Singular and Plural for Class 1
Three free worksheets, with answer keys
Singular means one. Plural means more than one. A Class 1 child learns three rules and one small list. Rule one: most words just add s (cat, cats). Rule two: words ending in s, sh, ch, x or z add es (bus, buses). Rule three, taught in some schools: a word ending in y takes ies (baby, babies). The list is the odd ones that follow no rule at all: man, men. Child, children. Foot, feet.
There are three free worksheets below, one A4 page each, and every answer key is in this article so you never have to hunt for a separate solutions PDF. Sheet 1 and sheet 2 drill the s rule and the es rule on completely different words, so you can practise twice in a week without your child recognising the answers. Sheet 3 is a step harder: the odd ones, y to ies, and changing a whole sentence from one to many.
No sign-up. Answer keys are further down this page.
- Three rules and one short list is the whole topic. Add s to most words, add es after s, sh, ch, x and z, change y to ies, and learn the six odd ones by heart.
- The es rule is a sound rule, not a spelling rule. Say bus and then try to add just an s. Your mouth cannot do it, so English gives the word an extra beat: buses.
- A child who writes foots has understood the rule perfectly and met an exception. That is progress showing itself, not a mistake to correct sharply.
- Plural endings are heard before they are seen. Counting things out loud at home for two minutes teaches more than a page of blanks, so spread the three sheets across a week instead of doing them back to back.
One and many: what Class 1 actually learns
Your child already knows this idea before anyone teaches it. They can see one biscuit on the plate and four biscuits on the plate, and they know those are different. Class 1 is not teaching the idea. It is teaching the ending: what happens to the word when the one becomes many.
In school it is written as singular and plural. At home it is easier to say one and many, and most Class 1 teachers use exactly that. Ask your child to bring one spoon, then four spoons, and the topic is already half taught.
Here is the whole thing on one table. Four rows, and your child will meet all four in Class 1.
| Rule | When to use it | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Add s | Most words. This is the normal one. | cat, cats · bag, bags · pen, pens · book, books |
| Add es | The word ends in s, sh, ch, x or z | bus, buses · brush, brushes · watch, watches · box, boxes · buzz, buzzes |
| y becomes ies | The word ends in y. Some Class 1 syllabuses include this, some leave it for Class 2. | baby, babies · lady, ladies · city, cities |
| No rule at all | A short list of old words that change shape. Learn them by heart. | man, men · child, children · foot, feet |
Notice that the first row covers the overwhelming majority of words your child will ever write. Teach that one properly and everything after it is an exception to a rule they already own.
The three sheets follow that order. Worksheet 1 and worksheet 2 stay on the first two rows, because those two rules carry almost all of a child's writing. Worksheet 3 picks up the bottom two rows once the first two are steady.
Worth knowing: the plural ending is a naming-word thing. Your child cannot add an s to run or happy and get a plural. If they start putting s on everything, go back to naming words for a day before returning to these sheets.
The s rule and the es rule
Almost every wrong answer in Class 1 comes from one place: the child adds an s where the word needed es. Buss. Boxs. Watchs. It looks like carelessness and it is not. It is a child applying the main rule faithfully to a word that will not take it.
The fix is not a longer list to memorise. It is one question your child can ask themselves, out loud, in about two seconds.
Say the word slowly
Not in their head. Out loud, stretching the end of it. Buss... Bookk... The whole trick lives in the last sound, so the last sound has to actually be made.
Listen to the very end
Does the word finish with a hiss or a buzz? Those are the endings s, sh, ch, x and z. Bus hisses. Brush hisses. Watch hisses. Box hisses, because x is really a k and an s stuck together.
Hiss at the end means es
Everything else takes a plain s. Now try to say buss with one more s on the end. Your mouth will not do it. English solves that by adding a whole extra beat, which is why we say and write buses.
This is why reading the words aloud matters more than looking at them. The es is there because of how the word sounds, so a child who only ever sees plurals on paper is being asked to guess at something they were never allowed to hear.
The five endings that take es, with the words your child is most likely to meet:
- s: bus, buses. Glass, glasses.
- sh: brush, brushes. Dish, dishes. Fish stays fish, so keep it out of the first lesson.
- ch: watch, watches. Bench, benches.
- x: box, boxes. Fox, foxes.
- z: buzz, buzzes. Rare in Class 1, so mention it once and move on.
This is also why there are two sheets on the same two rules rather than one. A child can finish a plural worksheet by remembering which blanks were which, and remembering is not the same as knowing. Worksheet 2 asks the identical questions of words they have never seen on this topic: cup, van, glass, fox, dish, bench. If sheet 2 goes as smoothly as sheet 1 did, the rule is genuinely theirs.
