I always find it amazing how children learn so differently from one another. Take Genius for example. She loves writing, but dislikes and does very poorly at grammar. At 11 years old, and without studying, she scored a 29 on the reading portion of the college entrance ACT (the highest you can get is a 36). However, she is an extremely reluctant reader unless we can find a fantasy and/or sci-fi book that she’s interested in.
I have been banging my head against the wall with grammar this year. She’s struggling with a lot of the concepts and I have not found a guide yet that teaches to her strengths. I did find something neat though that I’d like to share with you from a fellow blogger’s store Fortunately For You Books.
Grammar by the Book is an amazingly simple grammar guide that you can use with any book! While it is not designed to take the place of a complete grammar curriculum, it definitely is a great supplement.
You can choose to have a copy of a cd-rom or download it as an e-book. There are two levels to it, lower and upper, so you can use it with more than one child in your home.
The program consists of color-coded cards that you print and cut (they are just a little smaller than an index card). Each card defines a part of speech. For example the lower level cards have definitions of nouns, verbs, prepositions etc. The upper levels have cards explaining direct objects, linking verbs, pronouns and more.
There are also student sheets, that again are printed out, and cut to size. This is where the “fun” comes in (or at least in Genius’s case the tolerance of grammar lol!). Within the pages of the book the child is currently reading they need to find examples and cite them, of the grammar concept given to them on the teaching card. Since you can use it with any book, it is a great way to get more grammar taught with a child who dislikes grammar or as in our case, a child who enjoys reading only a certain genre of literature.
We have used this now for a couple of weeks successfully. I think the concepts become a little more “real” when seen in the print of a novel. Genius is able to find them and recognize them, and I suppose that’s the point! Hopefully now this will allow her to be able to write with them too.
Fortunately For You Books is loaded with hands on reading material, to make the books your children are reading come alive. Go ahead and check them out, they have titles to match a number of great books. Their prices are very reasonable, and since a lot of their products are e-books, you have immediate access to them. They even have a monthly freebie. For November it is a copywork book called Pockets of Thanks. Thank you Heidi and Shannon for letting me try out the Grammar by the Book – it will be getting a lot of use in our home!
You can hang out with Tammy at Three Different Directions where you can read reviews about homeschooling products.
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I grew up as a reluctant reader. Now I write action-adventures & mysteries, especially for tween boys, that girls and boys hate to put down. My web site is at http://www.maxbooks.9k.com and my Books for Boys blog is at http://booksandboys.blogspot.com I also have a short story in a new book called LAY UPS and LONG SHOTS, published by Darby Creek Publishing. I'm also featured in an article in the 2009 edition of Children's Writer Guide.
My other books are all ranked by Accelerated Reader
Max Elliot Anderson