And on to grammar…

Last week we took a look at the past, present, and future of our handwriting curriculum plans.  If you are interested, jump over and read Handwriting – Language Art Series.  This week, let’s take a look at the past, present, and future of our grammar curriculum.

Grammar

Past

Builder did not start working on grammar until the second semester of last year, his 3rd grade year.  Handwriting started out as a dislike for him, so I was not willing to jump into grammar any earlier.

We started his grammar learning journey by playing some basic online games to identify nouns, verbs, and the like.  We used several games found on turtlediary.com.

Turtlediary.com has an incredible amount of free games that encompass many topics.  Builder started in the first grade language arts area.  We picked out specifically the noun and verb games to start.

Of course with this many games staring him in the face, he had to give some others a try.  He ended up with a taste of a little bit of everything grammar!  It was during this time that Builder started doing some spelling work as well.  So for the moment, we were good with sticking to these elements only.

Once Builder had settled into those two components, I wanted him to start on a grammar curriculum that could carry him through many years.  I don’t feel completely competent on the sequence of teaching grammar.  Therefore, I wanted something that was a little more structured for us to follow.

I turned to the mighty Google and homeschool blog gurus to seek out some programs that might fit our budget needs and Builder’s style of learning.  The program we decided upon, was created by Annie Moffatt over at themoffattgirls.com.  At that time, my daughter was using a reading curriculum developed by Annie, so I already knew her style and quality of work.

Once I knew I was interested in Annie’s curriculum, I headed over to her teacherspayteachers.com store to look at the preview.  It drew me in immediately.

Present

This brings us to the present.  Builder is beginning his 4th grade year now, and we are working on finishing up Annie’s 1st Grade Language Arts and Grammar Mega Bundle.

This is a comprehensive Mega Bundle that contains 22 individual units focusing on topics such as:  types of sentences, sentence fragments, synonyms and antonyms, conjunctions, and more.  This curriculum can be purchased as one big Mega Bundle or as individual units.

Each unit contains printable worksheets that are very interactive.  This was a surprise to me.  When I heard “worksheets” and “interactive”, I was thinking “yeah right”.

But they are!

Annie has done a great job at varying the types of activities that are required on each sheet.  Sometimes it is fill-in the blank, sometimes cut-and-paste, sometimes color the answer, and more.

There has been enough interactive diversity within her worksheets that Builder really engages with and enjoys these sheets.  I have rarely heard him groan about the amount of work assigned that day.  We take one sheet a day and grammar is two days a week for us.

Builder has also started working through the Easy Peasy Language Arts-3 curriculum which contains some grammar aspects as well as some handwriting and spelling.  The Easy Peasy Language Arts curriculum continues through to Language Arts-7, then on to intermediate, and then English 8.  I have not completely looked into where the Easy Peasy Language Arts is headed.  I am hoping that this is what will take us through to the middle school years and beyond.

Future

As far as grammar goes, the future for us holds completing the 1st grade bundle and starting on the 2nd grade bundle.  At the moment, Builder is almost at the halfway mark for the 1st grade batch.  My goal is to be able to finish the 1st grade bundle by mid-spring and head into 2nd grade after our spring break.

We will also continue working through Easy Peasy Language Arts-3 curriculum and beyond, for as long as it fits our needs.

I am also very sure that as we progress grammar, spelling, and writing will all become intermingled as we find them so naturally in life.  This comes into play in our next post, Spelling – Language Arts Series!

And You? ~ Have you found a grammar system that works well for your little (or big) learners?