5 days of Elementary Montessori: Day 2 Sentence Fun

Welcome to another fun episode in 5 days of Elementary Montessori.  Today I want to share a couple of non-traditional Montessori style ideas for Sentence and Grammar activities.

I have the Farm Game for Nathan and he still enjoys playing with the set up we have even though the farm game is meant for a younger student. I also have several other printed materials for grammar and parts of speech. Eventually I will finish his grammar boxes and his sentence modeling set, but for now he is enjoying creating sentences with a set of plastic tiles a friend gave us. The colors don't coordinate with Montessori, but that actually has an advantage for Nathan as he was starting to memorize the colors instead of what part of speech we were working on.  

While his older brother works on a variety of other activities, Nathan can play a variety of games with the letter tiles and work on creative writing.  Recently he created a sentence that led to a discussion on verb tenses and how to make the verb tense match to the rest of the sentence. We also worked on writing the sentence on our home printed paper (we use Handwriting without Tears model currently, so I created a custom size paper for him).
Write the sentence and then write 2 additional senteneces that expand on the subject in the initial sentence is one of our daily tasks. Another thing these tiles have been very good for is self directed clean up, they have their own bucket with lid and when we are done with the activitiy the tiles fit in the bucket and are returned to the Language Arts Shelf in the Resource Room. As a way to encourage sharing with Daddy, Nathan is allowed to leave his completed paper on the table until he shows Daddy the work, then the paper is filed in his workbox under finished works.
We have also played a couple of rounds of Story Cubes to encourage Creative Writing and Creative Thought. 
I do allow Nathan to explore writing with either hand as he shows ambidexterous tendancies and I want to encourage whatever is most comfortable to him. 
Later this fall, I am going to have Nathan help me "build" grammar boxes and a few custom sentence strips. I am thinking we will use a modified idea, but still work with each part of speech progressively.
We are taking it at his pace rather than falling into a pattern of what the books say he is suppose to.

If you found us from the crew blog hop anchor post, thanks for stopping by, if not I'm grateful you found us. Be sure to come back tomorrow for day 3 of 5 days of Elementary Montessori and be sure to check out the rest of the 5 days of ... from other crew members by clicking on the button below.

Essentials in Writing: a DVD based Grammar and Writing program

I love writing so it has been a struggle for me to have a child that hates writing as much as my 4th grader does. He is a wonderful storyteller and has a wonderful grasp of language usage but when faced with putting the sentences together he freezes. Thankfully we received Essentials in Writing to try with him. We decided to stay with the 4th grade level and see how it goes. 
I wanted to make sure Cameron had a firm understanding of the grammar elements so I had him watch the first 4   lesson videos before moving on to the sentences and writing lessons.  We found a couple of issues so we spent some extra time on those issues before moving further. I would rather slow the pace and master the concept then move ahead and struggle more later on.
Having the worksheets as a downloaded .pdf file made it possible to actually print an extra copy of the pages we had trouble with to work on a second time. 


The DVDs played easily on our computer and made it simple to navigate as we moved around the lessons. Having 5 lessons show on the screen at a time kept Cameron from getting over whelmed. I did have Daddy watch a couple lessons with Cameron for a second parent interaction. Daddy had trouble watching and listening to the video as he is a sound engineer and the levels which the video was recorded at made for an off sounding environment. Since Mommy and Cameron don't have issue with the sound as much as Daddy we did ok with it. Although I have to admit there were elements of the lecture style that didn't sit well with me, but Cameron enjoyed the DVDs as much as a child who isn't a fan of writing can. He didn't argue or put up too much attitude when told his writing was next. 

The DVD set with .pdf download retails for $40 and if printing is an issue for you, they also sell a printed copy of the workbook for $20.00

Here is a sample of 4th grade  program. You can also download a copy of the Table of Contents and samples of the worksheets from the same page. 

While we will continue to use this program for the time being, I'm not 100 % sold on the format. I'm still trying to find the perfect program for my 4th grader, we will combine elements of this program with our Montessori style learning to hopefully cover it all in a way he can retain it.  We are always adapting our classroom / homeschool to fit their learning styles. 

The Schoolhouse Review Crew reviewed a variety of the grades that Essentials in Writing has available. You can see what others on the Crew thought by reading their posts HERE