We stumbled across a free resource online, and my kids had a blast with it! (I did order the 1.99 Kindle version just for ease of use, but you could easily just use the free one). Granted, we are "word nerds," and we love picking things apart and analyzing them, but the story was cute, entertaining, and helpful! It is from the 1800s, I think, so the language is more of an Old English style, but that only added to its charm for my kiddos. It also FORCED them to pay close attention, or else they would not know what was going on in the story. I love grammar and punctuation, yet I learned a few things as well during our journey.
Basically, the various parts of speech are being taken to court with Judge Grammar, Sergeant Parsing, and Dr. Syntax. Each must state his case before the judge, who will render a verdict at the end. Each chapter has an exercise at the end for the readers to complete in order to cement their understanding.
There are various places online that have posted worksheets for the activities at the end of each chapter. We used this one found at We Don't Need No Education. we also referred to posts on Half a Hundred Acre Wood here.
We approached this by covering a chapter or two a day, depending on our time frame and interest level, and MANY days my kids begged for "just one more chapter." They couldn't wait to see what happened next and which parts of speech argued. :) It is an advanced read for a 2nd grader, but we read it aloud and had no trouble. My 2nd grader reads at a much higher level (6th grade?), but I would suspect that a 3rd or 4th grader could do this with minimal assistance from parents. The hardest part about it is the older English that is used. Some of the vocabulary is just different from ours. We are planning to revisit this yearly as a refresher course for the kiddos (and for mama!) until all concepts are well established. It was a nice break from the regular grammar approach, and it allowed the kids to see "real life" purposes for grammar. Hope you enjoy!
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