Teaching Grammar the Charlotte Mason Way

In a Charlotte Mason Education, grammar program starts at age 10. Children learn more quickly and efficiently if one waits until the child is a bit older. According to Charlotte Mason, the children will pick up grammar concepts without years and years of formal training if they read books. As they get exposed to books, they are seeing the correct formation of sentences in English, a sense for good style, and proper grammar.

This gave me great relief when we started our CM journey. It only means I need not hurry and push myself to teach him grammar yet. Sometimes, grammar sounds intimidating to me, hehe! We devoted ourselves to reading, listening and narrating from well-written books. The truth is, there is more to be learned from reading. Besides, we are doing copywork and (now) dictation which is also part of Language Skills.

Since we are now on AO Year 4 and my son is now 11 yo. We are trying to cover some basic punctuation and gently introducing parts of speech. The upper years will be more on giving "names and terms and formal concepts to things they should already have used without realizing". So, it's like giving him a bigger picture first.

We are currently using the  First Grammar Lessons and hopefully in the future, transition to KISS Grammar. These are both free and available online.

Here are some of his sample work:

Make ten sentences with nouns that are the names of things you can hear for the subject:

Underlined in red had corrections

Make ten sentences with nouns that are the names of things you can only think of for the subject.

I am not a grammar expert but I am happy with my son's progress so far. Reading from books gives him opportunities to use the language for himself giving him a good foundation. I know we are not yet there but as I compared it to his previous work (before the big transition to CM), I'm so impressed! Also, as far as I can remember when I was at his age, I don't compose sentences like these, so it's another win for us!