[Grammar help with my third grader]

I am using R&S 3 with my ds. He's 8, and this is his first year of formal grammar. I have used/am still using R&S with my dd, and I'm convinced it's a very sound program. However, it's just not as effective for my ds.

 

My dd is like me, and finds language arts easy. However, my ds has more of a "mathy" brain, and LA is just a lot more of a struggle. When we got to the end of the section in the text on nouns, I found that he hadn't really got all the concepts, so I decided to go back over that section again. But I still don't think that he's really getting it.

 

For example, he knows that a plural noun names more than one, while a singular noun names only one. But when I asked him what type of noun names only one, he looked at me blankly until I had emphasised the "only one" part several times. (Ironically, he had no problem with applying these concepts in Latin!!)

 

I'm at a bit of a loss how to present it all to him so that he really gets the concepts and is able to integrate them. Math is easy - just whip out the base 10 blocks and we're good to go! But I don't know what else to try with grammar. Do I just keep soldiering on through R&S, going over the reviews and quizzes again until it's drummed into his brain? Do I switch up the program? And if so, what?? I feel like he'd get it all no worries if it were just all in nice, numbery tables and flow charts - turn it into math! :)

 

Thanks for any insights!

[Help with cell model]

We did this too. Definitely use gelatine or some flavored jelly.

 

 

 I didn't like the idea of wasting food.

 

In our house, the best science is the stuff you eat!   :laugh:

[Bravewriter Freewrite]

We do freewrites, too. I think ds was 7 when we started doing them. Dd is more likely to sit down and write on her own, so she took to them like a duck to water. It wasn't so easy for ds, but following the guidelines, I told him he could just write "I don't know what to write" over and over if he felt it necessary! He did something like that for the first one, but has been doing better and better ever since.

 

I do them along with the kids, and we read out our writing to each other once we're finished. I don't criticize or correct them; I find point(s) to praise and leave it at that.

 

We use the "Friday Freewrite" ideas from the blog. My kids (and I!) need them.

 

We started with a 4-minute time frame, but are finding, as we all get better at it, that we are needing longer and longer!

 

Freewriting is definitely a part of school that the kids really enjoy.

[Learning multiple musical instruments - what is the max for your child?]

When I was a kid, I wanted to play everything, too. :) Piano was my first instrument, violin my second, and when I brought home a flute, my piano teacher had a bit of a fit and told me (and Mum) that I wouldn't be able to do justice to my first two instruments if I took up a third. She was right. I did really well with both piano and violin throughout my schooling, and I'm glad I didn't have formal instruction in flute as well - it would have been just too much practice time. (Though I'd still love to learn to play flute properly...)  Later on, after I'd finished my undergrad degree, I took up the bagpipes, but by that time my formal instruction in both piano and violin was well over.

 

I guess that's just to say - I think 2 instruments is plenty for a kid, especially if they have other extra-curricular commitments. If your child is really musical, that is something that will last them all their life, and they may take up other instruments later on in life and still get a lot of out of it.

[Decluttering Difficulties]

A note on the manuals: you might want to check how many of them are available online. You might be surprised! Any that you find available online, bookmark the page then go ahead and toss out the paper version. Space saved = win!

[Most unusual/course you made up yourself/off-the-beaten path classes?]

We recently took our elementary- aged kids to sit in on a civil court case for a while, and used that as a spring board to learning more about courts and how they function. That was rather fun. You could go all sorts of ways with that, depending on your kids' ages.

[A Natural/Reluctant writer, need advice]

Have you been in my house? :p You just described my dd (just turned 10) quite accurately!  She has written her own poems and stories since she was quite little, but trying to do narrations for history and also the WWE answers was like pulling teeth.  Painful!  And I'm also someone who is not super confident with teaching writing - in fact, I feel like I've been floundering with this for years!

 

That said, here's how things have gone down for us. We worked our painful way through WWE 1 & 2, but gave up very quickly on WWE3. It was not a good fit.  We did TC for half a year, which was OK but not brilliant for her.  

