The Grammar Missions

Six years ago, I shared with you one of my favorite resources for teaching elementary kids grammar: Super Grammar (aff link)!

You can see above why I like it so much. It's because my kids LOVED it. My two oldest, who hated boring worksheet activities related to grammar, totally got into the action and adventure hidden inside this book. And I was able to use the characters to teach and present important grammar concepts in a way that my kids could enjoy learning. Read my post here to see how I used it.






Anyway, Super Grammar has now opened a store on TpT! Do you know what that means? NO WAITING! You can now buy and download a digital copy of their updated 2nd edition of Super Grammar instantly.

In addition, they have now come out with an additional resource that is just SUPER helpful. Grammar Missions is the awesome workbook that I wish I'd had six years ago. It goes perfectly with Super Grammar and contains more than 140 grammar mission assignments.

This workbook has a section for each Super Grammar super-team, and each super-team section is color-coded to match the color-coding in Super Grammar. Also, to keep things organized and easy to follow, the super-teams and their superheroes in the workbook appear in the exact same order and progression as they do in Super Grammar.

So if you have a 3rd, 4th, 5th, or even 6th grader who loves action and adventure and needs a grammar curriculum that's different and fun, this may be for you!

2nd - 4th Grade Writing Handbooks for Bilingual Learners

I'm pretty excited about my weekend discovery during one of my regular trips to my favorite used bookstore. When my older kids were little, we used the Write Away series and it was awesome. So imagine my delight when I found the SPANISH VERSIONS of both the second-grade and third-grade handbooks!

¡De viaje! and ¡Vía libre! (aff links) are handbooks for young aspiring writers. They guide students through the writing process by using easy to understand directions and giving clear examples. Your child will learn the basics of writing with this book through a variety of writing topics.

For example, in ¡De viaje! your 2nd grader will begin by learning ideas on what to write, keeping an idea journal, making a plan or outline and why an eraser is your friend (😉). They'll learn about making revisions, meeting with other writers to get feedback, how to correct their own work, and how to publish what they've written.

There's also a section on the nuts and bolts, which covers sentences and paragraphs.

Then there is a series of writing activities: personal writings (diaries, funny notes, cards to friends, and personal narrations), themed writings (book reviews, news articles, instruction guides, etc.), investigational writings (illustrated dictionaries, reports, etc.), stories, and poems.

These writing activities are followed by a section on learning to learn. It covers how to improve your reading, letters and words, how to talk and listen better, and a chapter dedicated to learning skills.

Oh, but we're not done! Then there's a grammar section to help students learn about parts of speech, sentences, the mechanics of language, how to improve your spelling, using the correct word, punctuation.

The final section is a student almanac with lists and tables of all sorts of things (sign language, the Braille alphabet, Roman numerals, etc.), maps, math, penmanship, and a look at history.

There is a TON of information packed into this little book!

And ¡Vía libre! is similar with a little more advanced content geared toward students in 3rd and 4th grades. But it has the same engaging style and is also jam-packed full of resources for your young students.

Anyway, I bought all three copies of each book and have them for sale in my shop. I wish I could have bought more, but these were the only ones they had. So it's first come, first served. You can find them here.  I've sold out, but you can find them here and here on Amazon (aff)!

Enjoy!

Winter Olympics Parts of Speech Game

As I mentioned, we're using the Olympics as a learning opportunity in our homeschool over the coming weeks. That means that almost ALL of our subjects have an Olympic link. Even grammar!

Check out this fun game that allows your student to practice distinguishing parts of speech: proper nouns, common nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. This file includes:

- game board
- game cards with words
- answer sheet with the list of words in their respective parts of speech category.
- blank cards for you to add your own words
- blank game board if you'd like to add different categories.

And, yes, it is available in English and Spanish!

You can find it in my TpT store or the MommyMaestra Shop.

Looking for other Olympic-themed resources? Don't miss:

• Science 360: Science of the Winter Olympics free video series
• Winter Games Unit: A comprehensive download full of excellent reading & geography activities
• My Pinterest board on Winter Olympics Printables and Activites
• Learn the Greek Alphabet (activity book for kids)
• Exploring Ancient Greece Through Crafts & Activities (books)

Free May the Fourth Download

May the 4th be with you! 

Since I am my kids are Star Wars nuts, you know this is one of our favorite days of the year. And so I wanted to remind you that I have a free set of printables based on the series available for you to download!

It's my little gift to you in honor of the day.

Grammar Force helps your kids strengthen their grammar skills with fun pages that focus on:

• Common nouns
• Proper nouns
• Contractions
• Adjectives
• Prepositions/Prepositional phrases

Note: This file is available in English only!

You can download it on TpT or here on MommyMaestra from my Shop.

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Free Download: Grammar Force

On December 19th, my husband and I loaded up the kids into the car and headed to town for dinner and The Movie. The tickets had been bought weeks in advance (when they became available), but the planning of attending said movie had been going on for two years.

Four days later, my kids went and saw it again, this time with a new set of friends. They noticed new details and came home equally obsessed as when they saw the very first one.

Then one day over the holidays, my daughter and I were sitting around and we decided to welcome the movie into our schooling. Do you remember this giveaway? Well, my son was terribly sad that he was too old for these workbooks. So my daughter and I decided to create a few pages that he could enjoy during our class time.

