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Reader Question: How do you teach children grammar skills without requiring handwriting?
There are several different schools of thought on teaching grammar skills. One is to wait until about 4th – 6th grade to begin teaching grammar. The “classical” school of thought is to begin teaching grammar during the grammar stage, appropriately enough. The grammar stage of classical education has nothing to do with actual grammar, but is, rather, the period in which children readily memorize information.
Being the classically eclectic, slightly Charlotte Mason homeschool mom that I am, I lean toward the classical school of thought with regards to grammar. I like to begin teaching grammar skills around 1st grade. At that age, many children are resistant to (putting it mildly) or incapable of doing a great deal of handwriting. That never slowed us down. Following are some ways that my kids were effectively able to learn grammar without doing a lot of handwriting:
1. Memorization. We used First Language Lessons Levels 1 & 2, most of which was done orally. I feel like this gave my kids a wonderful grammar foundation because they memorized the definitions of a wide variety of parts of speech and we still use those memorized facts nearly every day. It’s amazing the amount of information they have retained.
2. White Board. We are huge Easy Grammar fans and my younger two have used it for two years without doing their own writing. We go over each lesson on the dry erase board. I really like this better because it helps to cement the grammar rules in their minds as I go over each lesson with them. I also think that it helps them to hear each other’s answers.
3. Games. We love to learn from games whenever we can. Those little word tiles are great for learning parts of speech and sentence structure without requiring handwriting. You can even make your own by typing up some nouns, verbs, adjectives, articles, etc., printing out on card stock and cutting them apart.
4. Visual Aids. We recently filled a little photo book with prepositions and pictures cut from magazines showing each of the prepositions. This could easily be done with other parts of speech and really helps kids get an understanding of what the parts of speech really mean.
Do you have any tips for teaching grammar without requiring handwriting?
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This is helpful as my son is great in reading, but although he has pretty good handwriting, he's not quite old enough to do so much writing work. This will help me balance some of it out.
When can you start Easy Grammer? I looked for it, but what I found seems to be for around 4th grade.
My son is only 4 1/2, but I am a little freaked out that I might leave something out of his education, so I am keeping a list of things I might introduce in the future.
When he was around 1, we were playing with a little girl and her mom and the mom said that the baby's favorite color was yellow. I was all, Oh yeah, I should be talking about colors….
@ Deb — First of all, don't freak out! 😉 One of the best pieces of homeschooling wisdom I ever got was, "The universe is everything. You can't teach the universe, so quit worrying about it."
To me, the best thing that a homeschooling parent can do, is give their child(ren) the tools to learn what they need to know. Teach them to read and do basic math and they can learn anything!
That being said, Easy Grammar now starts with a 2nd grade book. The 2nd grade book is set up exactly like the Daily Grams books, rather than the actual Easy Grammar books. It's designed to be a daily, guided review.
To me, First Language Lessons Level 1 & 2 (both levels in one book) makes an excellent, gentle starting point. We followed that with Easy Grammar Grade 2. We don't worry too much about what grade level is on the cover. Grammar is grammar and Easy Grammar is taught in a cyclical fashion, so we just move through it all at a pace that works for us.
HTH!
Thanks! So you do both Daily Grams and Easy Grammer? I was planning on Primary Language Lessons, which I have (Amazon should thank me), but it seems like a lot of people have their main programs and then supplement with other short, fun things like Calculadder or Daily Grams, etc.
It is our first year, and I am just focusing on reading and math right now, with fun science books mixed in (he LOVES science). But when he gets older, there is SO MUCH to cover. When I was reading about the workbox system, it was overwhelming to realize people are teaching 12 things.
Anyway. Sorry to ramble – I enjoy your blog and all the bloggy home-school support that is out there!
Starting in 3rd grade, we do both Easy Grammar and Daily Grams. At that point, Daily Grams is designed to be a daily review that takes about 5-10 minutes, while Easy Grammar is the actual teaching text.
Great ideas! It's very important to distinguish between handwriting and other tasks whether it's grammar or math. I love your ideas for the photo sleeves books. 🙂
Why do we continue to teach grammar and mechanics with a strategy (Daily Oral Language) that simply does not work? Why do we force students to rehearse errors and teach grammar exclusively out of the writing context? Would love to hear your responses. More points at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-daily-oral-language-d-o-l-doesnt-work/ and, more importantly, a grammar/mechanics warm-up/opener/bell-ringer that uses a balanced approach of error analysis and model writing is detailed at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/sentence-lifting-d-o-l-that-makes-sense/.
Dropping by to say that I’ve updated this link on myGrammar for Homeschool lens. Still love the ideas here!
.-= Jimmie´s last blog ..Being a Polite Foreigner at the Table =-.