Simply Grammar and English for the Thoughtful Child

When I first started hsing my two oldest girls (now almost 21 and 19) I had bought Understanding Writing. Although I didn’t do each and every lesson, I did take from it the idea of correcting as they go and for them to write letters. That was our “curriculum” for several years! Oh, we’d do little impromptu grammar talks, like while canning one year and called it “Canning Grammar” (dual meaning intended! LOL!)

With the second set of little people coming along, I have not been as able to do the letter method as consistently, so I purchased the Language Lessons series from Queen Homeschool supply. I had started Serl’s Elementary and Intermediate Grammar with different ones, but it made it hard for my older girls to jump in and help when I wasn’t available. I have a friend who has 11 children, and the Language Lessons series is saving her sanity with the younger set, too! 🙂

I still have Simply Grammar in my bookcase, and still would love to use it, but this is working for now. My 19 yodd who just graduated came to me and said she felt she didn’t really know the parts of speech solidly and wanted to know what she should use to learn it on her own–tickles me because if you read this dds writings, you would never know she didn’t know “grammar” as to the names of the parts! She obviously knew how to use them! That really proves Ruth Beechik right! Plus, she sees the need and is motivated to learn it on her own. I am not necessarily saying that’s the way to do it 😉 but when life happens, it’s not the end of the world if they don’t know the official name if they know how to use it! (Kind of like some of my piano students who can’t tell me if it’s an A or F, but they know right where to find it on the piano!)

If you haven’t seen the Language Lessons, they are very gentle, very short lessons, and the picture study prints in the book are full color–a feast for the eyes! They are consumable and some of my friends think they’re a bit pricey, but I plan to take more than a schoolyear to complete each one, which makes them $10 a year. And they help me to cover it in a CM way that is harder for me to create on my own in this season of life. There are levels all the way to the “secondary child” which would be middle school age, I believe.

Hope that helps! Sorry if I rambled!

Trisch