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.
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