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.)