Grade School Grammar with the Easy Grammar System (a review)

Easy Grammar Systems were created by Dr. Wanda Phillips after she realized that many students had significant gaps in their knowledge of grammar. Upon further investigation, Dr. Phillips realized that many of these gaps could be blamed on concept isolation, meaning a concept was taught once and never discussed again causing students to easily forget what they had learned. I feel like my own grammar education was exactly as Dr. Phillips described. It wasn’t until I reached college that I was forced to grasp more grammatical concepts, or my grade would pay the price. I wanted to lay a better grammatical foundation for my kids, so we were excited to check out Easy Grammar:  Grade 1 and start learning!
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Though my son is technically in 2nd grade, we worked through Easy Grammar:  Grade 1 book because I really wasn't sure how much grammar was learned in the previous year. We had spent much of our schooling time on phonics with our English program and I felt like the grammar foundation hadn't been properly established. For this review, we received a copy of the Easy Grammar:  Grade 1 Teachers Edition, which included daily teaching tips as well as the worksheet pages for students to fill out towards the back of the book.

Easy Grammar: Grade 1 does an incredible job at laying a solid grammatical foundation. Concepts are introduced in their most basic form, expanded on and applied on an ongoing basis. 1st grade started with capitalizing the correct letters. First, students capitalize the first letter of a sentence, a few days later the capitalize names, and then proper nouns as their learning develops and expands. My son would occasionally ask if we'd already done this lesson, and I’d explain that we were practicing and expanding learning which is so foundational in elementary education.

Besides capitalizations, Easy Grammar: Grade 1 covers abbreviation, punctuation, apostrophe, colons for time, comma usage, hyphens for numbers, quotation marks, underlining, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, difficult words, double negatives, nouns, prepositions, and pronouns. Once a concept is introduced, it'll appear multiple times throughout the book to lead children towards mastery.
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My favorite part of using the Easy Grammar Systems was that it was quick and easy to implement into our homeschool schedule. We would start each school day with the day’s exercise and my son only spent about 5 minutes working on the page. After the first week, he had really grasped the program and knew exactly what to expect from each lesson and I’m confident that when this program is used consistently, it will yield tangible grammar improvements. I would highly recommend it to homeschooling families who are looking to get intentional about studying grammar, and traditionally schooled students who want to improve! After using this with my son, I was thinking I could really use a grammar review- and  was thrilled to see that the Easy Grammar Systems even offers an Easy Grammar Plus version for students through adults! 

Different members of the Homeschool Review Crew checked out different programs that are offered by Easy Grammar- so be sure to check out their reviews below!