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Rebecca
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| Posted: Feb 04 2006 at 8:26pm | IP Logged
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I am not an official unschooler but I am considering relaxing my already relaxed learning home even more. I would like to know IF and HOW your children learn grammar in an unschooling home. Any suggestions? Thanks!
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Rachel May
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| Posted: Feb 04 2006 at 8:38pm | IP Logged
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Hee, hee. School House Rock! Not long ago, Anthony (6), said, "Mommy, may I be excused from the noun, please?" I asked which noun, he spelled it, etc.... I sort of thought that would be the end of it, but tonight we somehow started "unpacking our adjectives." I'm curious to see how far it goes.
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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Rachel May
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| Posted: Feb 06 2006 at 12:47pm | IP Logged
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Did you see this link from MacBeth? Also, my MIL gave us magnets that color code the parts of speech so yesterday on the way to mass someone asked me what color adjectives were.
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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lapazfarm
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We LOVE school house rock (Got the DVD with the complete collection). That, along with madlibs, is the only grammar we do. Works great.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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Rebecca
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You know, I completely forgot about Madlibs! I did those all the time as a kid and they were great. I remember laughing so hard at how some of the stories turned out. Great idea! Thanks so much....
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Angela F
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| Posted: Feb 06 2006 at 5:21pm | IP Logged
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Julie over at Bravewriter recommends Nitty Gritty Grammar and More Nitty Gritty Grammar. I don't have much experience with them, but thought I'd post them for you to look at.
God bless,
Angela
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Mom to 7 blessings - welcome to Hanna Clare 1/19/10
"‘Great’ holiness consists in carrying out the ‘little’ duties of each moment."
St. Josemaria Escriva
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momwise
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| Posted: Feb 06 2006 at 5:50pm | IP Logged
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Rebecca,
We're not exactly unschoolers either but quite often at the end of the week I'll take the passage with which we did copywork and dictation and type it out with several mistakes in spelling, punctuation and usage and have them correct it.
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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NYCitymom
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| Posted: Feb 06 2006 at 7:51pm | IP Logged
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Hi! We h/s our dd (9) and grammar is covered in so many ways around here!
We try and do lots of reading. That is probably the best way to be exposed to (mostly) proper English, sentence structure, and word usage. She'll read quietly, with me, aloud to me, or me to her. She keeps a journal and writes fan letters to her favorite celebrities. She has a blog that she updates regularly and a website with tons of stuff on it (she also learned HTML!). She happens to really enjoy workbooks and the language arts ones are a favorite. She'll usually do a few pages a week. We play games like Scrabble, Madlibs, Boggle and other games that involve words. She loves crossword puzzles, wordfinds, and most other pencil games.
Something else we started doing together was watch foreign films with subtitles. Also, sometimes I'll turn on the "mute" button so the close-captioning comes on the tv. We just "read" the whole show! 
I hope I gave you some ideas!
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~Angelina
http://homeschoolinginnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
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Rebecca
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| Posted: Feb 08 2006 at 11:28pm | IP Logged
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Thanks for all the great suggestions. We went out and bought a Madlibs book and the kids had a blast. Now even my 6 year old knows what a noun, verb and adjective are! To think that things can be learned so easily and here I am fretting over what "program" to use. Thank God for you ladies. 
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lapazfarm
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And thank YOU, Rebecca, for reminding me how easy it can be. I know I can tend to slip back into the school-at-home mentality if I'm not careful. I am striving to unschool as much as possible, so it is good to have these reminders on occasion!
I'm glad it worked out so well for you and yours.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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Donna Marie
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[QUOTE=Angela F] Julie over at Bravewriter recommends Nitty Gritty Grammar and More Nitty Gritty Grammar.
We hae these and my kids love them! They give 7 thumbs up for schoolhouse rock and mad libs too!
God Bless!
Donna Marie from NJ
hs momma to 7 dc 
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Marybeth
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Amy, the grammar teacher, at the first school I taught at said games and having fun are the only ways to learn grammar. She had the best test scores in the school...I know test scores don't impress homeschoolers ....she simply played games with her students and they wrote the rules in their English notebooks they were required to have. A little bit of Real Learning in the classroom as I look back! 
You can google Language Arts games and there are so many you can't begin to play them all!! I don't have any bookmarked so I can't recommend any of the top of my head.
Enjoy your study of grammar!! Now, I have the song "Conjunction junction what's your function?" stuck in my head!  
Marybeth
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Karen E.
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| Posted: March 05 2006 at 3:37pm | IP Logged
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I am so far behind (are you all tired of me opening every post with that tired phrase) on all these threads, but here goes:
The Brian Cleary books that MacBeth mentions are pretty cheap at Half.com, and I really like them.
We use Mad Libs and the kids love them.
We model grammar, talk about grammar and punctuation, and point out opportunities to put it to use in the kids' writing.
Here's how my 12 yo, with whom I've done very little formal grammar, began a story she just wrote:
One night, later after all the Marches had gone to bed, Jo's parrot, Polly, woke her up.
I pointed it out to her father, the public school English teacher: "Look at her comma usage! I'm delighted!"
(Some families delight over athletic achievements ... we revel in commas here.)
When you get nervous, go ahead and work through a bit of a workbook. You'll either fill in a few missing blanks (literally, of course, and metaphorically) or you'll see just how much your kids have been learning from the informal and fun methods.
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God bless,
Karen E.
mom to three on earth, and several souls in God's care
Visit my blog, with its shockingly clever title, "Karen Edmisten."
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Topic: Unschooling grammar
