Of the texts I use almost all of them
I could probably be persuaded to use something else. There are
only three that I absolutely would not give up: Spell to Write and Read, Saxon Math, and Shurley Grammar.
It may surprise you that I would so adamantly stand by this much
maligned program. There seems to be no end to it's detractors,
especially since The Well-Trained Mind took it in it's sights.
But for all it's perceived faults I love the program.
We
should start back when I was starting to homeschool. I really had
no idea what to do about Grammar mostly because I hated Grammar.
I hated the underlining and the doulbe underlining and the circling and
the boxing and all that extraneous crud that I could never
remember. I was so glad to leave middle school and never see it
again.
Fast forward nearly twenty years to when I am beginning
to homeschool Stanley. I was invited to a homeschool meeting in
South County (that would be OC to those of you outside the Orange
Curtain). They were organizing a group of people who were using
The Well Trained Mind. I had not read the book yet but was told
it was about Classical Education. Since this was the method that
I wanted to use I decided to attend.
There were a lot
of interesting things I learned at this meeting but the one that I felt
was the most important was that the writers of TWTM disliked Shurley
Grammar immensely and the reason was because it did not make the
student diagram sentences. My interests, of course, were
immediately piqued and a few years later when I went shopping for a
Grammar program and saw Shurley in the Veritas Press catalogue I didn't
even hesitate. All I knew about Grammar was that I hated
diagramming sentences and a program that didn't have that would be my
favorite I was sure.
To say that Shurley does not require
diagramming, I learned, was to strictly define diagramming as
underlining, double underlining, et. al. Shurley does have
diagramming but it only uses the actually words. For the subject
noun the child uses the initials SN; for verb, V; for adjective, Adj,
etc. The simplicity of it is overwhelming. While I know it
is an apples and oranges comparison, I am still surprised at how I have
learned more in a year of Shurley than I did in four years of public
school Grammar. My son, as well, has been able to retain his
knowledge because his mind is not bogged down by also trying to
remember which line or box goes where. It is simple and straight
forward.
The only thing I do not like about Shurley is the
jingles. They really are, well, lame and unmemorable. I
will read the jingles to him but we use the School House Rocks Grammar for music instead.
i love shurley english. while it may not be considered strictly diagramming with the lines and such it is identifying every part of a sentence which in essence is diagramming. it is the most thorough program i have ever seen.
We started out using Abeka for Grammar (very dense and heavy on diagramming). Though my dd and I both like grammar, she tired of it after a year. Now we're using Learning Language Arts Through Literature. I have heard very good things about Shurley Grammar.
I have always hated diagraming sentences too. I know alot of homeschooling people who think it is a BIG waste of time. I want my son to know what verbs, nouns, etc, are, but there is no way I will ever make him diagram. I will have to check out the curriculum you suggested. I had never heard of it before.
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