Affordable, easy to use, in-depth and with plenty of practice and review to help students master their skills, Growing With Grammar can be a highly effective self-study homeschool grammar program for elementary and middle school students.
What We Like
But watch out for…
What is Growing With Grammar?
Created by homeschooling mom Tamela Davis, Growing With Grammar is a self-paced, self-study grammar program aimed at elementary through middle school students.
Covering everything from nouns and parts of speech to clauses, infinitives and more, the program teaches students formal grammar rules and conventions through a combination of direct instruction, dedicated exercises, frequent review and optional tests.
What Ages Or Grades is Growing With Grammar Intended For?
Growing With Grammar is intended for students in grades 1-8.
The series is divided into 8 levels, which roughly correspond to grade level and with each book honing and building on the knowledge and skills developed in the previous level.
| Level | Examples of topics covered |
| Level 1 | Nouns, pronouns, synonyms, antonyms, verbs, conjunctions, plural/singular, tenses and more |
| Level 2 | Sentences, nouns and pronoun prepositions, negative words, adverbs, adjectives, future tenses and more |
| Level 3 | Possessives, subject-verb agreement, direct objects, quotations, comma use, helping verbs and more |
| Level 4 | Relative pronouns, conjunctions and interjections, basic composition, diagramming verb phrases, progressive tense and more. |
| Level 5 | Perfect tense, diagraming predicates, compound and direct objects, indirect objects, appositives and more |
| Level 6 | Interrogative adjectives, adjective clauses, adverb clauses, diagramming adverbs and prepositional phrases, correlative conjunctions and more |
| Level 7 | Homophones, heteronyms, personal pronouns, emphatic form, active and passive voices, diagramming appositives, compound prepositions and more |
| Level 8 | Positive form, conjunctive adverbs, diagramming interjections, diagramming infinitives, infinitive phrases, gerunds, participial phrases, compound sentences and more |
Of course, being a homeschool resource, Growing With Grammar’s levels are really suggested grade levels and we believe that the program’s resources can be used pretty effectively by students learning outside of a traditional grade progression, such as by precocious learners and those in need of remedial grammar lessons.
That said, at times, Growing With Grammar can introduce some concepts a bit earlier than most, which can make the series a little more intensive and a little trickier to switch into from another homeschool grammar program.
Further, there is no online placement test that we could find.
As a result, some parents (particularly those learning off grade level) will need to read through the series’ resources and make their own judgement about where to start.
To their credit, however, there are a lot of resources available on the publisher’s website (including a scope and sequence for the series, a table of contents for each book and sample lessons/exercises), which can make doing so a lot easier, especially for new homeschooling families.
What’s Included In Growing With Grammar
Throughout Growing With Grammar, students learn from and practice grammar through a combination of explicit instruction and workbook style practice questions.
Depending on the level in question, the exact format of a level can be a little different.
Levels 1 and 2, for example, have their instruction and practice combined into one student workbook, with parents only needing to pick up an answer key and optional test package.
This format makes these early levels a bit more compact and easy to use, but means that the student resources are essentially consumable (unless students take care to work on looseleaf paper), which means that they can’t be as easily reused with younger siblings.
Levels 3 through 8, in contrast, split the instructional and practice components of their lesson between two separate books – a student manual and a student workbook.
While this means that parents will have an extra book to buy in addition to an answer key (and optional test package), with these levels larger families can simply reuse the student manual later on and only purchase new workbooks.
With either format, Growing With Grammer’s resources do have a pretty similar look and feel to them.
The student manuals (and workbooks in levels 1 and 2) are around 2-300 pages long and printed in black and white.
The books are mostly text-based with an assortment of diagrams and visual elements sprinkled into each lesson, as well as the occasional illustration.
They aren’t the most visually stimulating ELA books we’ve looked at, and may not exactly be the most exciting for grade 1 or 2 students to go through, but they do keep things focused on the grammar and can reduce distraction, which can be a big plus for some learners.
The books are spiral bound, with the workbooks being bound on top and the student manuals bound from the more conventional left side.
The use of top binding on the workbooks is a little different than most softcover books or even spiral bound resources we’ve seen and does have its pros and cons.
