The Curriculum Choice

The Great Editing Adventure

Sep 282009

My son says, "I like the inventions and guessing what they are. I can't wait for the next one. Also, they don't take very long."

Reminiscant of the one room school house, where the teacher would write a sentence to be corrected on the blackboard, The Great Editing Adventure series provides adventures that reviews grammar daily in this similar fashion.

There are 3 adventure stories in vol. 1 that review grammar, writing mechanics, spelling, vocabulary, finding synonyms and dictionary use. Each day you read a new sentence as you write it on a board, or use the student workbook (which I prefer) that already has the sentence written for you. Then my child takes a few minutes to correct the errors. I like to give the number of errors to look for. And, if it’s a hard one, I will give them a hint.

The Great Editing Adventure is great for daily drills because they are a quick way to develop editing skills in a fun manner. They also provide the opportunity to talk about grammar, spelling and writing in a contextual way. My children start caring about the story and are eager to find the mistakes!

The added bonus of synonyms and vocabulary words is easy to use and all-in-all this takes about 10 minutes a day. I recommend this for children beginning in grade 4 or above, with a prior grammar background. You can also alternate years doing a grammar text one year and Great Editing Adventure as review the following year.

Someone pointed out to me a long time ago that there is only so much grammar to learn. Many grammar texts simply repeat the same thing over and over which makes for “busy work”. Learning grammar is simply preparing a child to speak and write correctly. I like to alternate our focus each year between grammar and writing, and Great Editing Adventure is a great tool to help me achieve this goal.

Click here for a sample teacher page.

Click here for a sample student workbook page.

Written by Brenda, a classically eclectic mother of five. You can find her blogging at Tie That Binds Us about her homeschooling journey and family traditions.

Primary Language Lessons

Charlotte Mason, Classical, Language Arts, Uncategorized 2 Responses »

Aug 162009

I’d like to start off with a little background before I give this review because I think that understanding the circumstances can be helpful to another mom with a similar situation. So, here I was homeschooling my two oldest boys and getting ready to begin some sort of formal studies with my third son. I was using Shurley Grammar for my older two and knew that I could not teach three levels of Shurley. So, I wanted something as a light introduction and was beginning to succumb to the thought that grammar should be taught within other subjects. For first grade we just focused on reading, memorizing poetry, with an occasional dictation. Then, a dear friend and I had a meeting over dinner and gelato and she mentioned that some of her favorite times homeschooling with her, then, older girls was when they were using Primary Language Lessons. So, I ran home and ordered a copy.

When it arrived, I didn’t know what to do with it! It was different then anything that I had seen. It has beautiful illustrations, simple-yet-elegant language from days gone by, and….wait! I did recognize something – poetry! Yeah! O.K. I could try this. My third son did not know what to think of this book at first, but it has been a door for conversation. It has lead us through gentle exercises learning grammar through dictation and narration exercises and it adds to our “snuggle time” factor. You can see from the above picture that we actually have fun during our grammar time.

I’m looking forward to using this book again this year and progressing to the next book. He is more comfortable with the time we spend using this book and I have added some note-booking pages (instead of a workbook) to have something to show for his knowledge. I’ve lost my up-tightness that I had before 5 kids about teaching them everything “this year”. I understand now that it is a process and that language should be enjoyed and not forced on a child. I’ve found this is a good balance for my classical eclectic homeschool. I would say PLL is good for grades 1-4. There is another book that follows after PLL, which is Secondary Language Lessons and it is probably good for 3-6th grade. And, I still believe Shurley is a must for later on down the line. But, that’s another review.

Brenda is a classical eclectic mother of 5. You can find her blogging at Tie That Binds Us regularly about her homeschooling journey.