It seems there are two extremes of homeschool parents when it comes to English grammar - those who love it (like me!) and those who are scared of it! The popularity of teaching grammar in the public schools has gone up and down over the years, but I'm convinced of its importance in a solid education, and I agree with this statement from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE):

"As human beings, we can put sentences together even as children—we can all do grammar. But to be able to talk about how sentences are built, about the types of words and word groups that make up sentences—that is knowing about grammar. And knowing about grammar offers a window into the human mind and into our amazingly complex mental capacity."

Being a writer and a general word nerd, I really do love grammar, but I'm quite aware that not everyone shares that passion - including my children! My daughter is entering sixth grade. She has been in a weekly grammar class for the last two years, and tolerated it fairly well (the tutor was great, it was the subject that she tolerated). Recently, however, I have been on the hunt for a new grammar curriculum to use with her, as we have transitioned from the Classical Conversations version of classical education to a new and exciting pathway.

After looking at many different options, I'm delighted to find one that I believe is both thorough and accessible - Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind. I particularly want to share here how it stands up to the curriculum, Essentials of the English Language, that we have used for the past two years.

Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind was developed by Susan Wise Bauer, the author of the Story of the World history series and The Well-Trained Mind, a classic in the area of classical homeschooling. It is intended to be a four-year grammar program for grades five through eight, to follow up the First Language Lessons series for grades one through four, written by Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington. It is available through The Well-Trained Mind website, as well as Amazon, Christian Book Distributors, and many other homeschool curriculum sales venues. You may also download the first six weeks for free on their website.

Essentials of the English Language, 4th edition, is published and sold by Classical Conversations MultiMedia. It is only sold through the Classical Conversations online bookstore, and only to families who are confirmed registered students in a weekly CC-licensed Essentials class, although it may be purchased used through multiple online venues for selling and swapping homeschool curriculum.

Both Essentials and Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind approach grammar as a repetitive subject. That is, both have a one-year scope and sequence meant to be repeated for several years in a row, with the understanding that with repetition comes more familiarity and more understanding. To that end, only one teacher book is necessary, as it will be used for multiple ages and over multiple years.

The similarities, however, stop there. Essentials is intended to be used only in a CC-licensed class, followed by practice at home. One could continue to use it at home without a class setting, but it is written with that setting in mind. There is no student book, as everything is included in one manual. Essentials also assumes a three-year tour of grammar, while Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind intends to be a four-year curriculum.

Essentials repeats the exact same curriculum every year - the same instruction, the same examples, the same charts, the same assignments. Again, the assumption is that the repetition will help students grasp the grammar concepts, gradually allowing them to dig deeper with each year of experience. Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind, by contrast, keeps the same instruction each year, but provides a completely new set of exercises and writing assignments each year. This requires a new workbook purchase each year (organized by color - red, purple, etc.), but it also allows a family to use the same color for all of their middle school students, even if one is a first-year student and one is a third-year student.

Essentials has twenty-four weeks of instruction, in conjunction with the schedule of the CC-licensed Essentials program. Those twenty-four weeks cover the main parts of speech, several weeks of "review" for the first twelve weeks, followed by a review of each part of speech and more complex sentence patterns for the second twelve weeks. The curriculum includes dozens of grammar charts, as well as optional weekly editing practice, spelling rules, words, and homophones to practice. Because it covers only twenty-four weeks, it leaves twelve weeks without grammar instruction in a typical school year, which can be used to review previous lessons or on other lessons.

Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind, in contrast, contains a full thirty-six weeks of instruction. It covers the parts of speech in depth, spending many weeks in each area. Exercises for students to complete include identifying and labeling different parts of speech, kinds of sentences, and diagramming.

Because Essentials is meant to be used in a class setting, it places the burden of presenting the material on the tutor (who is using the exact same book as the parents and students). Parents are expected to attend class with their student so as to know how to explain the material at home. The home schedule that is encouraged in the text is daily copying of the appropriate charts for each lesson (with the goal of memorizing them), using an analytical task sheet to analyze one or two sentences, and (if the parent desires) time spent on the provided editing practice and drilling the spelling rules, words, and homophones. Students are not expected to master the material the first, or even the second, time through. Parents are encouraged to select easier sentences, charts, and tasks for their "first tour" students and harder ones as they progress through the program. Although parents are encouraged to scale the work as necessary for their students, the class keeps to the twenty-four week schedule.

Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind is set up with four lessons per week. The Core Instructor Text has an exact script, reminiscent of the First Language Lessons series, that helps the parent deliver the precise lesson to the student. Although it can be used in a co-op setting, it is designed to set the parent and student up for success at home. It is also recognized that first-time students may need more time to complete the exercises, and may take more than one year to finish a workbook. Parents of repeating students are encouraged to complete only some of the easier exercises, allowing more time to be spent on the more advanced topics later in the program.

I am very excited about using Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind this year, and feel that it is a much better choice for us than Essentials! I am finding the instructions very clear and easy to use, especially contrasted with what I found to be a verbose and complicated Essentials curriculum, and the workbook is attractive and easy for my daughter to follow and complete. Because it is our first year, of course, the content is not repetitive, but neither is the work from day to day - unlike our Essentials work which had us do the same basic tasks each day. There are also no grammar charts to copy, which is a relief. Although I liked the actual Essentials charts for explaining certain grammar points, and may still refer to them myself from time to time, copying the charts was a drudgery and did little to help my daughter understand the function or use of the parts of speech or different sentence constructions.

I also appreciate having a full year of grammar instruction at my fingertips, and doing grammar on our own will allow us to take it at our own pace. As a word nerd, teaching grammar does not intimidate me - but I have seen other parents and students struggle with the pace of the Essentials class, especially those who followed the common suggestion that no "pre-Essentials" grammar curriculum was necessary outside of the English Grammar memory work given in the CC-licensed Foundations program for ages 4-11. Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind does not include spelling practice or editing practice, but we never used these in Essentials, as I did not find them to be well-constructed or easy to implement. I much prefer the IEW Fix-It Grammar series for editing practice (along with some grammar review).

If you are weighing the advantages of enrolling in an Essentials class, I strongly encourage you to take a look at Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind first. I think you will find it to be a complete, accessible, and non-intimidating way to approach grammar with your middle school student, and that it will be part of an excellent preparation for high school writing, and beyond.

P.S. I was not given anything by Well-Trained Mind or Classical Conversations for this review. I purchased the curriculum myself and then wrote this to be helpful to other homeschool parents!

I've shared earlier in the spring about my fifth-grade daughter enjoying two live interactive internet courses through True North Homeschool Academy. As soon as he saw how much fun his sister was having, my first grade son wanted to join in!

I was excited to find a class with a different online homeschool group, Huddleston Academy, that was tailored to his age so that he could also have the fun of learning online with others his own age.

The class my son joined was Beginner Map Skills. For four weeks, he joined other early elementary children remotely to learn about directions, following a map, and about different regions around the world.

After finding out how much fun learning Latin with True North Homeschool Academy in a live online interactive class was, my daughter was eager to try another! So we decided to sign her up for True North's Writing Club, an online meet-up focused on creative writing.

Unlike the weekly Latin class, the Writing Club meets only every other week, for 90 minutes, and it is much more student-driven. The teacher, Lisa Nehring, is there every week to introduce writing topics and to guide the discussion and activities, but it is not a class. It's a club, and the goal of it is to help the club members meet their own goals in writing, whether that is writing poetry, a novel, a blog, or even for a contest.

The Writing Club is conducted via Zoom online conferencing. Students receive a link to join the meeting and once there can see and interact with one another under the direction of the teacher, who can also share his or her screen with them. Zoom also allows the teacher to put the students together for breakout sessions, during which they can see and interact with each other in a semi-private online "room" that is visible to the teacher but not to other students. This allows them to work together on a part of a writing project and then come back to the rest of the class to share their results.

My daughter has long dreamed of being a writer, so this club seemed a natural match. I had been told it was geared toward older students, with some younger ones in as well. What we found was that it was definitely more appropriate for high school students. Many of the students in the club were already prolific writers and were there to hone their art and to share what they wrote with others. My daughter is still at the point of writing simple stories and making them more interesting by adding details, so she was a little out of her league.

At the same time, these older students were amazing role models. They were patient and kind with her questions and suggestions, and they set the bar higher for her to reach. The writing prompts were open-ended enough for anyone to use, and she looked forward to the challenge every week.

I am excited that True North Homeschool Academy is offering a junior high Writing Club next fall, in addition to the high school Writing Club, as I think that will be a better setup for my daughter, but her experience this year was still a wonderful introduction not only to the skill of writing, but also to the craft. Seeing other students more committed to it than she is was a great way to challenge her and to whet her appetite for more in the future. If you have a child in middle school or senior high who loves writing, this structured teacher-led but student-driven writing club may be perfect for him or her, too!

You can learn more about True North Homeschool Academy on their website, Facebook page, Pinterest account, and Instagram.