Comparing Easy Grammar and Daily Grams

Comparing Easy Grammar and Daily Grams

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Why We Love Easy Grammar and Daily Grams

When we first began homeschooling more than 11 years ago, I found that one of my children was struggling to grasp even the simplest grammar concepts. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions – recognizing and labeling all the words in a sentence was confusing and overwhelming.

It didn’t take long to realize that we needed a simpler approach to learning grammar. As I dug in and searched for different teaching methods, I discovered that almost every English curricula presented grammar in the same way: Finding the subject and verb first.

We had already proven that this approach didn’t work for us. Faced with a long string of words, my fourth-grader would randomly grasp for anything that might possibly be the subject or the verb in a given sentence.

When I finally discovered Easy Grammar and Daily Grams (available at RainbowResource.com), I knew immediately that the prepositional approach to grammar would solve our learning difficulties.

And it really worked! I could see real comprehension when I taught my child how to eliminate prepositional phrases before looking for the subject, verb, and other parts of speech in a sentence.

Easy Grammar - a prepositional approach to grammar

Our family has had such success using Easy Grammar and Daily Grams that we have continued to use it for over 10 years. We love how the prepositional approach simplifies everything about grammar.

Using a Prepositional Approach to Grammar

Easy Grammar and Daily Grams are both based on the prepositional approach to grammar.

Students first memorize a list of prepositions and learn about prepositional phrases. Then they learn to delete prepositional phrases from every sentence before labeling any other parts of speech.

The author, Wanda Phillips, says, “By deleting prepositional phrases from a sentence, students can quickly find subject and verb and much more… thus simplifying their language.”

Comparing Easy Grammar and Daily Grams

Easy Grammar

The Easy Grammar series consists of six levels of complete grammar instruction covering parts of speech, types of sentences, capitalization, and punctuation. Each level increases in complexity, while the basic approach remains the same.

Both unit reviews and cumulative reviews are included, providing students with frequent practice of what they have previously learned. Unit tests and cumulative tests help to assess mastery of the material.

Easy Grammar

Each level (except grade 2) has three components: teacher’s edition, student workbook, and test booklet.

The teacher’s edition contains everything needed for a full year of grammar. Teaching text and rules, worksheets, tests, and answer key are all included in this one book–no fancy juggling required.

All worksheets and tests are reproducible within your own family, which means that you don’t have to purchase the student workbook if you don’t mind making copies of the worksheets. Blank pages and answer keys are on facing pages, which makes it easy to correct papers.

Answer key and worksheets are on facing pages in Easy Grammar's teacher editions.

Answer key and worksheets are on facing pages in Easy Grammar’s teacher editions.

The student workbook is a very affordable alternative to copying hundreds of worksheets from the teacher’s edition. Teaching text and rules are included in the workbooks. Pages are perforated for easy removal.

An inexpensive test booklet includes all the tests plus a pre-assessment and post-assessment to gauge progress made during the school year. Like the workbook, all pages are perforated.

Easy Grammar worksheet

Sample Easy Grammar worksheet

Easy Grammar is available in 6 levels:

  • Easy Grammar Grade 2 – This level is similar in format to Daily Grams, but unlike Daily Grams, it also includes introductory teaching material. It is considered a “guided teaching and review” book. There is no test booklet for this level.
  • Easy Grammar Grade 3 –  Grade 3 includes sentence writing practice with a focus on items in a series and appositives. Covers 28 prepositions.
  • Easy Grammar Grade 4 – Grade 4 continues sentence writing practice as begun in grade 3. Covers 40 prepositions.
  • Easy Grammar Grade 5 – Grade 5 offers writing practice including appositives, semicolons, and compound sentences. Covers 53 prepositions.
  • Easy Grammar Grade 6 – Grade 6 adds writing practice using subordinate clauses and participial phrases. Covers 53 prepositions.
  • Easy Grammar Plus – Easy Grammar Plus is designed for grades 7-12. It includes writing practice, such as using dependent and independent clauses. Covers 53 prepositions.

Daily Grams

While Easy Grammar teaches new grammar concepts systematically throughout each level, Daily Grams provides daily practice of what has already been learned. Simply put, Easy Grammar teaches while Daily Grams reviews.

Daily Grams can be used along with Easy Grammar or any other grammar course. It can be used equally well as a stand-alone program. My favorite way to use Daily Grams is as a light grammar course while focusing on writing skills, especially during the high school years.

Daily Grams Teacher Texts include 180 grammar reviews – one for each day of the school year. Each worksheet takes only 5-10 minutes to complete. Worksheets are reproducible and a condensed answer key is included in the back of the book.

Each worksheet includes one exercise for each of the 4 review categories:

  1. Capitalization
  2. Punctuation
  3. Parts of speech
  4. Sentence combining
Daily Grams Teacher Text

Daily Grams Teacher Text

Student workbooks are also available for most levels. All pages are perforated for easy removal. Answers are not included.

Daily Grams is available in 6 levels, which are slightly different from the Easy Grammar levels:

Daily Grams worksheet

Sample Daily Grams worksheet

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One Comment

  1. Would it be ok to just do the daily grams for my 7th grader? My thought was that I would be able to see what areas he might need more work from just doing that?
    Thanks