For those using Winston Grammar

I am all ears too! I have been looking a this program on-line for my son. I would love to hear what other mom’s who have used it think.

Tammy

I used this with all four of my older children.  I am debating whether to use it with my youngest, but not because of any fault with the program.  At this point I am considering using this with her on Friday for review of the week’s topics and using Our Mother Tongue the rest of the days.

However, in the past I have used this as the sole English program for my oldest two, in the years they did English.  I actually used both Winston Grammar and the Advanced level as well.  This worked nicely for LA (ds), and worked out ok for R (dd #1).  For H & L (dds #2 & 3), I used this in late elementary and then when they were in 10th & 8th grade, I used OMT.  While H & L had an aquaintance with grammar because of WG,  it didn’t really click until we used OMT – especially for L. H seemed to be fine, but L seemed hesitant with her knowledge.  I think OMT explained each part in a way that took doubts away for her – kind of like wondering if you’ve spelled a word correctly and not being sure about it, if that makes sense.

Here is how I used it: You are given cards that correspond to a part of grammar which must be moved/placed in the order they appear in the sentence you’re diagramming. For example, if the sentence is:

A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

the article card will be laid down first because “A” in the sentence is an article.  Next would be the adj. card because “quick” is an adj., and so on.  The program works incrementally, so they start out with one part of speech at a time, and build from there – the first one covered is, as I mentioned, articles.

The student is to use the cards for each of the sentences they are working through.  I broke up the pages so that only a few sentences are worked per day with a full or two completed within a week.  Usually it wasn’t more than that. I asked that my kids say the first sentence out loud at a minimum saying each part of grammar, with one of my kids needing to say every. single. sentence/ grammar part outloud, even if it was only quietly, as each sentence was dissected.

I really like that you have the color of the cards corresponding to a specific part of speech for visual learners, the movement of placing the cards in order for the kinesthetic learners, and saying the words & part of grammar aloud for the auditory learner. The part that I wasn’t as excited about is that it didn’t seem to have much teaching part to it.  It is definitely not as informative on the explanation of grammar parts as OMT. For a child that is grammar-philic, this will probably be enough to help them understand and move on with confidence.  For a child that is grammar-phobic, this may not be enough to help them especially if your child craves explanation.