Having a hard time with no grammar until 10.

I think Charlotte waited to introduce parts of speech for a couple of reasons.

First, grammar is an abstract concept. It’s not so much the study of words as the study of the order of words in a sentence and how groups of words or individual words relate to each other. Children can grasp it much more quickly and comprehensively when they are old enough to process more abstract concepts.

Second, Charlotte waited until the students were beginning to write their narrations around that same age. As students grapple with conveying their thoughts in writing, and trying to communicate those thoughts clearly and accurately, they will have a reason (and desire) to start analyzing how pieces of sentences relate to other pieces, in order to improve their own written narrations/compositions.

Much of the schooling that we are used to from our own childhood (and even much of what is being done today) jumps immediately into analyzing. Charlotte, instead, embraced the philosophy of giving children lots of time to see the big picture, to work with the large concepts and notice relations between them. She introduced picking things apart through analysis only after the children had been given years of opportunity to grow through synthesis.

We handle it by gently introducing grammar earlier with short lessons.  It hasn’t hurt my kids love of learning or confused them in any way.  I understand that most of the drill and kill of formal grammar lessons is unnecessary, but I also find that my kids forget easily without enough repetition.  So to me, balance is the key.

We start grammar conversationally with the Rod and Staff books doing the lessons orally in 2nd grade.  It takes 5 minutes on the couch at the most, twice a week.  We don’t finish the book by any means.  In 3rd grade, we use the next R&S book and still keep the lessons mostly oral with just a few written sentences.  Once again, it only takes a few minutes, about 3 times a week.

By 4th grade, they are around 10, and we cover it more thoroughly.  By then, they are familiar with some of the basics since we have done it before.

Rod and Staff to me is very CM friendly in that the lessons are incremental and very conversational.  Since I only assign a portion of each lesson as written work, it follows the short lesson format as well.

I would definitely encourage you to use the World of Language series by Ruth Heller first (ages 6/7-8/9).  Then I would recommend looking at Writing Tales no earlier than age 9.

http://www.olsenbooks.com/scope.html

Both of these gently introduce the subject matter so that it won’t be completely new to them when they are older, when it will really sink in.  Then you have other things to choose from: Growing with Grammar, Analytical Grammar, Our Mother Tongue, R & S, etc

In their copywork you can point out which words are nouns, proper nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. With the Heller books, that will help familiarize them with the terminology and general concept without drilling to no avail.

We used Writing Tales at age 9/10 and loved it!  We also used some Mad Libs which taught my 8 yo some basic grammar early, in a fun way and reinforced what my 10 yo was doing in Writing Tales.  I am seeing the progress in CM methods for my son’s writing now, in grade 6.  He always did copywork and oral narrations.