body: in the bath, on the chair, in your coat, on the step. Nothing was asked of him and no questions were put.
Day nine, tidying up, he dropped a block into the basket and said "in". Not a sentence — one word, in the right moment, which is what learning a preposition looks like from the outside. By the end of week three he was saying "in box" while doing it, and — the part that mattered to his mother — he could follow "put it under the chair" the first time she said it.
The flashcards had not been wrong exactly. They had been fourth.
Seven mistakes that stall position words
- Starting with flashcards. A card shows a relationship your child cannot enter. Bodies first, pictures last.
- Teaching all six at once. Two at a time, for a fortnight. In and on first, and no others until those are reliable.
- Always gesturing while you say it. Helpful at first, then a crutch: the child reads your hand instead of the word. Drop the gesture once they are following.
- Asking "where is it?" before they can answer. Questions are a test. Comment first, for weeks, and let the question come later.
- Correcting "in box". The missing the is not an error worth naming. Say it back complete — "Yes, in the box" — and carry on.
- Expecting speech as the measure. Comprehension runs months ahead. Test with actions.
- Abandoning it after a week. These words take longer than nouns because they encode a relationship, not a thing.
A two-week plan
- Days 1–3. Run the one-minute check. Note which of in, on, under your child already follows. That is your starting line.
- Days 1–14. Choose two words only. For most families, in and on.
- Every day. Use them in tidying up and at bath time — the two moments with the most natural repetitions.
- Stage one for the first week. Put the word on your child's body wherever you can: in the bath, on the chair, under the towel.
- Second week. Move to objects your child moves. Add the box game once, for five minutes.
- Day 14. Repeat the one-minute check and compare. Comprehension is where you will see the change first — often before a single word is spoken.
Where the Mommy & Me English method fits
Everything above is built on one requirement: the same few phrases appearing in the same few moments, day after day, long enough for the pattern to settle. Not lessons — repetition inside a life you are already living.
That is exactly what my course produces. It is a system for the mother: which phrases belong to which daily moment, in what order to introduce them, how to respond when your child answers in Ukrainian, and how to keep going through the weeks when nothing seems to be happening. It assumes you are not a native speaker and that your time is limited. You can see how the Mommy & Me English course is built.
My background is a Trinity College London CertTESOL, NILE Young Learners training, and Ukrainian specialist diplomas in speech therapy and primary education, alongside more than nine years teaching children. The speech-therapy half is why this article is organised around comprehension and sequence rather than around games: those are the two things that decide whether the games work.
The short version
Position words are not a small extra topic. They are the hinge between naming things and describing the world, and six of them will do more for your child's English than another twenty nouns.
Start with in and on. Put them on your child's body before you put them on an object, and on an object long before you put them in a book. Use them in tidying up and the bath, where the repetitions are free. Test with actions, not with speech. And when "in box" comes out without the the, say it back complete and keep going — that missing word will arrive on its own, the way all of them do.
