I was never taught much grammar, per se. I figured it all out pretty much on my own, through all the reading I did, and my mom taught me how to assign the names to parts of sentences in middle school, but at that point it was all so instinctive to me that it never really struck. Hence my struggle in basic English classes in college, when we covered grammar – I could write you a perfect sentence, and pick out an imperfect one, every time, but ask me to actually parse it, and I was sunk.
Wait, which one of these is an adjective and which one is a verb again? One is a descriptor and one is an action word … or is it an adverb, and who really cares anyway?
All of which goes into why I am teaching Joy grammar now, as part of first grade, so that it becomes ingrained in her before she’s such a fluent reader that she can’t be bothered to keep track of what is what. And it’s actually helpful to me as well, because after two months of nouns alone, you better believe I am not ever going to forget their definitions now.
Hopefully by the end of first grade, we’ll both be able to perfectly parse a sentence!
Homeschooling: an education for child and parent alike.
(Please excuse the bad pun in the title of this post. I can never resist a good homophone – and yes, I DO know what that is. I learned it from Veggie Tales.)
Hah, I’m the same way, with spelling as well – I could always write perfectly grammatically and orthographically correct sentences, but couldn’t tell you *why* they’re correct. They just are, that’s all!
Actually, where I did learn formal grammar was in Latin class, because there you have to or you’re sunk. Plus, Latin is so logical, it made it easy to grasp. And then the basic word types I already knew & understood because German has so much easier words for them than noun, verb and adjective. They’re “Hauptword” = head word, main word; “Tätigkeitswort” = doing word; and “Eigenschaftswort” = property word – perfectly clear, eh? One type tells you what the sentence is about, one what they’re doing, and one what they’re like. But those other fiddly things – conjunctions or what-have-you – forget it.
Hmm, maybe I should take over teaching the girls Latin next year, instead of leaving it for Carl to do …
Yes! Grammar is so important, and they breeze over it in the regular schools. She’ll thank you later for giving her a good foundation.
I hope so!