 

For this year I bought BW Partnership Writing, which we are not using totally religiously: we are using the projects (worked on once a week), Friday freewrites (once a week), and poetry teas (about once a week), and I have to say that it has really injected a lot of the "fun" spirit back into writing (as a school subject) for dd.  She gets to have the fun in creative writing that comes naturally to her, while at the same time learning some of the important composition skills that are not always so fun to learn. I do recommend BW for this.  I love that dd (and ds, who is tagging along) will have these fun projects to look back on, while learning something in each project. We all get a kick out of the freewrites, and that approach is totally suited to dd's style. And everyone loves the poetry teas! I'm really happy with how BW is fitting into our school, and the results it's getting in terms of dd enjoying her writing. So that's my 0.02c on BW. :001_smile:

 

I'm also working slowly through CAP W&R with dd. I like the structured teaching, and it's going pretty well with her - I see her slowly developing skills that she has struggled with a lot, so that's a good thing. We're almost ready to move into Narrative I, so we'll see how that goes.

 

And I do echo what other posters have said - R&S Grammar is a must-do around here. Yes, R&S also teaches some composition skills, which is an added bonus. I can't say how well those concepts are sticking with dd, as the teaching is pretty dry, but I do see the grammar portion being really useful and well-retained.

 

Anyway, as you probably figured out, I'm no expert in this, but your dd sounds so like mine, and I just wanted to share what seems to be working here...for today at least!  :p  Hope it helps some!  Good luck!

[s/o - Use of "that" instead of "who"]

In no way would I call myself a grammar expert, but surely, surely, this rising trend I have been seeing and hearing is wrong! I'm talking about when people use "that" instead of "who". For example, "There is the woman that gave it to me." Shouldn't it be "who gave it to me"  - using "who" when referring to people or a person?  It sounds so impersonal - it makes me feel like the person or people to whom the speaker is referring is some kind of object or animal.."There is the machine that gave it to me."  I know, weird and probably nit-picky...

 

So am I right that this is grammatically incorrect? And am I the only one who (not that!) finds it really annoying?! :tongue_smilie:

[ISO: ideas for staying close to nieces]

There's a book on Amazon called "Grandparenting at Long Distance" which my sister gave my mom, and which I also read - has lots of good ideas of how to stay involved with the lives of loved ones far away. (Obviously those ideas won't just apply to grandparents.)  Skype, letters, read and discuss books together, try to have a similar hobby that you can compare notes over, keep up with happenings at their end of the world so you can talk about them, visits when possible, cards...lots of ideas, but utilize every tool at your disposal, for sure! (Electronic and otherwise.)

[Poetry]

We have done poetry during morning time, and now we are doing dedicated poetry teas instead. During morning time, I was having the kids memorize the poems, but it began to feel a bit like this:  :smash:   So now we do poetry teas instead. We simply read the poems out and enjoy them! We laugh over the funny ones, and I might occasionally make a comment about a poem, like "Oh, I just love how the poet described the snow" or "Did you get that little play on words there?"  My comments are never really deep or overly analytical, I just say what strikes me. Sometimes I might ask why someone likes that particular poem. But no, we don't really go into a lot of discussion about the poems. 

 

We have a poetry tea about once a week, and we spend about half an hour on reading poems, and about half an hour with the current read-aloud.  The kids pick out their own favourite poems to read from the poetry books we have on the shelf; I supplement with others I might particularly want them to hear. As an encouragement, my kids do like to occasionally pull the poetry books out themselves and read them on their free time.

 

Really, at my kids' ages, (and yours are a bit younger, I think), what I'm really aiming for is exposure and enjoyment. I want them just to revel in the fun of the words and the stories that poems tell, to delight in the language, and to learn to love poetry for itself. So we just read out the ones we like! When they're both a bit more firmly into the dialectic stage, then I might start introducing some more "analysis" of poems, and yes, I think at that point it might be helpful to have a guide. But I'm not quite there yet, so maybe someone with a bit more experience of that might chime in.

 

Anyway, HTH!

[Please. Stop. Talking.]

My dd is very extroverted and chatty, too. Luckily her little brother doesn't mind hearing it, but it can really wear me down, to the point where I have to ask her to stop talking for a while. I feel so bad doing that, but I get so that I'm about ready to crawl out of my own skin if I don't get relief from the onslaught of words! 

 

I nearly fell over laughing one day at the pool when my dd informed me that she had been seeing if she could talk underwater, and had discovered that she could!  :lol:  My unexpressed thought, was "Of course you can!!"

[How many syllables are there in 'caramel' in your accent?]

2 syllables---car--mul, but that is pretty standard around here since there is a nearby city called Carmel, IN, so most people just pronounce the candy the same way.

 

I'm curious - does the accent go on the first or second syllable when you name that city in IN? Because there's a city in CA that's called Carmel, only it's always pronounced "Car-MEL" as opposed to how I usually hear the name of the candy pronounced: "CAR-mle" (2 syllables).

