Lately it's been Beaver Scouts. Every weekend there's been something going on - as well as our weekly Beaver meetings. Camp-outs...Bottle drives...Recruitment drives - which happens this weekend with a Scout carnival happening at one of the local malls here - anyone can come and take part in our Penny Carnival and learn a little about Scouting.
And this year, we are also taking the little Beavers to Drumheller, Alberta as our wind-up! They are so excited! We leave on the 26th and return on the 29th and are going to be touring the museum, the Hoodoos as well as one of the coal mines in the area - and visiting the splash park if weather permits.
Add to this the regular life stuff - home schooling, house cleaning, yard work - since we finally got rid of the snow and have had some decent weather of late - and I still have to find time to go and get some flowers and plant them around this old house.
Anyways, I've also been trying to get some planning done for the next school year since Beav informed me that he was NOT under any circumstances going back to regular school - insert exclamation here. He loves being home schooled - and he was honest about it. "I like being at home with you and I like being done school in 2-3 hours instead of 5-6 hours like E and R" (his friends).
I think I've got pretty much everything figured out except for the grammar portion of the language arts.
And here is where I am stuck.
He hates writing but this year's language arts curriculum ("homemade" again as I get bored with the "cookie cutter" curriculums myself) takes on more writing than he's used to - stories, letters, sentences and paragraphs, synopsis of books and stories, etc. So I've been looking for a grammar program that is straight forward but with very little writing as he's going to have enough of that with other things.
As a former teacher I think grammar is very important. I occasionally do proofreading for university students in this area and get so annoyed at some of the mistakes they are making - mistakes that would never happen had they been taught the basic grammar skills at an early age and spent the rest of their schooling simply reinforcing those skills.
"I don't believe the author of this books nows what he is talking about and maybe the publisher should rethink there willingness to publish such under-researched books and maybe next time they take on a new author actually read the books they are handing in because it was boring and lacked any kind of consistency and they should maybe have a word with their printing department as well because the book was filled with all kinds of spelling errors in the book and it was just lousy and very hard to read with all the spelling mistakes but it did have some good points to it but the author could have fleshed them out a bit more rather than just stating this or that as a fact taken from this source or that source and" Do I really need to go on? YES, this was the opening paragraph of an actual five page essay that I proof-read for a second year university student! AND I was supposedly proof-reading the final draft! Needless to say, I had a headache by the time I was finished and the paper was filled with red marks.
So the point I am trying to make is GRAMMAR is important. Knowing a noun from a verb is important - even if you can't point out a verb to save your life (like me) at least KNOWING that what you are writing and saying does or does not sound grammatically correct is important.
Believe me. Being 22 years old and still saying "I gots a new truck today" is no longer cute!!!
So I've been looking at two different ones - well, three, but the third one is simply too far out of our price range to justify it. Yes, I will actually be purchasing a grammar curriculum.
So I need some opinions.
Growing with Grammar is one...
Easy Grammar is the other - and I like the "Daily Grams" idea to reinforce and practice the lessons rather than taking Grammar for two days a week and forgetting everything you learned (like me - I honestly have to take a refresher course in grammar I am thinking).
I was also intrigued by Basic Cosy Grammar (it's Canadian) but at $170 plus shipping and all that I think I will skip that. It states "from ages 9 and up" but Beav already knows more about grammar than the average 9 year old so I figured it might be a good choice for him since he likes to watch videos for lessons - but at that price I don't think that will be happening.
So if anyone out there in blog land has used either of these programs, please let me know and give me your opinions. Or if you happen to know of any other great program out there I will be willing to listen...er...read?
Anyways, for now. I am hoping to wrap up another chapter of Story of the World today. Beav loved this program so we'll be continuing with it next year for sure.
1 comments:
My kids have liked the "Editor In Chief" workbook series published by "The Critical Thinking Company": the workbook explains the grammar in a summary section, but most of the book involves catching grammatical errors in sample readings. I've found that if I have the kids work steadily on this (at least a couple pages a day) for a couple weeks before a standardized test, they get substantially higher scores on the language arts protion of the test.
This is pretty much the only "textbook" language arts we have done -- i.e., aside from reading real books, writing essays, and the like -- and they have been generally scoring at twice their grade level, currently five year or more beyond grade level.
So, it seems to work.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
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