Honestly, how much grammar does a 3rd grader need?

We use Mad Libs. :

And we read a lot. We've done some copywork and narration too, but haven't spent a lot of time on either.

I despised language arts in elementary school. I absorbed grammar rules from reading, and found the exercises horribly tedious. Dh jokes that it's the reason we homeschool.

ZM

I don't feel that a 3rd grader needs any grammar study. If you're reading lots of good literature to him, having good conversations with him, providing good audio stories, and if he sees good movies, good grammar is just an active part of his life. My son never studied grammar at all - he didn't even need a crash course on it when he entered college classes, and his first two English teachers told him he was the best student they'd had in years. That came about from being immersed in the language, being read to a lot, and naturally becoming an enthusiastic, self-motivated reader in his teens. Although, if you feel like introducing it a little later, it can go very fast - not a big deal. Meanwhile, at his age, I wouldn't do anything formal beyond maybe Mad Libs. - Lillian

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I think reading aloud to your child, from quality literature, counts for a huge amount too -- possibly even more than reading independently, because the grammar in a readaloud is typically more complex since it's not limited by the child's decoding ability. I also think that the use of proper grammar at home, and a relative lack of exposure to poor grammar in the classroom / schoolyard / through pop culture counts for a lot too.

I've never taught grammar formally to my kids. They've played with MadLibs a bit and that's pretty much it, except that my eldest read "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" and "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" as a teen -- casually and for pleasure. Four out of four of them have picked up excellent grammar intuitively.

Edited to add: Do you like my lousy grammar and run-on sentences

Miranda

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LOL! I actually bought this when I was looking for more grammar stuff for ds:
http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Le...9765641&sr=8-1

I am one who didn't necessarily pick up everything that I should have!

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i am a giant grammer dork and i LOVED that book!! i felt so joyful reading that there were other people who are compelled to cross out unneccessary quotation marks and apostrophies on public signs! my dd shares my ire-just the other day, walking to the park, she spotted a construction sign that had quotes around the word "your" (wrong). She pointed to it, and said, "Omg, mama, don't they know that's WRONG to put those on that word? We should call them and tell them!"
lmaoooooo
ita that the best way to share grammer with your child is by reading well written stories and books. they will pick it up naturally. we also do lots of mad libs. sometimes, dd and i will write stories where we try and do everything as grammatically incorrect as possible, and then we both totally crack up reading them aloud.

grammer doesnt have to be grueling and boring

I just had an email from Writing Strands addressing this topic. So much grammar practice is given to our kids, but they end up retaining very little of it. Their idea is to just work on one concept at a time until the kid gets it, then move on.

We throw in books like Editor in Chief to help give practice, but none of the traditional workbooks. There are plenty of opportunities to look for grammar rules in his work and daily life. We had a riot sitting here the other day on unnecessaryquotes.com

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daily grams looks great! thank you for sharing that. it's exactly what i am looking for ....something short, simple, and easy!

oh, and to OP, we also love mad libs!

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How "strange" ! Where in the world do people get the idea to put all these things in quotation marks?! I wonder if they think it's something that can substitute for italics or some other way of emphasizing the word.

Yup, I was about to mention the Charlotte Mason too. We started "formal grammar" (there's those quotes...) around grade 3, though we had done some informal stuff about nouns and all that previously. I wish I'd known then not to stress about it earlier... none of it stuck very well and I just ended up frustrated that he couldn't remember or figure out what a verb was after all this time.

Once we started it more formally, we used Easy Grammar -- the main books that Daily Grams are designed as a supplement to. DS *loves* it, just absolutely loves it, which really surprised me since it's really quite "dry", no colourful pictures or funny stories.

I will say that if you use JUST the Daily Grams, you might benefit from having the teacher's guide or something... the method of starting with prepositions and crossing things out and going from there might be different from what you're expecting and it will help to explain the method, why it's great, and how to approach it with the kids. Also, Daily Grams doesn't offer any INSTRUCTION beyond little reminders. It's just a practice book.

We used Easy Grammar itself (without Daily Grams) for grades 3 and 4, and for grade 5 we're using just Daily Grams. There's very little new stuff this year, it's just continuing to practice and more complicated sentences, so the few new things (like coordination conjunctions) we're able to handle as they come up. Next year we'll use Easy Grammar for grade 6 and we'll be done -- that's as far as I'm going to "make" him do grammar (quotes again!)

In hindsight, I might have even waited until grade 4 or 5 to start. I don't think he got any real benefit from the grammar practice he did at age 8 or even 9. He's getting it now, mostly I think just because of maturity, not because of years of practice. Easy Grammar can be started at any level, each book gives a good from-the-beginning kind of approach, lots of review if you're going year-to-year but also makes it so you can start anywhere, without any previous grammar experience.

Imo grammar is not needed at that early an age. As a ps teacher we started w/grammar in first grade and it got pretty heavy in third. The reason? The 4th grade writing tests. :