Grammatical Slippage Is A Thing of The Past With "Getting To Grips With Grammar"
Written: Jan 31 '05 (Updated Jan 31 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Colorful and educational book, covers basic grammar, tons of examples.
Cons: Inquisitive kids will nit pick you to death about certain things …
The Bottom Line: Want to give your child a great grammatical base? Get them this book!
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| Freak369's Full Review: |
My kids were all early readers and loved going to the bookstore and library on a regular basis. I never forced them to read, they did it of their own free will. Even though they were all great readers they all had problems grasping the grammatical side of things. This was frustrating for everyone involved and I really wish I had a book like this around when they were having trouble because it would have helped to explain things a little more clearly to them. If you have a child that enjoys reading then this is a must have type of book for you to get for them. It will help them learn about the proper way to use words, how to write clear sentences and help them with other areas of learning. I won’t say that this is the best grammar book on the market but for younger children between the ages of four and seven, it’s a top pick.
Getting To Grips With Grammar
This is an excellent book to help children understand the basics of grammar and will help them when they start to write their own short stories or essays. It covers all the main parts of grammar including nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, opposites, comparisons, verb tenses, prepositions and what a complete sentence is. It also gets into areas of speech, punctuation and how to use a dictionary but these sections aren’t as in-depth as the ones that deal directly with grammar. Most of the sections are presented on two pages with a full color illustration and lots of examples of the topic. A great example of this is when they are covering verbs; it’s a cute beach scene with everyone in the scene doing something different. Sentences like “The dog splashes the children” has the very in italics so that kids can pick out the word that goes with the topic. Sometimes this is a little confusing for kids when they aren’t used to dealing with plurals or new words so be sure to read along with them and help them out if they seem a bit puzzled.
Each section offers a definition of the part of grammar that is being explored. Since I already talked about the verb section, we’ll stick with that one. “A verb is an action word. It tells you what a person or thing does. For example, jump, run and swim are all verbs”. It’s pretty fun to use the illustrations and text examples to reinforce the lesson but if you are doing this with a younger child you may want to take it slow and cover one section a day then use about ten to fifteen minutes after you’ve read about it to see how many verbs [or nouns, pronouns etc] you can name. This is something that really helps them remember what they are learning and it’s so awesome to see their eyes light up when it “clicks” and they “get it”. I have no doubt in my mind that Annabelle is going to love this book and will want to read it over and over again. If you have a young child that is learning to read this can help them understand why sentences are written a certain way, even if you have to read it to them and explain things a few times, it will be something that they remember.
The key thing with this type of book is that you have to keep in mind that you are dealing with things that you already know so if a child doesn’t remember the information he or she reads it the first time, let them read it again. Not every child is going to be able to have instant recall or possesses a photographic memory so if they don’t “get it” the first time, try reading it with them again. If I had this book when my boys were younger I am sure that they wpouldn;t have gotten so frustrated with proper grammar. The one downside to this is that kids that are slightly obsessive may harp on certain things. A great example of this is when I showed this to my youngest and he started flipping through the pages. There were some text examples of nouns and peoples names in the sentences however when you would look at the illustration you wouldn’t see the persons name but other people’s names instead. This was something that he pointed out to me and said, “If I was a kid, that would confuse the heck out of me”. Sometimes it takes a kid to proofread a book and point out the problems with it. I figured that they added other peoples names above the illustrations so kids would have other names to work with, a great idea but if you have kids like mine, they’ll ask you, “Which one is Mary?”.
Things To Know
• This is part of a small series of books designed with the younger child in mind to help them master things that most adults take for granted. The series of called the “First Guide” and carries other titles like “Don’t Slurp Your Soup” and “Getting Down To Business”. The books are a great way to expose children to the basics of things without having it presented in a childish manner. Sure there are cartoons and illustrations but the information that is provided is top notch and can be extremely beneficial to them.
The Bottom Line
With some positive reinforcement from parents or grandparents this book can help kids master the basics of grammar at an early age. The illustrations are fun to look at and try to pick out the words that the sections are referring to, the sentences are easy to read and the topics that they pick to work with are all kid related [the beach, the park, a playground etc]. The book is published by McGraw Hill, a leader in children’s books. To check out other titles in the series or learn more about what they have to offer, please visit their official website at www.mhkids.com.
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2005 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
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