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Could there be any better endorsement for a grammar program?
From third grade and up, Easy Grammar’s method of learning the grammar rules begins with memorizing a list of prepositions. The theory is that the subject and verb will never be in the prepositional phrase so, if you learn the prepositions, you can eliminate the prepositional phrase and make it much easier to identify the subject and verb.
Each of the parts of speech — nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. — gets its own unit in the book, along with a section on capitalization and punctuation, with reviews and cumulative reviews for each.
Daily Grams is a daily review of previously learned concepts set up in a page-a-day format that usually takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Each Daily Grams page covers five concepts. Capitalization, punctuation and sentence combining are always three of the five sections. The other two sections include topics such as parts of speech, dictionary skills, homonyms/antonyms/synonyms, analogies and so on.
The second grade Easy Grammar book is set up like Daily Grams and is intended to be a guided lesson for parent and child to work on together. The repetition offers a great foundation in the basic grammar rules that will set a student up for future success in grammar. My youngest two say that sentence combining is their favorite part. Sentence combining simply offers two sentences of gradually increasing complexity that the student combines into one sentence. An example of an easy sentence early in the program would be:
Bill has a cat, too.
Combined: Bill has a dog and a cat.
I’m not sure if it’s Easy Grammar/Daily Gram’s systematic approach or the no-frills grammar practice that my kids love, but whatever it is, we’re all big Easy Grammar/Daily Grams fans. Anything that makes this grammar-loving mom’s kids share her love of grammar gets two thumbs up from me.
Kris is the sweet-tea-drinking, classically eclectic, slightly Charlotte Mason, homeschooling mom to her three Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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Easy Grammar and Daily Grams are my favorites as well. So easy to teach. My oldest daughter scored highest in grammar on her ACT and was asked by her English teacher in college to help out the other students in class with their grammar.
Are you still using Easy Grammar? My 10 year old used it last year and we loved it. I have heard some people say that they switched from Easy Grammar, because retention was low. So, I was considering switching to something more rigorous (Analytical Grammar). I haven’t decided yet though because we really enjoyed Easy Grammar last year, and I don’t want to make my children hate grammar.
Yes, we’re still using it. We love Easy Grammar! Just last week, my oldest was telling me that she was helping a girl at work with her English homework. My daughter was showing her coworker how to identify the parts of speech by finding and crossing out the prepositional phrase first. I was rather proud. 🙂