We had fun creating these. And I was thinking, "Hey! Maybe some MommyMaestra readers will enjoy them, too."  So here you are, dear readers.

Inspired by my kids' love of the series, this little freebie simply contains five worksheets, each one with a different theme:

• Common nouns
• Proper nouns
• Contractions
• Adjectives
• Prepositions/Prepositional phrases

Enjoy this little freebie!

Click here to download Grammar Force

Celebrate National Grammar Day with a Giveaway!

Happy National Grammar Day!

I may or may not have been accused of being the "Grammar Police" on more than once occasion. So this is a topic that is very dear to me. It bothers me when I see there/their/they're being used incorrectly, or when my kids confuse an adjective for an adverb. (Yes, I know I have a problem.) That's why I love this giveaway.

If your children (or even you or your spouse!) have trouble with grammar, it's no surprise given the dry, boring, painful way grammar is often taught in school. And that's why I love Super Grammar and have used it in our homeschool curriculum to teach my kids grammar - in a FUN way that is EASY to learn!

You can read all about how I use Super Grammar in our lessons here.

The Giveaway

To celebrate National Grammar Day, our friends over at Super Grammar are donating a special prize pack of Super Grammar goodies for two (2!) MommyMaestra readers. The Prize Pack includes an autographed copy of Super Grammar, a set of four promo posters, and a National Grammar Day Poster (all shown above).

To enter, simply use the Rafflecopter below.

¡Buena suerte!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Celebrate National Grammar Day with Super Grammar!

Happy National Grammar Day!

Last year, a little update on Scholastic's Facebook page caught my eye. They were sharing some free grammar worksheets with a superhero theme.  Thinking this might be fun for my kids, I downloaded the five pages and shared them with my children. Naturally, they loved the Super Grammar superheroes. In fact, they liked it so much, I went back and read the page with a letter to the teachers from the author and illustrator. And then I noticed something else - their signature. Tony Preciado and Rhode Montijo. Hmmm. Now I am REALLY interested.

So I contacted Tony and Rhode through the Super Grammar website, and arranged to feature them in an article for NBC Latino. They kindly sent me a copy of Super Grammar to review.

Super Grammar

I thought the book would be fun reading for my kids, but little did I know that I would actually wind up using this book as part of our homeschool Language Arts curriculum. We have been using Super Grammar for about a month now and I have been amazed at how much my children enjoy learning grammar, AND how much I enjoy teaching it!

The book itself is arranged into four main sections, each one focusing on a particular group of grammar concepts (disguised as superheroes) for children to learn. These four sections are: The Completion Team, The Amazing Eight, The Super Symbols, and The Sabotage Squad.

The sections are made up of various superheroes or supervillains who represent specific grammar concepts. The smallest team is the Completion Team, which is made up of two superheroes: The Subject and The Predicate. They are the most important team and spend their days working together to create complete sentences. Individually they are powerless, but together they are super strong!

Okay. So you get the idea. Here's how I'm using Super Grammar to teach my daughter who is in third grade. (My son is in first grade, but he enjoys watching and participating, too.)

For each grammar lesson, I focus on one new superhero. Because my kids learn best with interactive lessons, I use our dry erase board to present the superhero and his or her superpowers. To make the lesson even more memorable, I went to the Super Grammar website and downloaded pictures of the superheroes, printed them on cardstock, cut them out, laminated them, and then added a magnet to the back. Voilá! I have superheroes on the board for my kids to manipulate and focus on as we learn about each one. Take a look...

I basically use the book as a Teacher's Guide, but I don't stop my kids from looking through it - they love to study it and look at the pictures. Each of my lessons builds upon the previous one (Tony and Rhode have made this very easy, thanks to their layout and the order of their superheroes). I write the most important information on the board and read aloud the rest.

Sometimes I use the sentences that Tony gives in the book as examples, but I usually wind up making up some of my own so that they can practice. I like to pull in some of the other well-known superheroes, too, and make silly sentences which make my kids laugh. (For the record, I'm pretty sure the Green Lantern's favorite color is probably not pink. :)

My daughter has assigned each superhero his or her own color, and then uses that color to identify their role in a sentence. Now that we've gotten further in the book, we've started running out of colors. So now, I have her focus on identifying the specific superhero that we're studying at the time. It was getting a little crazy because she wanted to ID each one and we had lines and circles going everywhere. See...

The best moment for me happened a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that my daughter had not written a complete sentence in her writing assignment. She was missing the subject. When I pointed that out, she immediately cried, "Oh, no! The Fragment got me!!"

I had not been thinking of Super Grammar at all when this was happening, and I was floored that she had identified her mistake so quickly. And for the first time ever, my daughter has actually begged me to teach a grammar lesson for the day.

I am completely sold on this book. The only thing missing is that I don't have enough worksheets for my daughter to practice on in order to reinforce each concept. But I know that a workbook is in Tony and Rhode's plans for the future.

In addition, Super Grammar has created some super posters, each one featuring one of the four Super Grammar Super-teams. We got ours in the mail last week and my kids immediately divided them up equally between themselves, then ran for their rooms to hang them up.

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Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. I did, however, receive a copy of the book and posters for review purposes.