The workbooks’ top spiral binding makes them more left-hand friendly and allows them to lie flat on the table, much like a notepad, making them easier and neater for kids to use – always a plus with self-study programs.
On the downside, their handling can initially be a bit more unfamiliar to younger kids in our opinion, and they will need to be a bit more careful not to tear the pages when turning them.
Growing With Grammar’s writing style tends to be more on the formal side, is pretty short and to the point and generally avoids the kind of long-winded explanations that are unfortunately too common in many grammar textbooks and that tend to leave kids rolling their eyes.
With each lesson interspersed with numerous examples and visual diagrams, as well as clearly bolded and underlined text, the books are generally pretty easy to follow and quite clear in their instruction, making them pretty easy for students to read alone or with only minor help from parents, something we feel busy homeschools will certainly appreciate.
They also provide students and parents with references to the specific lessons from which the exercises are derived, which can be helpful if a student runs into trouble.
The workbook exercises, meanwhile, are fairly traditional and include straightforward problem sets that should be familiar to most families, such as work and sentence rewrites, simple writing exercises, identifying and writing down grammar concepts from sentences, circling answers and so on.
Each section of a level also comes with dedicated review sets, which are broadly similar to the workbook exercises and also helpfully refer to the lesson in which the concepts are taught.
Answer keys for the series are contained in a separate book, which are sold separately from the main texts.
While this does mean that interested parents will have to spend some extra money, keeping the answers in a separate parental resource does reduce the temptation (an opportunity) for students to cheat as this is intended to be a self-study grammar course.
Finally, Growing With Grammar also offers parents optional test packets for each level.
The tests are intended to be done in the middle and end of each section, with the tests helpfully letting parents know when they should be handed out.
The tests are similar in style to the workbooks, although they contain slightly more challenging examples and problem sets for students to work on and usually cover several lessons and topics studied to that point.
These tests come with their own answer keys and are completely preformatted and ready to use, even including offering points for each problem with -a total score at the top of the page, which is nice and can make them pretty easy to slide into a family’s overall teaching plan.
Approach To Teaching Grammar
Traditional, Explicit Grammar Instruction
Growing With Grammar teaches grammatical rules, syntax, conventions and mechanics in a direct and explicit manner.
This instruction is provided as part of a dedicated learning component of each lesson, and is usually delivered via short and to the point text that, with the addition of sentence diagramming and written examples, lays everything out quite clearly.
Having dedicated, formal instruction as part of each lesson is a more traditional way of teaching grammar and presents students with the proper mechanics and conventions of the English language from the outset, helping them learn to avoid mistakes and even going a long way in helping kids come to grips with the many quirks and exceptions of the language.
In this way, the program stands in contrast to grammar curricula that take a more implicit approach, whereby students might be expected to learn or derive an understanding of grammar from exercises, texts or other uses of the language.
In addition to teaching grammar with clear and direct instruction, each lesson in Growing With Grammar also contains a practice component filled with a number of traditional workbook exercises, such as sentence rewrites, picking out grammar concepts, circling, and even short composition exercises.
By providing a good deal of exercises in each lesson, and as they are very clearly and explicitly linked to the topics they’ve just learned, students in the program can benefit from the kind of proven, focused practice that can really help them hone their skills and understanding of the material.
On the downside, and unlike programs such as Winston Grammar or Fix It! Grammar, Growing With Grammar’s traditional lesson-practice teaching method isn’t necessarily the most multisensory or activity-rich method of teaching.
That said, its clear and relatively short lessons, as well as its straightforward practice component, can make it a useful and fairly easy to implement supplement to broader homeschool ELA programs that might be lacking a dedicated grammar component, such as Five In a Row.
Spiral Learning
Growing With Grammar also follows a spiral method of teaching.
In other words, a level might introduce a grammar concept, teach it to a certain depth, and then review and revisit that topic again in subsequent levels, exploring it in greater depth and complexity as students progress.
For example, students are introduced to subordinating conjunctions in level 3 and then again in levels 5-8 where the concept is examined in more challenging contexts and examples.
