Large Families come here. I need help with grammar.

[mom2agang]

I'm looking for a grammar program for my kids. How do you do grammar with your large family? What program seems to work the best? Do you teach grammar to each child?

Thanks Erika

[saraha]

I have 6 kids and kind of relax school for elementary. I find that a lot of grammar is repeated over and over, so I made sure my kids knew the basics (verb,noun,adjective, basic punctuation) and started grammar in Jr. High. My two older, 11 and 13, are both working through Easy grammar 6 as their first "formal" grammar study and find it very easy. It is also very easy to teach. The teachers guide is scripted and it is very open and go. I am liking it from a teacher's pov. The kids find it boring, several days of similar worksheets. If I am feeling creative or an idea hits me on the spot, we'll do something a little different with the practice, or I also have some of those scholastic workbooks and I'll run off a corresponding page. But mostly they just do the boring practice and it takes them less than 10 minutes start to finish. One caveat, we are not rigorous in this area, my kids are strong readers and natural writers, so I find this approach very appropriate for my learners. I save all of my effort and tears for Math.

 

I plan to do this with the next two kids, and the two after that. Teaching it in pairs when they get middle school age, as appropriate.

[SilverMoon]

I have six children, but only four are currently old enough to be students. They each have their own grammar book, so I'm teaching three different levels of Rod and Staff English and one level of First Language Lessons this year. With my oldest we floundered on grammar after FLL 2 (3 and 4 weren't written then), until we found Rod and Staff. We haven't looked for a grammar curriculum since.

 

Each child gets taught separately. R&S English has an oral or class drill section to go over with the child, which means they have to demonstrate understanding before they go on. My DC in the 4th grade book does his lessons nearly entirely orally with me, which actually takes less mom-dependent time than getting him through it on his own. The older kids start with mom to check understanding, then they can work independently just fine. The youngest one in FLL is totally mom-dependent.

[Kendall]

I’ve only had 6 at the most that I have schooled at once, and I’m currently down to only 6 at home with one of those 4.5 so not official in school, I only do a little math and phonics with her. I mostly use Rod and Staff Grammar and try to be done by the end of 8^th grade.

 

I do only 3 lessons per week(skip writing, poetry, reviews, and sometimes I do the Puncuation/Capitilization chapters as dictation spread throughout the year). I don’t do grammar formally until 3^rd or 4^th grade. So I’m only doing regular grammar with 3^rd through 8^th graders.

 

This year I am doing the following with my 3^rd and 5^th graders.

 

I take a sentence from their Rod and Staff book or from another book or I make one up. I dictate it. They write it down (sometimes I write it down for them on two pieces of scratch paper). I have them underline the subject once and the verb twice. Then we focus on a part of speech. Lately that has been the noun. I have them tell me the first noun. Then I ask the following questions about it

Is it common or proper?

What is the number (singular or plural)?

What is the gender?

What is the case? Nominative , Objective, or Possesive? And why? (Because it is the subject of the sentence because it is a predicate noun and renames the subject, because it Is the object of a transitive verb, because it is the indirect object, because it is the object of the preposition _____, because it answer’s the question whose and modifies _________)

 

As we do that for each noun, we obviously cover more than nouns. I also have them diagram at least parts of the sentence.

I look at whatever Rod and Staff lesson they are on and pull from that with regard to the types of sentences. They retain so much more from this than from just working through exercises. At first I have to tell them everything. But now a few months later they can always answer all but case correctly and often case as well. We are now moving to pronouns. I ask similar questions and do all of the nouns if there is time. I will later add verbs(tense, mood, etc) adjectives, adverbs, adding in parts of speech as we cover them in R & S. Because of the way I do it, they often know much of it when we get to that part of speech in the book.