Try this at the table: put four things in front of your child, one of each kind. A cap, a box, a brush, a pen. Ask them to say what two of each would be. Four words, ten seconds, and you will know immediately whether the es rule has landed.
The y words and the six odd ones
Two more things sit at the edge of the Class 1 syllabus. Whether your child meets both depends on the school, so check their notebook before you drill either one. Both live on worksheet 3, which is why that sheet is the one to hold back until the first two are easy.
Words ending in y. Baby becomes babies. Lady becomes ladies. The y goes and ies takes its place. Some Class 1 books introduce this near the end of the year and some hold it back for Class 2. At Class 1 level, keep it to three or four familiar words and do not explain the consonant rule underneath it, because that rule needs vocabulary your child does not have yet.
The odd ones. These six change shape completely and there is nothing to work out. They are old words that kept an old ending, and they are learned by hearing and saying them.
| One | Many | A sentence your child can read |
|---|---|---|
| man | men | Two men sat down. |
| woman | women | The women are here. |
| child | children | Six children ran fast. |
| foot | feet | My feet are wet. |
| tooth | teeth | Kiran can brush her teeth. |
| mouse | mice | Ten mice ran away. |
The last exercise on worksheet 3 asks for something none of the earlier ones do: the whole sentence, not just the missing word. One baby is here becomes Two babies are here, and the word most children forget is not babies. It is is. Changing one to many changes the words around it too, and a fill-in-the-blank page hides that completely.
Now the part worth getting right as a parent. When your child writes foots, or childs, or tooths, look at what has actually happened. They have learned a rule, held on to it, and applied it correctly to a new word. The rule was right. The word was the exception. That is a thinking child, not a careless one.
Treated as a failure, it teaches them that trying the rule is risky, and a child who stops trying the rule stops learning the language. Treated as progress, it costs you one warm sentence. Try this instead:
- Say the correct word back cheerfully, as if you are agreeing with them. "Yes, two feet!"
- Use it twice more in ordinary talk over the next few minutes. Wash your feet. Where are your feet?
- Come back to it tomorrow, not tonight. The correction sticks better after a night than after a lecture.
- Do not put a red cross next to it. The rule they used was correct.
The six are enough: man, woman, child, foot, tooth, mouse. Class 1 does not need geese, oxen or leaves. Adding more words at this age turns a short memorised list into a long one, and long lists are the thing children forget.
Answer keys for all three worksheets
Every answer for all three printable sheets is below, in the same order as each page. Mark them sitting next to your child rather than after they have gone to bed, because the useful bit is asking them why they chose what they chose.
Worksheet 1
Exercise 1: Add s to make it more than one
- a. two cats
- b. six bags
- c. four pens
- d. ten books
Exercise 2: These words need es
- a. two buses
- b. three boxes
- c. four brushes
- d. five watches
Exercise 3: Circle the correct word
- a. Ravi has one cap.
- b. Meera has two dolls.
- c. I can see three buses.
- d. Amit has five boxes.
Exercise 4: Match the odd ones
- man goes with men
- child goes with children
- foot goes with feet
- tooth goes with teeth
Exercise 5: Write the missing plural
- a. Two mice ran.
- b. Three women sat.
- c. Two babies can nap.
Worksheet 2
Exercise 1: Add s to make it more than one
- a. two cups
- b. six hats
- c. four dogs
- d. ten vans
Exercise 2: These words need es
- a. two glasses
- b. three foxes
- c. four dishes
- d. five benches
Exercise 3: Circle the correct word
- a. Anita has one bag.
- b. Rahul has two cups.
- c. I can see four foxes.
- d. Sana has three dishes.
Exercise 4: Put each word in the right box
- Add s: cap, hen, pot, tin
- Add es: bush, class, match, wish
Exercise 5: Write the missing plural
- a. Six frogs sat.
- b. Two dresses are new.
Worksheet 3
Exercise 1: These words do not take s or es
- a. two men
- b. two feet
- c. six teeth
- d. ten mice
Exercise 2: y becomes ies
- a. two babies
- b. three ladies
- c. four ponies
- d. five puppies
Exercise 3: Circle the correct word
- a. I can see two children.
- b. My feet are wet.
- c. Two women sat down.
- d. Dev has three stories.
Exercise 4: Now go the other way. Write the one word.
- a. one man
- b. one mouse
- c. one lady
- d. one tooth
Exercise 5: Write the whole sentence for many
- a. Six men ran fast.
- b. Two babies are here. The word children forget is are.
- c. I see three buses.
Two things to watch for while you mark worksheet 1 and worksheet 2. If exercise 1 is perfect and exercise 2 is all wrong, the s rule is solid and the es rule simply has not been taught yet, which is a ten minute job. If the mistakes are scattered across both, your child is guessing rather than applying a rule, and the fix is to go back to saying words out loud before writing anything.
