I need to find a grammar curriculum for my first grader. Any suggestions you have will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
I have heard that McRuffy Press's first grade LA focuses on lots of grammar. It's what we will be using, but right now we are just heading into K.. using McRuffy of course
We used Horizons for Phonics but there program does start to introduce grammar and punctuation. This year we also used Sonlight's LA program.
2nd the recommendation for First Language Lessons. The first 100 Lessons are 1st Grade, the 2nd 100 lessons are 2nd grade. So it's one book for two years. And you can usually get it on Amazon, used, not too expensive.
We used a Spectrum LA 1 (Mercer Mayer edition) from Barnes & Noble for first grade. It intro'd just enough grammar imho. It was a cute little workbook with all the Mercer Mayer critters and my son loved it. We then used Rod & Staff English 2 this year.
Winston Grammar looks great! I just received some materials from them to review for my curriculum website heartsathomestore.com. I don't have the reviews done yet, but I like it a lot. There are identification/clue cards included that help identify the parts of speech and mapping out the sentences. I have read some great reviews on it and plan on writing a good one myself. It is a little hard to explain, but you can visit their site for more info: http://www.winstongrammar.com/ I also really like Easy Grammar Systems, but they don't start until 3rd grade. I did Abeka Phonics with my daughter for 1st & 2nd grade. It is a very thorough program, but if you don't like a lot of worksheet type work, I wouldn't recommend it. There are 2 workbooks for their Language Arts: Letters and Sounds and Language. They are both basically phonics in my opinion. It did give my daughter a strong foundation to build on though and she is a great reader because of it.
Christian Light has a LA for first grade. It's a lot of phonics/spelling practice, but also introduces "naming words", "action words" and "describing words", and also phrases/sentences, capitalizing names and the first word of a sentence, and periods and question marks at the ends of sentences.
Yes, I have also been told that McRuffy 1st grade focuses on grammar. It also does the phonics, spelling, reading, writing and handwriting. From what I am understanding they are introduced to parts of speech, more punctuation (they introduced some in the K program), writing all of it. Now in the K program we have already learned about/ been introduced to capitalizing the first word in sentences and names, periods, question marks, apostrophe s, commas and exclamation marks. We are using it this fall. I personally LOVE all of the McRuffy programs. I highly recommend them to all. The TE is the heart of the program! So, it is not one you can use without. If you do it will just seem like a collection of worksheets, the TE is essential!
We're trying First Language Lessons this yr. I've heard nothing but great things about and very excited to try it this new school yr.
We have done about 20 lessons in First Language Lessons. My ds 6 loves it. He ask if we can do grammar first. Which he has always given me heck about school. WE usually do about 2-3 lessons a day about 2 days a week, and some times we skip some of it, because it can be repetitive. It is very gentle and easy, you don't do handwriting stuff until 2nd grade which is great for my boy because he isn't writing well yet. There are complaints on Amazon about it in that some of the poems are changed or modified. She tells you in the book which ones are and you can just get your kids to memorize the originals if that is what you want. Which is what my kids are going to do. As a side note, my boy is really shy and we are practicing on him learning to speak in front of people by reciting his poems to others and I have found it very helpful for that. My dd who is 4 has picked up a ton from it as well, she can repeat back the definitions, and the poems without even being "taught" them. There is no prep work for the teacher either. Which is nice. I bought the book for $12 brand new from Amazon ( with free shipping LOL) and since you don't write in it I will be able to use it for all 3 kids, for 1st and 2nd grade. That is a deal !!
I would suggest nothing formal at all. But, if you do, go for one that is very relaxed and not workbook/worksheet oriented. We sometimes think the earlier the better, but sometimes that is counter-productive.
A Beka does have a great grammar program. However, it also includes much more than grammar; unless they have changed things around recently. So if you are only interested in grammar, you may not want to go with A Beka.
I used worksheets printed form http://www.sfreading.com/resources/ghbgrd1.html for 1st grade grammar.