 

I use the Rod and Staff book as a guide, sometimes teaching it first when it does not fit in with the above exercise. We do much aloud, which saves grading things later. If they do some on paper they bring it to me as soon as they are done and check it near me or I check it. Anything that goes on a pile for me to check later RARELY gets checked. So I try to avoid that. We use the Rod and Staff 5^th book (my 3^rd grader is bright, or I would either use the 4^th book or do them together but each at their level. ) I think I could modify this to include my 7^th grader and still have her use the 7^th book, but I am currently working with her separately.

[LLMom]

I follow bravewriter's recommendation of hitting grammar 3 x in a school lifetime. Julie recommends once in elementary, once in middle school, and once in high school.

[Murphy101]

I don't do formal separate grammar every year.

We edit, do copy work, and write ability appropriate papers daily.

 

I buy a formal separate grammar in 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. (What I use varies.)

 

That's been enough for us so far.

[sarahv]

For grammar, I like the ACE English PACE's. It tackles grammar really thoroughly between 4th and 8th grades in a non-taxing way for me. I like it because it does diagramming and word usage and covers verb forms, regular and irregular, as well as all the other bells and whistles you can imagine come with our non-simple, fraught-with-exceptions English language.

 

For a work-text type, it's quite good. Very teacher friendly because it's meant to be an student-led kind of curriculum. I've been happy with it. It's a subject I don't have to plan. Whew! Now onto other planning... ;). Like writing, history, math, science, Latin and Greek...

[LindaOz]

I have 6 schooling kids (although my older two have now finished with grammar). We do grammar twice a week using mostly Abeka grammar as a supplement to their main LA program. My 12yo is using Easy Grammar Plus. I don't teach this grammar - my kids read the instructions and do the exercises themselves. If they are stuck then they come and see me but these programs are rather self-explanatory and the kids are able to learn from them themselves. I do go over my 8yo's pages with him first, but this only takes a couple of minutes.

[stm4him]

We are using the Dictation Resource Book by Susan C. Anthony. I divided the grammar handbook section into 24 weeks and we do it together on the whiteboard (using with 2nd and 3rd grader but will do in 1st-6th). It takes about 30 minutes. Next year my oldest will go into CC's Essentials program which is for grades 4-6. This will usually keep 2 of my kids together (pregnant with #7 currently) and that will ease up my workload. I plan to spend about 30 minutes a day on the grammar portion daily with them while my little ones watch a phonics video. So that will mean I can cover grades 1-6 in grammar in an hour. So I highly recommend CC's Essentials program and if you want to add more (and extend it down to the younger kids) I'd use the Dictation Resource Book (and the Homophone books, but do it orally) and some whiteboards and markers. We do the lessons like this:

 

Day 1: Parts of Speech (CC Memory Work and DRB to add depth)

Day 2: Capitalization and Punctuation and Usage or Quotation Marks and Dialogue

Day 3: Homophones, Word Roots (Latin and Greek), Word Building (prefixes and suffixes)

Day 4: Forms (outlining, letter writing, journaling, bibliographies)

Day 5: Sentence rewriting and editing

 

All of this either comes from Essentials, Foundations, or the Dictation Book or Homophones book except the journaling. I can send you links to how I broke this up if you'd like......

 

I knew the Essentials program was the best way to give them a thorough grounding in grammar (including diagramming) without having to have everyone on different levels (like R&S, Shirley, or FLL) and be able to have the littles watched while I learn along side them. I wanted a way to work with the kiddos younger than 4th grade without having to have them also on different levels and when I realized I already owned a great grammar handbook that just I could just reteach yearly to all the kiddos it took a huge weight (and a lot of money) off my shoulders!

[TengoFive]

I've tried various things over the year with my current 9th grader with poor results. The best thing for us so far is R&S done together as a group. I have the oldest 3 (5th, 7th, and 9th) doing R&S 5 with fabulous results. It's a tad on the easy side for the 9th grader, but 8th (the other book I have on hand) was way too advanced.

 

I like FLL, but found it too teacher intensive in the 3rd and 4th grade levels for us at this point. For 1st and 2nd grade though, I love it.

 

I've looked at Analytical Grammar and may combine the oldest into that next year. I'll probably stick with R&S though.