I am homeschooling one other person this year (besides my own) who is in 7th grade. She struggled in public school with grades, but tested just well enough to stay on grade level. Her mom and I think Easy Grammar might be a good start for her first year homeschooling. She's in 7th grade. Looking at their site, and keeping costs down as much as possible, what's best to start her with? - What grade level? I didn't see a placement test, is it ok to start her with 7th grade, or should I go back a grade or two to pick up concepts again? - What about Daily Grams? Does anyone recommend this? - Is it important to get the teacher book as well? Some curriculum I rely HEAVILY on the teacher's book, but others (like Saxon Math) I do not. Any info for a new middle schooler and this program very appreciated! Thanks!
I like Easy Grammar. The old EG wasn't "graded", but the new ones are. My kids were about that when I had them use it. Daily Grams are a nice review. I might hit grammar really hard one year, and then the next we'd do Easy Grams just to keep up with things. With Easy Grammar, I'd get the Teacher's Book, but NOT the Student Workbook. The Teacher's book has the lesson on one page, and then you turn the page for the answers.
I'd start with EGPlus. It's about 6/7th grade level. It's a great place to start. It covers all the parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation. Look it up at the Easy Grammar website. They have a page there that shows the scope & sequence of the series, so you can pick wisely. I really like the Daily Grams. When I had a small group all about the same level, I would copy a page on the board every morning, they would copy into a notebook, then we would go over every item in detail, and give the reason(s) for something to be the way it was. Like, "capital T on The because it's the first word in the sentence", "comma after Mother because it's a noun of address", and so forth. Way more input this way than just doing the exercises and getting them marked wrong and correcting them! I really like the Sentence Combining, because it helped the students see that there are different ways to structure sentences, for when they did reports and such. I would use maybe the 6th grade DG every morning with the EG+ as the main grammar.
I agree! We spread EGPlus out for 7th and 8th grade. Now, for 9th grade my dt's are using the daily grams which are now called Easy Grammar Ultimate: 180 Daily Teaching Lessons (Grade 9). For EGPlus, buy the teachers book and copy the work pages. They are reproducible and the book has a very sturdy binding. I had to have the teachers book for the correct answers! You could also buy the teachers book yourself and have the parent purchase the student workbook. That is much easier than copying each work page.
Linda, have you ever tried Editor in Chief? I'm doing that with Faythe and Phillip right now. They have trouble finding all the mistakes!!! Though Phillip's getting better about checking where ending punctuation is in relationship to the quotation marks!
Thank you all so much! I will definitely buy the teacher's book, and I think I may just pay for that one myself and have the parent buy the workbook. I didn't even see EG Plus when I was first looking, so I'm glad you all recommended that over the 7th grade. I am not sure where she is with her grammar learning, as I'm not sure what the public school teaches in each grade, so I like the idea of a review of everything! Thank you, and I'll let you know how it goes! Laura
(I think it'd probably be a bust for Phillip, too, if Faythe wasn't doing it with him! But he's pretty lazy sometimes!)
We are a serious EG family here. Waiting for next year. We do the full program for 4th, 5th & 6th. Then in 7th & 8th do Daily Grams. For high school (so far) I am going to do The Ultimate at some point. My new High Schooler is overwhelmed, so I'm giving her a grammar breather this year. I agree, there is no test. But if you start with the Plus (I think that's the new one!) and spread it out over a year it's fine. Agree with TG recommendation, too...only idea I'd add is that the worksheet is ont he right, the answer are on the left, so they either need to put a sheet of paper covering the answers or you could go to Staples and cut the binding and have them spiral bind so they could do it and totally flip the answers behind the book. I do recommend, though, if you're going to go thru multiple students, get the TG and the student book. I only had to buy the TG 1 time, and the student books twice. Now my youngest will start next year with the 4th grade and I'm just going to let her use TG as mentioned above HTH.
There comes a time that, if you're going to copy the whole thing, it's almost cheaper (and more convenient!) to buy the book! Plus, buying the book will give the writers money they deserve!
I agree, Jackie. The other reason I MIGHT buy the student book for my youngest is sheer space. That, and I could resell the TG when she's done with it. I won't need it after she's done...but I also it takes up SO MUCH ROOM b/c it's so thick....and we hand in portfolios in this state. Anyway....I think you've all talked me into buying the student book! LOL
We started Easy Grammar Plus today! I spent quite a bit of time looking through it and I'm impressed. I do think it will take us more than a year, but we'll see. I bought the student book too, and have decided to have my kids go through it too. It was so nice teaching the same lesson to all three kids! I made photo copies but I think I may buy two more student books, we'll see. Thank you all again...great book for us!
