Grammar

Today was a bit if an eye opener for me. 

When i was a kid my best friend and i used to write each other all the time (i am a military b.r.a.t..)  I forget the time frame of this but at one point she started send me back my own letters - and they were corrected! - along with her reply. : )

I can write, but grammars rules, sometimes spelling, and most definitely commas are not my friends.  The only grammar i remember also involved this dear friend concerning a gerund.  I don't even know what the thing is still today but i do remember i thought our teacher was saying agerund and my friend finally, at some point in life, corrected me. : } Needless to say, you get the point here ...i am not good with the stuff.

How do you teach what you don't know you ask?
(am i missing a comma here???)

When Running Buffalo was younger and we started homeschooling we started using CHC with a few adjustments. They have their own grammar program.  We were using Little Angel Readers (we highly recommend this program still, 10 years later!!) for reading and then transitioned into the CHC grammar once we finished the LAR program.  We used it for a couple of years but never got through the whole book.  I just could not accept the jumping around and lack of real practice with the program.  Finally we just stopped.  Yep, grammar consisted of me correcting what i noticed they needed work on and that was it.  At one point we tried Voyages in English but did not have good lesson plans and ended up dropping it as well. 

This year Running Buffalo is in High School and my not so dear friend Grammar is back in our life.  R.B. works on it by himself mostly, but if there is something he does not understand he will come to me for a better explanation (tee hee hee.) I read the lesson and then explain it.  We have managed thus far.

The younger ones have taken on grammar this year too.  We are following OLV for the next 2 kids with the exception of Religion and History.  We are using Voyages in English with a different (and much better) lesson plan.

This week i have seen similar topics for both our middle schooler and our high schooler.  We actually had a grammar conversation of sorts today centered around predicate nominatives and appositives ...Who has conversations like THAT???? Apparently we do. 

But the point is, i realized (and said as much to our oldest) that Running Buffalo missed a lot...and i am very thankful that he is learning it now.  (we won't mention that i also told our middle schooler that he had to learn it but if we messed up too much it was ok cause i never use any of it now anyway....: ) he just looked at me with is mouth hanging open.)
I must say though - i was very excited when Strong Arrow and i finally figured out that if we circle the verb and then use the rule (we made up ourselves ...so you can correct me if we're wrong here!) the predicate nominative noun falls after the verb and the appositive noun falls after the subject but before the verb.
Learning grammar with your child when they are young is a lot easier than jumping in there in high school.  Who knew the heading of a letter (address and date) should not contain abbreviations! 4th grade Grammar! Gotta love it!

The moral of this story?  Find a good grammar program and use it...as early as possible....

ps. my childhood friend - she became a High School English teacher! ...but i still love her! : )