This stands in contrast to a mastery method of learning, where a concept is explored until a student reaches a certain level of proficiency and understanding (i.e. “mastery”) and then is not revisited again.
In this way, each level of Growing With Grammar allows students to explore a wider array of concepts over the course of a year.
Learning is also kept a bit fresher and less boring as new concepts are introduced more frequently, meaning that students may not feel as bogged down studying one idea in grammar for weeks at a time.
Finally, because the series tends to frequently review and revisit concepts over the course of the series, it can prevent memory-related learning gaps from developing, which can be particularly helpful for students who tend to forget things without a good deal of practice and revision.
Self-study
Finally, Growing With Grammar is intended to be a self-study program, providing students with both a teaching component and practice exercises that they can do on their own.
In general, these lessons are clearly and simply written, making them easy for students to understand, and are short enough for them to go through without becoming frustrated or simply zoning out.
As a result, with perhaps the exception of the earliest grades where the reading portion might be a little complex for them (and which consequently may require a little more parental help), students can largely go through Growing With Grammar on their own, with parents stepping into a more administrative role of oversight, grading student work and (optionally) testing.
This can free parents up to teach their other children or focus on the many tasks that homeschooling (and life) can involve, which should be good news for busier families.
How It Works
In general, Growing With Grammar is a pretty straightforward resource.
As mentioned previously, the series is divided into 8 levels, roughly representing grades 1 to 8.
Each level contains several sections, each representing different topics and areas in grammar, such as:
- Nouns
- Pronouns
- Sentences
- Adverbs
- Punctuation
- And even composition
Each section is then broken down into a number of different subtopics, which make up that level’s individual lessons.
Under “nouns,” for example, students might explore:
- Common and proper nouns
- Concrete and abstract nouns
- Compound nouns
- Plural nouns
- Irregular plural nouns
- Single and plural possessive nouns
- And more
Lessons in the program are pretty short, only about 2-3 pages long, making them pretty short and intimidating to go through, and there about 108 of them per level.
At a 3x per week pace, each level therefore represents around 36 weeks worth of grammar instruction and practice.
The program’s lessons tend to also follow a pretty consistent format.
Students (or students and their parents) start off by reading through an instructional component, which serves to introduce and explain concepts in a careful, step-by-step manner and offers students a variety of sentence examples, writing samples and even diagrams to help students understand the underlying point.
With this learning component complete, students then turn to the lesson’s workbook exercises (located in a dedicated workbook in grades 3+) to practice what they have just studied.
These aren’t just a few exercises, either – Growing With Grammar tends to include a decent number of problem sets (often containing 8-10 or more items each) for students to work with, which ultimately serves to reinforce learning pretty well even if some students may feel it to be a little bit rote after a while.
At the end of each section, the program typically offers a series of review questions that touch on the different concepts and subtopics learned to that point.
Like the program’s tests, these include numerical references that link concepts/problem sets to specific lessons, which can be very helpful for revision or if students find themselves a bit lost.
Finally, parents can also purchase and make use of optional test packets for each level, which can be useful if they would like to formalize and track student progress a bit more.
Is Growing With Grammar A Secular Or Religious Program?
Ultimately, Growing With Grammar is a secular grammar curriculum that makes no real mention of God, the Bible or other faith-related topics and tends to stay focused on English grammar learning.
As a result, it can be an excellent option for secular and neutral homeschools, as well as faith-based homeschools that are simply looking for a solid grammar program.
It may not, however, be the most ideal for those looking for a grammar program that integrates a religious outlook.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Affordable
With its books costing less than $25 and complete packages often available for well under $50, Growing With Grammar is a very budget-friendly curriculum.
Easy to Use
With most lessons involving a student reading a straightforward and clearly written lesson text and then doing familiar practice exercises to hone their skills, Growing With Grammar is a pretty easy to use and easy to integrate grammar curriculum.
Strong and explicit grammar instruction
Through its lessons, Growing With Grammar teaches students important grammar rules and concepts clearly and explicitly, giving them a solid foundation in the English language and its conventions.
