Grammar boxes!!

 

WHAT. WAS. I. THINKING.  Man oh man are these things time consuming to put together.  I will admit that they are well worth it, but take a lot of time.  I ended up going for the less expensive route and making my own "boxes".  I was not willing to shell out the $$ for these at Montessori Outlet.  I actually went to Walmart and bought fishing tackle boxes and then used felt to color code them to match the cards.  See below.

 

 I then printed the cards from Montessori Print Shop.  I labeled each card according to the correct grammar box, laminated, and cut the cards out.  I do have to mention that it was worth the investment for a paper cutter after boxes and boxes of laminated sheets needed to be cut.  (I wish I knew my friend, Rachel, who offered to do cutting for me back when I made these.  It would have saved me a lot of time!)

 

Sample of the preposition grammar box with all of the cards in it. 

There are 8 grammar boxes for the child to get through, ideally before the age of 8.  They include article (noun is mixed in this one),  adjective, verb, preposition, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, and interjection.  Kui is on the second to last one so I'm hoping she will make it to the last one before the year is over.  We started over with the first one at the beginning of the year for a refresher.  It turns out though that it was more new information than an actual review for her!  I'm glad I didn't rush her.  She has been diligently working through them.  She has actually caught on to the color coding system and uses that to "cheat" when she is finding her grammar symbols. 

 

The grammar symbols are color coded to the cards for each part of speech.  For example, the red circle is for verb.  The child can think of it as a ball which is always moving and the verb in a sentence is for the action.  The boxes also include command cards along with experiments for the child to use and learn examples of words for a particular part of speech.  They are actually pretty cool and we have a lot of fun doing them.

The idea behind the boxes is for the child to read the large card which has two sentences.  The child finds each word, according to the part of the speech, and places it in the correct order in the sentence.  Then the child does what the sentence says.  ("Stack the small cube on top of the large cube.")  This sentence has a variety of parts of speech including adjectives and a preposition.  Then the second sentence will have a few words that are different that the child has to switch out.  When the child does the physical action of the card, it helps them to remember the different parts of speech easier. 

 

Sample sentence written out with the individual cards with grammar symbols on the top.