Worksheet 3 is marked differently. Its last exercise has no half marks worth arguing about: either every word that had to change did change, or one of them slipped through. If babies is right but are is still is, your child has the plural rule and has not yet noticed that the rest of the sentence moves with it. Read both versions aloud together and they will hear it themselves.
The odd ones are different. Worksheet 1's exercise 4 and worksheet 3's exercise 1 are memory, not reasoning, so a wrong answer there means nothing about your child's grammar. It just means those words have not been said out loud enough times yet. Use them in conversation this week instead of re-testing them.
The part a worksheet cannot hear
Here is the awkward truth about this particular topic. Plural endings are a sound before they are a spelling, and a worksheet is silent.
Say these three out loud: cats, dogs, buses. The first ends in a hiss. The second ends in a buzz, closer to a z than an s, even though the letter on the page is an s. The third adds a whole extra beat that sounds like iz. Three different sounds, and on paper they look like the same rule. Your child can fill every blank on all three sheets correctly and still say bus-iz as busses or drop the ending entirely when reading a sentence aloud.
That gap is easy to miss at home because written homework is the thing that gets checked and reading aloud usually is not. It is also the gap the national data keeps pointing at. ASER 2024 found that 44.8% of Class 5 children in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and that test measures reading in the regional language, not English, so English reading sits behind even that number. Those children have been completing worksheets for years.
ASER 2024: 44.8% of Class 5 children in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and that test measures reading in the regional language, not English. Written grammar practice moved along for those children. The reading aloud did not keep pace with it.
The National Reading Panel review in 2000 found that systematic phonics instruction, teaching the sounds letters make in a planned order, produces better reading than approaches that leave it to chance. Plural endings are a small, everyday example of that: an ending your child says correctly is an ending they will read correctly.
So add two minutes to every sheet. Once a page is marked, point at exercise 3 on worksheet 1 or worksheet 2 and ask your child to read all four sentences out loud to you. Listen for the endings. If buses comes out with the extra beat, the topic is genuinely learned. If it comes out flat, you have found this week's practice, and it costs nothing to fix. On worksheet 3, have them read their rewritten sentences aloud instead.
The rest of the topic sits on the same base. Our guides on phonics for beginners and reading practice for kids cover how to build it from the sounds up.
The s in cats is heard, not seen
A plural worksheet can check the spelling. It cannot hear whether your child says the ending, and that is where this topic really lives: the hiss at the end of cats, the buzz at the end of dogs, the extra beat in buses. ZigZu is an AI Reading Coach built for Indian children aged 4 to 8. Your child reads a storybook aloud, ZigZu listens to every word, and corrects pronunciation gently in real time, in Indian English.
200+ levelled storybooks, from first three-letter words to full chapter books. Progress reports that show you which sounds and words your child has mastered and which still need work.
Live on Android & iOS in India · Free to start · No credit card required
Frequently asked questions
Singular means one and plural means more than one. In Class 1 your child learns to change a naming word from one to many: one cat becomes two cats, one bus becomes two buses. Most words simply take an s. Words ending in s, sh, ch, x or z take es instead. A few odd words like child and foot change completely.
Three, and they build on each other. Worksheet 1 covers the add s rule, the add es rule and the six odd ones. Worksheet 2 repeats those two rules with completely new words, so you can practise again later in the week. Worksheet 3 is harder: irregular plurals, y to ies, and changing a whole sentence from one to many.
Add es when the word already ends in a hissing or buzzing sound: s, sh, ch, x or z. Bus becomes buses, brush becomes brushes, watch becomes watches, box becomes boxes. Say the word out loud and you will hear why. Buss is impossible to say, so English adds an extra beat and it comes out as buses.
Six of them are expected in Class 1: man becomes men, woman becomes women, child becomes children, foot becomes feet, tooth becomes teeth, and mouse becomes mice. These follow no rule, so they are learned by hearing and saying them, not by working them out. Use them in ordinary talk at home and they stick faster than any drill.
No, and it is worth understanding why. A child who writes foots has learned the add s rule and applied it correctly to a word that happens to be an exception. That is a thinking child, not a careless one. Say the right word back warmly, use it twice more in the next few minutes, and move on without a red mark.
It depends on the school. Many Class 1 syllabuses introduce it near the end of the year at a simple level: a word ending in y drops the y and takes ies, so baby becomes babies and lady becomes ladies. Teach it with three or four familiar words only. The full consonant rule behind it belongs in Class 2.
Use what is already in the room. Ask your child to count things aloud: one spoon, three spoons, two brushes, four boxes. The plural ending is a sound before it is a spelling, so counting out loud teaches it faster than a page of blanks. Do it for two minutes while laying the table and it never feels like homework.