We have been using Rod and Staff's English Grammar textbooks for 3 years now and I really like them.  They are thorough, well-organized, with good explanations.  There are more exercises than I feel are really necessary for my children, but I have solved this by not assigning every question in each set.  Doing this took about 30 minutes each week as I planned the lessons for the week and entered each assignment in Homeschool Tracker.

For this upcoming year, we are going to begin using Tapestry of Grace (TOG).  Up to this point, I have tried a couple of writing programs half-heartedly, but mainly I've just had my children do the writing assignments in Rod and Staff.  However,  since next year I'm planning to use the writing assignments with TOG, some of the Rod and Staff assignments will be redundant.  Since I was unwilling to give up Rod and Staff for another grammar program, I first decided to just leave out all the writing assignments.  Then, as I started looking at the number of remaining assignments and the number of school days I had a brainstorm.  I have been purchasing the worksheet books, but rarely using them because there was enough practice in the texts.  For this school year I've decided I'm going to have my chidren read the lessons from the textbooks and ONLY do practice from the workbooks. By doing this we will only do grammar 3 times per week, freeing up more time in our day to do TOG reading assignments.  It will be less busy work for the kids, which they will appreciate, and it will greatly decrease the time I have to spend planning grammar, which is a good thing since I'm going to need it to plan TOG. I'm excited about trying this plan and am anxious to see how well it works.