It hurt to let it go, our old silver Daily Grams book. It had been a faithful companion through many years of homeschooling and had helped our children so much.
Every morning, I would sit on the couch with my latest middle school child and we would spend a few minutes together learning basic grammar and composition skills. Each lesson included five questions, one each on capitalization, punctuation, and sentence combining, and two on basic grammar. None of them were particularly hard and all of them were short, but it was the repeated, daily work that made such a difference for my children.
Our book was very, very old, but perfectly designed for couch work. Each day’s lesson was on the top half of a page, with the answers below it. I covered up the answers with folded 8 ½ by 11 paper that doubled as a bookmark, and we did two pages a day.
The newer books, available for every grade, have the answers in the back and come with student workbooks so that your children can do the work on their own. If, however, you’re looking for a quick, daily snuggly subject, you can still easily do it on the couch with your children.
After my children were comfortable with the basics of grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence combining, we would begin a formal grammar program, so we only used Daily Grams for less than a year each. But what a good time it was!
The newer versions of Daily Grams are available from Easy Grammar , and you can see sample pages there as well. Samples of the grade 6 book, for example, show the 5 questions that were in our older book as well as an extra miscellaneous question. It is possible to use Daily Grams throughout your children’s school years, although we did not choose to do so.
Disclosure: We have owned Daily Grams for many years and are not compensated for this review.
Annie Kate and her husband are the parents of five busy blessings, ages 15-25. Though inspired by classical and Charlotte Mason education, they have discovered that the best learning involves real life: music, cooking, dairy farming, nature walks, bee keeping, reading, judo, blogging, website development, writing, gardening, photography, learning retail, working with horses, and more. Annie Kate's goal is to inspire and equip her children to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love their neighbors as themselves.
I had never known what Daily Grams was before. This seems a painless way to learn. Daily items tend to add up to solid learning over time. The more we do, the more I find that a daily pattern of learning works best for us.
Daily Grams sounds really nice! I’m going to take a look into it more. Thanks for sharing!