Is it possible to come up with a plan to present the rules and forms of our language (grammar) to a child without turning the study of language into a dry and boring chore? Is there a way to present the parts of language while continuing to foster an appreciation for the beauty of the whole?
Language is a most beautiful expression of the human person. Our ability to communicate from the depths of the heart was lost after the Fall and the invention of the written and spoken word is an outward expression of our deepest desire to be in communion with one another. Language is the tool by which we share ourselves, our deepest thoughts and innermost feelings with others. How quickly the discovery of this beautiful tool is turned into a task for many children.
In designing a language main lesson for our children, we wanted to preserve the beauty of the whole as we processed through the parts. Exposure to well-written literature is the primary and most essential ingredient in teaching language to children, but at some point the whole must be dissected and the parts must be identified and understood. After recently discovering Ruth Heller's World of Language series, we've designed a main lesson block that will concentrate on the parts of speech, rhythmically weaving each part into the fabric of our children's curriculum.
For the next few weeks we will begin our long term study of language with a focus on nouns. Using Heller's beautifully illustrated picture book Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns as well as her companion book A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns, we will spend time each week reading about this important part of speech within the context of enjoying beautifully illustrated and well-written verse.
In planning this unit it was important that the needs of all our children were met. We wanted something that would offer each child exactly what he or she needed at the time. Whether it was an introduction for the youngest children or a review for the older ones, we found that Heller's books offer the correct amount of grammatical food for each child within the framework of one cozy family read-aloud.
Using their imagination and expressing these abstract concepts creatively, the older children are left with the work of incorporating the understanding of language into their own writing. Whereas the young child is prompted to identify the particular element of language in the world around him, the older child is given the instruction to identify this part of speech in the weekly writing assignment.
As part of Along the Alphabet Path, our older children are writing fairy tales along with other written narrations. As they try their hand at this literary genre, we have asked them to highlight the part of speech we are studying each week throughout their weekly rough draft.
The plans will change a bit each week as we continue to uncover the mystery of our language. Of course, those plans will be posted here and main lesson book samples will be kept in a sidebar album. As we cycle through the World of Language we will cover nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions. And while these richly illustrated books may appear at first sight to be a simple series of picture books, the amount of grammar dealt with in their pages is surprisingly advanced.