Our English Grammar Story

Rod & Staff English 8 landed on my doorstep a few days ago, and as I was flipping through it I found myself heaving huge sighs and thinking, “Verbals?  Again?” and wondering how I would ever convince JellyMan that yes, he really does need another year of English grammar under his belt before we ditch all the curricula and start writing research papers.  Then I realized that I have never shared our whole English grammar saga with you.  

We started off with Mad Libs because my boy liked them (I was in a different place when JellyMan was in first grade - every lesson had to be FUN!) and how much grammar do you really need to know in first grade, anyway?  Exactly.  In second grade, Scooby Doo Mad Libs weren’t quite cutting it anymore academically, so I wrote up my own Mad Libs to teach JellyMan the remaining parts of speech.  They were a big fat pain in the butt for me to write, but JellyMan loved them so I didn’t mind.  Much.  Still, I could tell that JellyMan would never learn to tell the difference between subordinating and coordinating conjunctions with my homemade Mad Libs, so for third grade I purchased Winston Grammar.  It was a flop.  JellyMan hated it (all the little cards made him crazy) and I was not impressed.  My first thought was, “Hell, I could have done this myself.”  So I gave it up and ordered Rod & Staff’s English 4.  JellyMan hated that, too, and since we were already struggling with math facts, I set formal grammar aside for the remainder of the year.

At some point between JellyMan’s 3rd and 4th grade years, I gave up on the whole joyful learning thing - if I wanted this child to learn anything at all I would just have to settle for reluctant learning or disinterested learning or even miserable, despairing learning.  After all, my job as a parent isn’t to make my children happy.  It’s to ensure that they have a decent chance of making themselves happy, preferably in their own homes with their own families and not in my basement with their online pals 2Rite and GeekLuv.  And call me crazy, but I believe we all have a better shot at being blissfully independent when we know how to diagram adverbial clauses.   So JellyMan’s world changed in the 4th grade, and I think it changed for the better, though he would probably tell you something completely different, perhaps something along the lines of, “My mom is a drag, man, and I’ve got big plans to move my room to the basement - just as soon as I finish this stupid grammar assignment.”  

We’ve developed a nice routine for Rod & Staff English over the years.  The Goobs read the lessons on their own and copy down the key points (which are conveniently highlighted in a little box) into their grammar notebook.  Then they ignore the Class Practice exercises and work through the Written and Review Exercises I’ve assigned. They must do the writing assignments and sentence diagramming on paper, but nearly everything else is completed orally with me.  We no longer use the tests; we go through the Class Practice section of the chapter review lessons orally, and if they can rattle off the answers we call the chapter mastered and move on.  If not (and this hardly ever happens) they get a day to study and then use the chapter review Written Exercises for a written test.  Each lesson takes from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on which child it is and how much writing is involved.

At the moment, I am agonizing over whether I should call it quits at book 8 for JellyMan, or continue using Rod & Staff English through high school.  On one hand, I want him to be able to spend most of his time on learning to write research papers in high school.  On the other hand, I’d hate for him to miss out on any grammar!  Anemone, being the second child, has benefited greatly from my experiences with JellyMan and will have the best of both worlds.  She began Rod & Staff English 4 in second grade, and should finish up book 10 by the end of eighth grade, leaving her high school years free to focus on composition.  

One more thought before I close - I believe we probably could have ignored formal grammar until 8th grade.  In fact, if I were to do this whole homeschooling thing over again, I would have The Goobers work through the 8th grade book in 8th grade and call it good - unless, of course, they were interested in learning Latin or one of the romance languages.  I’ve found that English grammar has been a great help to us in learning Latin.  We can concentrate on memorizing all the endings without having to pull our hair out trying to remember what an indirect object is or what “past perfect” means.  Thanks to Rod & Staff, we already know.