[Free ebook about presidential elections]

Thank you!

[One day only Brave Writer freebie - Arrow issue]

Thank you!

[Handwriting practice for tidiness]

My rising 5th grader is a proficient reader, speller, etc., but her handwriting is a mess!  She has no problem with letter formation, it's just that her printing is really messy. To be honest, I don't think it's improved much over the past couple of years. She can write cursive, but it's a bit laborious, as she still has to think about the formation of each letter.  I know that that is just a matter of practice, but for her printing, I think her main problem is that she just goes too fast - she can't be bothered taking the time to form her letters tidily, so they all start to go to pot - the tails of p's and j's float on top of the line, for instance. 

 

I've come to the conclusion that she just needs to have lots and lots - and lots - of practice/drill, in both printing and cursive, until tidiness becomes more habitual. Does this sound right? And if so, does anyone have any "pretty" looking resources they can recommend to make this process a little less of a drag for her? She's going to hate the practice enough as it is, so I thought some fun color pictures or themes might help spark a modicum of interest or, at the least, alleviate the pain a little! :)

[When Quitting Isn't an Option...]

This thread has helped me a lot, too. Thanks for your honest post, OP, and for all the wonderful follow up from everyone else. You've brought hope and some new ideas to combat my "gray" outlook on this school year.

[SOTW Vol 3 Activity Guide]

I have the same - it's the right one. The drawings on the cards are definitely not as professional as with 1 and 2, and the formatting in the chapters is a bit less slick than the previous levels, but I think it's got loads of quality content. I'm wondering if that's why the formatting isn't the same - trying to fit more material into one volume. Can't complain about that! :) I don't use the cards in the back, so the illustrations don't bother me that much.

[Just for fun: ridiculous things people have argued with you]

When I was 7 months pregnant with ds, a woman at the grocery store asked how far along I was. When I told her, she replied incredulously, "Are you sure??"

 

Um, yes.  I carry big, but please, I think I might have some idea of how long I've been pregnant - and so might my doctor!

[DD needs positive thoughts.]

I would take the pedals off of the bike and have her use it as a balance bike.  It teaches proper balance much better than training wheels and won't go fast because there are no pedals to push it.  http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-kids-bike-into-a-balance-bike/

 

Ignore the young ages in the video.  As the man says, it works for all ages.  <snipped the video>

 

This.  Do this.  It totally worked for our kids, nervous as they both were.  Once they can balance, they feel much more control, and adding the pedals back to the bike wasn't a huge hurdle then.

[bickering kids]

In this house, it's a respect issue. In my mind, bickering = disrespect, because the parties to the bickering are trying to prove that they are in the right and the other is in the wrong, regardless of anything else. It involves a distinct lack of generosity and grace.  So, if you're being disrespectful to your sibling (or parent!) then you have to find something extra nice to do for them that day.  Each instance of disrespect = another instance of doing something extra for that person.  So, you might end up doing a lot of your sibling's chores, or making a nice card for them, or lending them your favorite toy...lots of different options there. 

 

Just a thought, anyway.  It makes that character and virtue study a bit more concrete - they get to practice being generous, nice, loving, etc., even if they don't feel like it! 

[Writing...I don't know what to do!]

Goodness, thank you, everyone for the feedback!  You've made me feel a lot better about where dd is at, and you've given me some good ideas about next year.  I did like the sound of Partnership Writing - the fun projects would totally inspire dd, so I think it might be worth investing in that.  I can still see next year being a bit of a hodge-podge, though...unless I find that BW really hits the sweet spot for both of us.  Here's hoping!

 

And then there'll be ds, who will be a whole different kettle of fish!  I expect I'll be right back here in a year or two!  :)

 

Mind you, this is all complicated in my head by the fact that when I went to school, I'm sure we didn't learn any formal writing (letters, paragraphs, etc.) until the middle school years - and it didn't hurt me, I was a very sound essay writer by high school - but then I see other kids the same age as mine writing all these amazing compositions, with editing and paragraph structure and the whole nine yards.  And it just makes me wonder, what should I really expect from dc for the elementary years, anyway?  I think I shouldn't be expecting too much; that if they are able to construct a paragraph and be excited to write what they really think (find their "voice") that that should be adequate for this stage.  So I guess I'm trying to figure out which program will foster that balance.

 

 

[Writing...I don't know what to do!]

