I know I've mentioned here before that I'm totally in love with the concept of living math. Well... I've decided to try to do the same with language arts. See... I'm not a huge fan of language arts (which I'm sure you all can tell from my writing on my blog... lol). I was a math and science girl in school... I did my language arts stuff... but it never really "clicked". So, it goes without saying that grammar/language arts has been my hardest subject to wrap my head around with homeschooling. It's hard teaching something or even just encouraging your child to do something that you, personally, do not like to do. So, we've done just what we've had to (and sometimes a little less).
After really getting into living math, I wondered about a living language arts program. Some way to make grammar more fun and accessible for us. We're still doing our formal program (albeit slowly) but I wanted more.
Enter my attempt at putting together a living language arts program for Alex. For the spine of our experiment this year, I'm using this book...
Woe is I Jr.: The Younger Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
I pre-read it this summer and enjoyed it. It was fun and it made sense to me. I also liked that it had cute little poems in each section to help you remember what you had learned.
I started assigning Alex sections out of this book a week or so ago. Right now he is currently still in the beginning section on pronouns.
Also this summer I went through Amazon and the library's online catalog to find as many grammar related story books as I could. I have a big huge list, but I hesitate to post it before I actually see the books in person to see if they really apply.
I checked out a couple of pronoun story books for Alex to read....
I And You And Don't Forget Who: What Is a Pronoun? (Words Are Categorical)
I will say that my favorite of the two was the second one... Mine, All Mine. The first one may have had good content... but the crazy fonts and page filling illustrations were too much for me. Mine, All Mine is a great, straight forward book on the different types of pronouns and how to use them.
This approach has also given me the excuse to get out...
I love Schoolhouse Rock! To go along with what we we're reading in Woe is I, we watched this...
You've just got to love Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla! :-)
We're just beginning our little experiment here, so I'm not sure how it will all go... but so far, we're having fun doing it!
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