Using the Infinitive

After reading the section How Insects Eat Their Food, you came across a lot of infinitives. What is the infinitive? To sneeze, to smash, to cry, to jump, to run, to read, to eat, to slurp--all of these are infinitives. What do you notice about all of these?

An infinitive will almost always begin with to followed by the simple form of the verb, like this:
TO + VERB = infinitive

Because an infinitive is not a verb, you CANNOT add s, es, ed, or ing to the end.

Examples:

The ants arrived to grab the leftovers from the picnic.
Insects have wings to fly all over the place to catch food.
Bees like to eat nectar from flowers.

Practice: Complete each sentence by putting the words in parentheses in the infinitive form.
Example: Derek wants Sarah (learn) Spanish.  -->Derek wants Sarah to learn Spanish.
1. It was too late for Tyler  (register) for classes.
2. The teacher told Tim (go) to the principal's office.
3. Ryan's grandpa promised (buy) him a car for graduation.
4. Ally went to the office (sign up) for softball.
5. Cristina didn't feel good but we persuaded her (come) to the party.
6. Dylan wanted Brady (help) him with his homework.
7. I asked her not (call) me so late at night because I go to bed early.

Using the infinitive, write a sentence about how the mouth of a fly, butterfly, and ant allow them to eat their food. Refer back to the page How Insects Eat Their Food if you need to. There are plenty of examples in the reading that you may use.
For example: The chewing and biting mouthpart of cockroaches allow them to eat a variety of foods.





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How Insects Eat Life Cycle and Using Sequential Adverbs Let's See What We Learned Works Cited