Offers lots of practice and review
Each lesson in Growing With Grammar typically has the student do a good number of practice questions to hone their skills, while each section ends in a pretty comprehensive review, meaning that there is less opportunity for damaging skill and knowledge gaps to develop over time.
Short lessons
Generally speaking, the learning component of Growing With Grammar is fairly short.
At 2-3 pages long, they aren’t too hard to read through and won’t bore or frustrate students quite as much as longer texts.
Supports self-study
Growing With Grammar is a self-study program, providing students with clearly written and understandable learning material, as well as enough practice to reinforce learning and sharpen their skills.
As a result, parents don’t have to spend quite as much time directly teaching and supervising student learning as with other programs.
Cons
Not the most activity-rich, multisensory way to study grammar
Growing With Grammar is largely a traditional approach to grammar instruction, with lessons mainly formed around text instruction, workbook practice and review.
With few audio, visual, kinesthetic or tactile exercises or games to try, it isn’t the most activity-filled or multisensory grammar curriculum out there, even if it can be very effective.
Books are not the most fascinating to look at
Although clear and easy to read, the black and white and mostly-text student manuals and lessons may not be the most exhilarating or fun for students to read through.
Who Is Growing With Grammar Ideal For?
Those with a broader ELA program that are looking for a strong grammar program
Some homeschool ELA programs can be very educational, interesting and even lots of fun to learn from, however a good deal lack a formal grammar component.
With its short, clear and explicit lessons and wealth of practice questions and reviews, Growing With Grammar can be easy to add to these programs as a comprehensive grammar supplement.
Those looking for a grammar program that teaches diagramming
Growing With Grammar integrates sentence diagramming as part of its teaching and grammar practice, making it a good choice for families who want to integrate this visual organizational tool into their studies.
Those looking for a program with lots of practice and review
Lessons in Growing With Grammar contain plenty of practice sets, giving students a lot of opportunity to solidify their knowledge and hone their skills.
Further, each section tends to contain a dedicated review component, which can help in making sure students don’t forget what they’ve learned.
Those looking for a self-study homeschool grammar program
Growing With Grammar can be used by students as a self-study program, which can be very helpful for busy homeschooling families and those looking to strengthen a child’s independent study skills.
Who Is It Not Ideal For?
Those looking for a brightly illustrated and colorful curriculum
Growing With Grammer’s materials aren’t the most colorful or illustrated around and may not be as exhilarating for kids to read through as some other options.
Those looking for a multisensory, hands-on approach to grammar learning
Generally speaking, Growing With Grammar teaches using a more traditional combination of instructional text and workbook exercises and may not have as many hands-on or multisensory activities as some other programs.
Price
Note: Prices are correct as of writing, all prices in USD.
Depending on the level, Growing With Grammar can include a student workbook and/or a student manual, as well as an answer key and optional test packet.
In general, these can cost:
Student workbook – $17.99 per level
Student manual (grades 3+) – $21.99 per level
Answer key – $3.99 per level
Tests – $4.99 per level
As always, parents should check for the latest prices, as well as any discounts or offers that may be available.
Is It Worth The Money?
Overall, we believe Growing With Grammar to be a highly affordable grammar program that still offers quite a bit of value for homeschooling families.
Its resources provide clear, explicit and to the point grammar instruction covering a wide array of topics and concepts across the elementary and middle school curricular range, and does so with fairly short and accessible learning sessions.
In addition to its instructional component, students also get a good deal of solid and practical workbook-style practice in Growing With Grammar’s lessons, and each level provides enough periodic review to make sure students don’t forget what they’ve learned after a while.
Finally, Growing With Grammar is a very easy to follow and implement self-study grammar program, which can make it very valuable for busier families and for students who enjoy working on their own.
Bottom Line
Affordable, easy to use, in-depth and with plenty of practice and review to help students master their skills, Growing With Grammar can be a highly effective self-study homeschool grammar program for elementary and middle school students.
About the Author
Anne Miller is the editor of The Smarter Learning Guide and is a passionate advocate for education and educational technology. A mom of two, she majored in English Language and Literature and worked as a substitute teacher and tutor for several years. When not writing she continues to root for the Yankees and the Giants.