Tell me about Shurley Grammar

[GSOchristie]

It keeps coming up in my life, and I feel like I NEED to have it for first grade next year. We have several friends whose children go to a charter school that uses it, and they say their kids love it. Then a fellow CC mom was telling me yesterday that she loved it, as well. If I do get it, can I just get the teacher's manual and student workbook, or do I need the CD, too? I found a good deal on the books, but they didn't have the CD.

[mhaddon]

I'm debating hard between it and rod and staff. I'm just not sure. My friend loves it, she said it is fabulous so I'm going to go check it out in person first.

[umsami]

From what I've heard, it's so complete that you can skip a year in between. So do it for 1st and 3rd...but do something else like daily grammar for 2nd.

 

As for the CD, the songs are key...but...if you go to youtube... and search on Shurley grammar...or Shurley noun...shurley verb... lots of videos will come up.

[happyhomemaker]

It's super scripted so if that kind of thing turns you off, best to look elsewhere. I agree with PP that you don't really need the cd. We also do every other year with Shurley because it repeats so much from level to level.

 

Things I like:

I like their explanations. I like using questions and answers to find parts of speech. I like the vocabulary and repetition. The jingles are sometimes annoying, but they are memorable.

 

Things I dislike:

The writing is terrible, IMO. I skip it entirely. The sentences that you parse do not vary much at all in their sentence structure. I found that dd had a hard time finding parts of speech in regular sentences that weren't laid out in the perfect Shurley way. If you use sentences from literature every now and then, that may correct that problem.

 

I am using KISS in our non Shurley years and the combination is great. KISS used real world sentences, and I am able to use the Shurley explanations and questions to help her with the KISS sentences. It has worked really well.

 

[mumto2]

We did it using 2,4,6. As long as you have access to the chants you will be fine but my kids loved them. Looked forward to the days when we did them so important. I agree on the very scripted. We did not do it all but enough of it. It is a good solid program.

 

Now I am going to give a bit of unsolicited advice. For first grade I would do First Language Lessons by SWB instead of Shurley. Much more gentle and more complete imo. Poetry etc all included. Plenty to learn. Only the first book was done way back when ;) so we moved on to Shurley with dd, then ds joined in because I owned it. If I had to do it again I would stay right there. KISS grammar is free so if you want more that will be easily availiable.

 

 

[Kathleen.]

I like it because it's quick and easy to do. We skip the writing. You can make up your own tune for the jingles.

[GSOchristie]

Thanks, I will look at FLL, too. I found the books for $9, do I'm going to get it, find the jungles on YouTube, and check out KISS, too :). So much for just keeping it simple for next year!