Friday, March 19, 2010

"Thinking Through Grammar" by Dr. Arthur Whimbey

I mentioned earlier that I've made some changes for the 2nd semester in our homeschool. One area where I've made some changes is in Language Arts. Miss Scarlet has finished Story Grammar for Elementary Students and has started the "town" level of the Michael Clay Thompson (MCT) program. We're loving the vocabulary and poetry components of the program but the jury is still out on the grammar & writing portions. That's a post for another day, however.

As Miss Scarlet was doing an exercise in one of her MCT books today, I noticed she was struggling with a prepositional phrase. So I decided to have her work through a chapter in Thinking Through Grammar: 5th and 6th Grade by Dr. Arthur Whimbey. This is the book I'm planning on having her do once she's done with MCT. I had taken a chance on ordering it sight unseen as I wasn't able to find any samples on the web of the middle school level book.

Thinking Through Grammar is a solid, no-nonsense consumable work-text. It is designed to be self-teaching. Because Miss Scarlet is much further ahead cognitively than her physical writing skills, I allowed her to dictate the answers orally while I transcribed. You can see one of the pages she did today here.

Sample page from "Thinking Through Grammar" -

3 comments:

Lizzie said...

That looks interesting, where did you get it? Prepositional phrases can be confusing.

Crimson Wife said...

I bought it directly from the publisher but it's also available on Amazon. ISBN is 0970907567.

Jennifer in OR said...

Thanks for the info on Story Grammar - I like this concept and will check it out. I've been using Susan Wise Bauer's First Language Lessons Level 3 for my third grader, but the diagramming is perhaps too much? It's an intense amount of diagramming, which I'm absolutely not opposed to, but wondering if there's a better, gentler approach out there?