My Life as Mrs. Cooks: Improving our Grammar with IEW

GRAMMAR, GRAMMAR, GRAMMAR! If you know me then you know how I feel about grammar. My grammar is horrible and I don't want my kid's grammar to be, so we have tried a few different things throughout our homeschool journey. When my oldest daughter studied Ancient History, we tried Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)'s writing program that went along with the time period. I failed at teaching it. This was early on in our homeschool journey and my daughter was just coming out of public school. We had no idea what we were doing, so we put it back on the shelf. I was disappointed becuase IEW was one of the first curricula I heard about when we first started homeschooling. It was talked about very highly amongst homeschool moms. I went to their booth every year at the homeschool conventions and asked a ton of questions. However, I still did not feel confident enough to teach it, mostly because that is an area that I am not good at. Fast forward to a few months ago we were given the opportunity to review the Fix It! Grammar program. I am so glad accepted! Hurry up and go grab your coffee y'all, because I can't wait to share our review of The Nose Tree [Book 1] part of the Fix It! Grammar program from Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) with y'all!

What Did We Receive

The Fix It! Grammar program has 6 different books. It is suggested that you start with Book 1 if you have never used the program so that is what we did.

We the complete Book 1 The Nose Tree. It came with the Teacher's Manual and the Student Book, both are spiral bound.

How Did We Use It

There are 33 weeks of grammar instruction and practice. Each week is split into 4 days and each day is intended to take about 15 minutes.

When we received our books I read the introduction so that I could become familiar with the program. I did not want to fail this time. The first thing I did was allowed each of my kids to pick out a 3-pronged folder and spiral notebook.

I then removed the grammar cards from the back of the student book, laminated, cut them, and placed them on a ring for easy reference for the kids.

IEW is so generous! The purchase of the Teacher's Manual allows you a free download of the student book, Mastery Learning e-audio, and But, but, but ... What about Grammar? e-audio. So I downloaded the student books so that I could print it for my kids. I did not print it at all at once I printed each week as needed.

All of my children for familiar with the first few weeks or so, therefore I decided to move at a faster pace for three older kids, who are 16, 13, and 12 and went at the recommended pace for my 10-year-old son.

My older kids are doing a full week in one day and my youngest son is doing a day at a time.

I decided since the daily assignments are not long we would add this to our morning basket and work on it Monday - Thursday. I gave each child a 3-pronged folder to keep their worksheets in, a spiral notebook for them to write the sentences they fixed and their vocabulary words, and they shared the grammar cards.

Older kids - I printed off the current week for each day (we did 4 weeks in one week), and read the, Learn IT part to them, I then read the sentence for Day 1, they wrote the vocabulary word in the back of their spiral. Next, we fixed the sentence I graded it as soon as they finished. If they fixed the sentence correctly I gave the ok to write it in their spiral where they left off the previous sentence. After they all finished that day we moved to the next day until we completed all four days.

Youngest son - My youngest son followed the same steps, however, we did not move at that pace. We did week 1 day 1 on one day and then moved to the next day the following day.

Our Final Thoughts

My 16-year-old daughter said, " IEW is one of the best writing programs my mom has gotten for us to use. It's not too demanding and takes the time to teach you new concepts instead of expecting you to know them right at the start. The way they teach the concepts is also a very simple effective technique. As in teaching you how to break down the parts of a sentence the correct way, or how some nouns can become verbs depending on how they're used in the sentence. They really did a wonderful job making sure all children can grasp the concept, which comes in handy if you're like my mom and have kids ranging from 16-10. All of their books do that not just the first couple. I enjoy the stories that they write they are so interesting and teach a valuable lesson. "

My 13-year-old son said, "I think IEW is a good curriculum because it helps build your critical thinking skills and is really fun when you compete against your siblings to see who can finish the fastest. I also think it is a cool curriculum because my mom enjoys it. Even though the curriculum has a weird name (IEW) its still really fun to participate in it. Little known fact IEW is just another way to say "EW" LOL.

My 12-year-old daughter said, " IEW is a great curriculum I love how they have the grammar cards they are good for when you need more practice. I love English so this to me this is a great thing. from a scale to 1to10 I say 10! Great!

My 10-year-old son said, "it is a good curriculum for younger kids it teaches kids about the different parts of speech. I have learned about nouns, pronouns, and articles so far.

I love the way it first teaches the grammar rule or part of speech, and then have the child look for the mistakes in the sentence. Many programs expect you to put out what you have not put in. In other words, they expect to know what you have not been taught. IEW has a gentle yet very thorough approach to teaching grammar. I did not fail this time my kids love and so do I! I feel confident enough now to pick the writing program up off the bookshelf. Thank you so much IEW!

Crew families tried different books of the Fix It! Grammar program. Click the banner below to learn more about the program and what the different books have to offer.