I am a grammar fanatic. The truth is, I just love language, whether it's English, Spanish, French... I love the feel of words as they roll around my mouth and I have favorite words that sound like musical phrases to me. Conversely, incorrect grammar grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. "I seen" instead of "I saw" is currently at the top of my grammar hit list. I am not, however, so blinded by my own love of language that I mistakenly believe that my children will embrace a grammar text with the same enjoyment I do. That's right-- I enjoy grammar texts. We began with Rod and Staff, going from Phonics to their English texts, but somewhere around second grade I decided to go with English for the Thoughtful Child instead. I can't really remember now why, but I know I learned of EFTTC from The Well-Trained Mind. I like both Rod and Staff and EFTTC, but each are quite different. EFTTC is gentle, slow, and not text-like while Rod and Staff English is gentle, rigorous, and definitely a text book format. Now, here's where personal philosophy comes into play. While I love grammar and all things word-related, I do still feel strongly that later is better for the majority of children. Certainly children need to have a basic understanding of punctuation, capitilization, and sentence structure. Those things can be introduced naturally through copywork and reading. English for the Thoughtful Child does this nicely as well, as do the Pathway Reader workbooks if you're inclined to use them with your early readers. My children have loved the Pathway series and I see good fruit in the simple, straight-forward daily exercises which cover vocabulary, word usage, spelling, phonics, and reading comprehension. We have used the wonderful series of Ruth Heller books in our Circle Time. I read a page or two depending on the flow of the text and everyone thinks of a sentence using the words we are studying (ie verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) You can see a sample of one of our son's funny drawings here. Eventually, a thorough and comprehensive study of grammar is necessary, and for that we have used Rod and Staff English, Grade 8, Preparing for Usefulness. If your student has never studied grammar formally, Rod and Staff English 8 will cover everything: parts of speech, punctuation, capitilization, sentence diagramming, note taking, outlining, paragraph construction, letter writing, proofreading, outlines, story writing, and poetry. There are copious exercises for practice and reviews every chapter. Our current 8th grader isn't a natural writer so I've had him using Rod and Staff English 8 this year. His compositions have improved in such a way that I am once again affirmed by our choice to use this text. As with my previous Marvelous Monday review on Math, I feel that Rod and Staff puts out timeless, thorough, and proven texts. We did use Daily Grams for several years, but I did not see that my children retained the information over the long haul. Again, this is where the idea that later is better plays a part; because an 8th grader in our home is writing so much for the Veritas Press Omnibus, they need to put all of this grammar study to good use. Daily Grams seemed to teach snippets out of context; there was simply a disconnect between the short daily exercises and the writing they were instructed to do for Omnibus. If you want to improve your own grammar and have a good laugh at the same time, try Spogg. And, of course, don't forget to visit Cheryl's blog to see her Marvelous Monday post, too!

Everybody Loves a Great Book

I know I just talked your ears off last Marvelous Monday when we covered history, so I promise I won't be quite so chatty this time. It sounds so nice and thoughtful of me, but really the truth is that I don't have terribly a lot to write about literature curricula because I'm one of those odd types who believes you should just READ. Forget the snippets chosen by some so-called expert and regurgitated with insipid questions in a literature text. Pick up a good book and read to your kids. Then make lists of books you want them to read by the time they leave your home and have them READ. The list I've used most over the years when deciding on good literature for our home is The 1,000 Good Books List. I also scan the Veritas catalog and the Sonlight catalog: Veritas for its solid classic picks and Sonlight for its unique Christian content, such as missionary biographies and the like. Our junior highers and high schoolers utilize the Veritas Press Omnibus curriculum, and through that they get a deep and wide discussion of literature. But before then, we simply read. Don't forget to hop on over to Cheryl's blog to see what she has to say about literature, too!