Found Nouns

As much as possible, I try to avoid traditional curricula (textbooks and workbooks) in favor of living books, a concept originated by the educator Charlotte Mason. To me, a book is a living book if it is:

1. Well-written in a literary style
2. By a single author who cares about the subject

For our elementary school grammar studies this year, we are studying one of the parts of speech each month through books and activities. We began September with nouns, using the following three books:


Our final "test" on nouns was to name as many nouns as possible from the picture above. The same object could be named more than once; for example, the dice could also be a cube or a square. My family, my sister's family, and my mom and niece competed against each other. The family who found the most nouns that none of the other families found would win. Next time I try an activity like this, I think I will forego the competition because it made my boys a little too intense. It works just as well to find out how many nouns we could all find together. When I pooled our answers, I found that between the three families, we identified 176 unique nouns in the picture.

Afterwards we discussed how learning about nouns, and that multiple nouns can name the same object, could help us in writing. We decided that it can help us select the best words to represent something and avoid repetition by substituting other appropriate nouns when we can.

I selected the picture I did because it seemed to fit the season. I found it at the following link, where there were some other good pictures that could be used as well. http://www.theotherpages.org/spy/spy012.jpg
The I Spy book series would be another resource for pictures of nouns to name.

The Apostrophe and Me

Yesterday morning my daughters Karina (14) and Katie (12) met me on my bed with a pile of grammar and vocabulary books to call my nieces in Texas for grammar class. We selected this "classroom" because the bedrooms are the only rooms in my house separate enough from family life to have the possibility of being temporarily quiet. My sons Tommy (10) and Jack (7) were supposed to be doing math, but I suspected they were actually researching the care and keeping of a pet scorpion, which had been Tommy's obsession ever since he woke up. As we worked our way through first our vocabulary book, 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, and then our grammar books, Our Mother Tongue by Nancy Wilson and Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss, my fifteen-month-old daughter Helena sat on my lap, whining every few minutes for a chance to play with the phone, paper, a pen, a book, or anything else I happened to be using at the moment. Her three-year-old brother Luke kept entering the room to ask, "Can I play Lego Star Wars with Tommy?" After I had said no nearly a dozen times, he started talking about pets. It wasn't until class was over that I discovered I had given the impression that we were buying a "fish that swims in the water" at the pet store right now. I'm not sure how I managed to discuss new vocabulary words, compound sentences, and the multitasking functions of the apostrophe with so many interruptions.

According to Lynn Truss, the "tractable" apostrophe happily complies with the strange assortment of functions we have given her, continually overworked and misunderstood. Today I feel like an apostrophe, a little curlicue that floats above a word, simultaneously being Karina's and Katie's and Tommy's and Jack's and Luke's and Helena's mother. At times like these it seems like the solution is to find a safe, soundproof area where Luke and Helena can play by themselves, ideally with a free nanny, while the rest of us get some real work done.
But then I remember:

• Luke proudly writing letters on the white board on Tuesday at Katie's piano lesson, making me guess what each one was before shouting out "right" or "wrong."
• Helena swaying in an infant dance while Tommy played "The Happy Farmer" at his cello lesson, her eye's meeting mine with a half smile.
• Luke selecting a white goldfish with orange spots and holding it carefully in the car on the way home after I asked myself, "Why not get a fish?" I couldn't come up with any good reasons.
• Helena using the piano keyboard as a ladder that enabled her to grab a pencil and scribble all over the music books while I helped her older brother practice, laughing right into my face every time I pulled her down.

Since I don't have spaces in my life when I am not otherwise occupied, these circles of interaction always occur in the middle of something, bringing me a moment of joy and peace in the midst of the hurry. Several years ago I read a book called Building Healthy Minds by Stanley Greenspan about the development of the intellect in early childhood. I have never forgotten his term, "circles of interaction," for these moments between a caregiver and child when communication flows back and forth, with or without words. He wrote that these circles of interaction are important for brain development.

The Suzuki Method is based on the concept that we are educating our children from the cradle. Grammar, Geometry, History and music practice may feel more rigorous, but the youngest minds in my family are developing the fastest. I believe they may have the most to gain if Eric, Amy, Karina, Katie, Tommy, and Jack all find space in our lives for circles of interaction with them.

Is Sentence Diagramming Necessary?

My mom currently homeschools two of my nieces in Houston who are the same ages as my two oldest daughters. We hold "class" over the phone several times a week, with my mom teaching Spanish and History while I cover English. One day in the middle of diagramming sentences with noun clauses, my niece asked, "When will I ever have to know this in real life?"

Her question caught me off guard. I find grammar and the diagramming of sentences to be a fascinating puzzle, almost fun. A couple of months ago, to my family's annoyance, I spent hours discussing the function of a word in a sentence. Was it part of the verb phrase, a predicate nominative, or an adverb? After discussing all the possibilities and reasons for them with first my daughter Karina and then my husband Eric, they both eventually responded, "Who cares?"

Should I care about grammar? Does anyone really need to know how to diagram sentences? What is the purpose of education anyway and where is the place for complicated grammar?

The diagramming of sentences seems to be a dying art. Neither in my home schooled or my public schooled years as a child did I learn the skill. It was not until I took Grammar in college that I first experienced it. I chose English as a major because of my love for literature and a desire to improve my writing. It wasn't until I took courses in grammar and the history of the English language that I realized that my interest in linguistics possibly surpassed my zeal for literature.

I am well aware that everyone does not share my fascination. Some people find grammar irrelevant and studying it to be either extremely difficult or as dry as I find the history of weaponry. Knowing extensive grammar may actually hurt them if it kills any desire to learn. Sentence diagramming is not necessary.

I do not agree with E. D. Hirsch, who in Cultural Literacy argued that there are certain facts everyone needs to know to be well-educated. For me, education doesn't consist of a list of things students know or do not know, where education ends once the checklist is completed. Instead, it is about how what they are learning develops them as human beings. Shinichi Suzuki put it eloquently in Nurtured by Love when he wrote, "For the sake of our children, let us educate them from the cradle to have a noble mind, a high sense of values, and splendid ability." As I teach, I need to keep in mind this goal.

If, in teaching grammar to my daughters and nieces, I fail to make it relevant, if I fail to make my fascination with the beauty and complexity of our language contagious, if I fail to make the meaning of sentences clear by analyzing them, then there is no purpose in diagramming sentences. It is a worthless enterprise that won't develop good character but may lead to a lifelong grammar aversion.

On the other hand, words do have power and magic. The gospel of John begins with the announcement, "in the beginning was the Word." As I contemplate the purpose of grammar and how it can enrich my niece's life, if I can help her see the miracle in the miniscule building blocks of language, if diagramming helps her understand a sentence better, if she can feel wonder and gratitude that we have the written and spoken word, it will meet the true purpose of education. I will be preparing a noble soul to serve the world in word and then in deed.