I feel like I'm totally floundering in regards to teaching writing.  I have been all over the place with my poor dd (oldest = guinea pig).  And I'm talking writing specifically; I'm happy with our grammar and spelling programs, and don't really want to double up on that in a writing program if I can avoid it.  

 

DD is very imaginative and creative, loves to tell stories, and writes her own stories, unprompted.  She does, however, struggle with expressing herself succinctly.  Why use 10 words when 100 would do? ;)  I want her to learn how to express herself more succinctly, and also to learn how to structure her writing, but without snuffing that creative spark that is burning in her.

 

We worked through WWE1 in 2nd grade, WWE2 in 3rd grade, but she was totally not ready for WWE3 in 4th grade. So we spent some time in W&R Fable, then went to TC, which we haven't yet finished.  Here's how they went:

*With WWE, summarizing (narrations) were really hard for her, as I mentioned before - she wants to put in every detail, and struggles to see how she can make a narration make sense without doing that.  It was a constant issue throughout both volumes we have done so far, and all my coaching and instruction just didn't seem to help much.  (And in trying to have her do narrations in other subjects, it just became such a constant fight that I kind of gave up for the sake of peace... :blushing: )

*We didn't get far in W&R, so I can't really talk about that much, aside from the fact that again, summarizing was an issue. I would like to get back and do Fable with her, even if she's a bit "old" for it.

*TC was good, and I feel like it has helped her in learning paragraph construction.  However, it drove her crazy when the outlines/details of a story were given her - she just wanted to write the story the way *she* wanted it to turn out.  I think that's great, and I love her creativity, but it made trying to follow the process of learning step-by-step how to construct a paragraph (topic sentence, supporting details) a bit of a struggle.  We haven't done the third section yet.

 

I'll be honest, I don't really feel like I know what I'm doing with teaching writing, as you can probably tell by all the different curricula I've dabbled in.  I totally get the approach that SWB gives in TWTM and other sources - it really makes a lot of sense to me - but then I feel like DD should know how to do all the different types of writing already - letters, reports, etc. - and she doesn't, really.  Is that OK??  I just don't know if that expectation is realistic at this point. 

 

And I don't know how to approach next year.  Do I just plunge into W&R and continue on that line? Go back to WWE3 and work on that?  Finish up TC first?  Go through the writing lessons in our grammar program, R&S English?  Ditch everything I have and go with something else, like Brave Writer??  I just don't know how these different options will play out, and I don't want my poor DD to continue to be a guinea pig.

 

Anyway, thanks if you've read this far! :)  It helps me just to write it out here, to clarify my thoughts a bit.  But if you have some experience/advice/words of wisdom to offer, I would really appreciate it! 

 

[Grammar for 8yo]

If you can handle non-secular, Rod and Staff English is awesome for moms who want to learn with their kids. The TM will hold your hand and even script the lesson if you need it.

 

Second this recommendation.  I learned very, very little grammar in school myself, but this text definitely allows us to walk through it and learn it together.  They also publish an English Handbook which can be a good resource for the parent.

[Question for progressive lens eyeglass wearers]

Caveat before I add my two cents: I have no idea what brand my lenses are, besides "Expensive-O"  :tongue_smilie: and I do wear mine all day.  It is not a light prescription, and since we had vision insurance at the time, I got them at a private optician practice, not Sam's Club or Lenscrafters or whatever.  

 

Having said that: when I first got this prescription, the focus area for reading drove me up. the. wall.  I could not handle having to move my head side to side just to read one line of an average book!  My optician allowed one free do-over (the word "upgrade" was never used) so they re-ground the prescription to give a wider reading focus area, and it has made all the difference for me.  It was the difference between "I can finally see properly!" and "I don't know how I can ever see properly again!"  I guess what I'm saying is, if you have the option to upgrade to a wider viewing area, and you can afford it - totally go for it!

[Order of RSO Earth & Space]

Yes, we have been doing Earth and Space this year.  I have the same problem as you - we don't get weather here! :)  I figured, not much point in building a rain gauge or anemometer if you get no rain and little wind.  So we put off the weather section until spring...(don't tell anyone, but we still haven't done that bit...) and it hasn't been a problem at all with the flow of the curriculum.  The unit on weather is self-contained, so if I were you I wouldn't hesitate to jump in with the second unit, which is on the water cycle, and keep going from there.  Then you can slot in the weather unit when you've moved and you think it will work out best.