Tell me about The Sentence Family

[RainbowSprinkles]

What grade/age did you use it? How did you use it? How did you like it?

Would you say it's very similar to Grammarland?

[Julie Smith]

I was going to ask this. I think I saw someone post that they were reading it on a Ipad.

[heart'sjoy]

I've used this with a 2nd grader with FLL 2nd grade; I've used this with a 4th grader who was using Daily grams and needed a bit more work on labeling the words in a sentence before starting Latin for Children.

 

The best was adding each "family member's"picture and definition to the child's memory box for retention. I also ask 2nd grader to label words by colored underlining. We don't label every word but will do 2 verbs, 1 adjective, a preposition, and 1 conjunction etc. We do this on his dictation sentences several times a week.

 

 

This is a nice introduction to the parts of speech and sentence types that can be adapted to other writing or grammar programs. This program made it easy to discuss adding stronger verbs, interesting adjectives, and exciting adverbs in 3rd grade to our sentences (IEW). It gave us just enough of foundation to use the parts of speech to improve and own their writing and to not flounder in Latin grammar.

 

I'm not familiar with grammarland. Sentence family does not cover punctuation, capitalization, and many other grammar concepts that would be in a comprehensive grammar program like Shurley or Easy Grammar.

 

Hope this helps.:grouphug:

[birchbark]

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/tags.php?tag=sentence+family

 

:001_smile:

[RainbowSprinkles]

I've used this with a 2nd grader with FLL 2nd grade; I've used this with a 4th grader who was using Daily grams and needed a bit more work on labeling the words in a sentence before starting Latin for Children.

 

The best was adding each "family member's"picture and definition to the child's memory box for retention. I also ask 2nd grader to label words by colored underlining. We don't label every word but will do 2 verbs' date=' 1 adjective, a preposition, and 1 conjunction etc. We do this on his dictation sentences several times a week.

 

 

This is a nice introduction to the parts of speech and sentence types that can be adapted to other writing or grammar programs. This program made it easy to discuss adding stronger verbs, interesting adjectives, and exciting adverbs in 3rd grade to our sentences (IEW). It gave us just enough of foundation to use the parts of speech to improve and own their writing and to not flounder in Latin grammar.

 

I'm not familiar with grammarland. Sentence family does not cover punctuation, capitalization, and many other grammar concepts that would be in a comprehensive grammar program like Shurley or Easy Grammar.

 

Hope this helps.:grouphug:[/quote']

 

Thank you, this is helpful. :)

[RainbowSprinkles]

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/tags.php?tag=sentence+family

 

:001_smile:

 

 

Thanks! Should have done a tag search.

 

I'm still interested to hear more reviews. :)

[MamaReads]

We really enjoyed The Sentence Family. It is a very waldorf-esque introduction to the parts of speech. Both my 5 yo ds & 7 yo dd enjoyed creating a main lesson book out of one of our large sketch pads. My now 8yo dd refers back to hers as we work through FLL3.

 

The prose is very short in SF, there is a lot of emphasis on creating the image to connect the concept.

 

I haven't used Grammar-Land yet, but it seems to be more of a living book. I think I will be adding the Librivox recording to our audio book line up. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

[Jenny in GA]

We purchased The Sentence Family this fall when my third grader made it overwhelmingly clear, very quickly, that she would not tolerate FLL.

 

She absolutely loved it. She loved drawing the pictures. She loved the stories. She loved everything about it. She finished it in about 6-7 weeks.

 

After that we did Grammarland. She liked that as well, but not quite as much. There were no artwork for her to do and the story and characters weren't as "cute."

 

Since then we did MCT Grammar Island and Practice Island, which she zipped through and also liked very much.

 

It's funny; she absolutely hated FLL to the point of mutiny. But now grammar is her favorite subject. Guess you just have to find the right match!

[Chelli]

We are working through The Sentence Family right now for 2nd grade. I read one chapter each week. It starts with the four types of sentences, then moves onto the parts of speech.

 

Once we cover a part of speech, then for practice, I pull sentences from our WWE passages or our history/science/literature books for her to find the parts of speech and/or type of sentence.

 

I printed out the pictures of the sentence family and laminated them instead of me drawing them. Dd likes to draw the pictures in a notebook though.

 

It is a very cuddle on the couch, artsy, story approach to grammar that is perfect for my dd (and I would imagine most children). But it is also helping grammar to stick more than anything we've tried so far.

 

We will be moving on to MCT Island for third grade.

Edited March 1, 2012 by pw23kids
fixed mistake

[birchbark]

I agree with all the reviews. We used it for both 2nd and 3rd grade and loved it. My DS is getting into prepositions in his R&S and I'm having him read the story on prepositions to refresh his understanding (and he's in 5th).

 

As a PP mentioned, it is strictly grammar, no mechanics or usage. I think it meshes wonderfully with a program like WWE. Not to mention that it's so reasonable-priced and non-consumable to boot.