Thursday, October 16, 2008

Grammar ROCKS!

Or, well, at least we like to THINK it does!

I decided that I wanted to add grammar to our daily schedule and, after researching different options and talking to my friend Julie, Homeschooling Guru Extrordinaire...no, I'm just kidding, she's really just a completely normal homeschooling mom whose opinion I happen to value a lot... I decided on a curriculum called Shurley Grammar. (Or maybe it's Shurley English, I can't really remember. But that's not important.) Anyway, I was looking for a thorough curriculum that wasn't going to add a whole lot of time to our day, and wasn't going to kill us with boredom, and this seems like it's going to fit the bill rather well.

Plus, there are these fun little "jingles" that the writer of the curriculum has come up with for learning the different parts of speech, so I think Reilly is going to get a kick out of those. What's really funny is that while the curriculum calls them "jingles", and put them on a CD, they didn't actually put most of them to music. The lady just sort of...says them in a semi-jazzy way, throwing in some random claps as though that makes them more jingle-y or something. It's really rather laughable. Luckily, I have Homeschooling Guru Julie, who also happens to be Musical Guru Julie *waves at Julie* who was able to figure out an actual tune for most of the jingles, which will really make it fun. I'm kind of excited, actually.

What's really funny about all of this is the fact that she is so excited to start this! I guess it's because it's something new, so hopefully she'll continue to be excited about it. She was very disappointed that she wasn't going to get to write in her workbook because I was going to be alllll frugal and photocopy the book so that I could use it for Declan. However, I was just looking online and realized that when the time comes for Declan to use the book, it will only cost me around $10 to buy him a new one. So she'll be thrilled tomorrow when I tell her that she gets to write in her book! Silly girl!

1 comment:

Heather the Mama Duk said...

Have fun with it! I guess what she calls jingles are what other things (Latin programs in particular) call chants. Hope it works well for you. I've heard that kids who use Shurley English KNOW their grammar!