Grammar Books This English Teacher Loves!

* Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on the titles in gray, it will take you to Amazon. I will receive a small commission on any purchases. However, all opinions are my own. *

I confess that I’m a bit of a grammar nerd. I’m not saying I diagram sentences on the weekends for a good time, but I have always found diagramming to be a fun, educational puzzle. I don’t go around with a red pen in hand, correcting bad grammar on signs, but they do drive me crazy! Christmas card season is especially aggravating with all those unnecessary apostrophes. (It’s “Merry Christmas from the Tillmans” NOT “Merry Christmas from the Tillman’s.” There’s no apostrophe! You’re not owning anything!)

For that reason, I’ve learned over the years that my favorite grammar picks are not necessarily the right fit for everyone. Grammar seems to be a subject a lot of parents are nervous to teach. When homeschoolers find out I used to be a high school English teacher, a lot of them will ask me for curriculum suggestions.  

The problem is, since I don’t need much in the way of a teacher book or script, I can use certain resources that may be a challenge for some parents. For that reason, in this post, I’m not going to share “how we do grammar” like I normally would. Instead, I’m first going to give you my professional tips for doing grammar well with your kids. Then, I’ll share my absolute favorite, well-scripted resource for grammatically-challenged parents. Then, I’ll share my personal favorites that I think takes the pain out of grammar for the students and makes it a lot more interesting. 

My Grammar Guidelines

#1 No busy work! Think back to your own school days. Was there anything worse than having to copy twenty sentences from your grammar book for homework? Language arts was my favorite subject, and I even hated those assignments with a passion. Not only that, studies have shown that it is ineffective. Anyone can find the verb when you have to look for it twenty times or more! It never translates to long term knowledge. 

#2 No dry grammar books! I bet your grammar book was pretty boring too, right? Dry explanations followed by random sentences on mundane topics. Yawn. No wonder most people hate grammar. 

#3 No disconnected grammar. The point of teaching grammar (and yes, it is a very important subject, but that would be another post) is to improve writing and reading skills. A good grammar curriculum will incorporate these through copywork, dictation, narration, writing practice, and examples of beautiful writing from the classics. (More about all of this later as I highlight my favorites!) 

My Favorite Scripted, Open-and-Go Grammar Curriculum:

First Language Lessons for The Well-Trained Mind

Any parent can open this curriculum, follow the script, and give their child a solid grammar foundation. Even though this is marketed as a classical resource, it fits very well with the Charlotte Mason model as well. It is very gentle in its approach, and it utilizes narration, copywork, and dictation. There are also beautiful age-appropriate poems for students to memorize. If it takes your child longer than 1st through 4th grade to finish the four levels, don’t panic. As an English teacher, I can assure you that it provides plenty of solid grammar even through sixth grade. I am also a huge advocate of Charlotte Mason’s caution to not over-tax the student and to go at their own pace. Remember, mastery is the goal, not finishing the set of books by the fourth grade. Don’t be afraid to break some of the longer lessons into shorter sessions in books 3 and 4 in particular. 

One other note: if you are also using Writing With Ease from the same company (which I also highly recommend), feel free to skip the narration lessons in the grammar books. However, if you aren’t using a separate writing curriculum, these are important to have your child work through. 


My Other Grammar Picks:

Daily Grammar Practice

I first discovered Daily Grammar Practice (DGP) as a high school English teacher, and I loved it so much, I purchased it with my own money. I saw a huge improvement in my students after implementing it. Her introduction to the program makes me want to stand up and slow-clap because she, as a fellow high school English teacher, was also fed up with dry grammar books filled with busy work that never seemed to work. This curriculum has students analyze one sentence for an entire week, but it is different from other “sentence a day” programs because students do multiple things with this one sentence. On Monday they label the parts of speech, on Tuesday they label the sentence parts, on Wednesday they label the phrases and clauses, on Thursday they punctuate the sentence, and on Friday they diagram it. The sentences get increasingly more complex, and new concepts are introduced in an intentional order. When I taught high school, my students thought they were getting away with “not doing grammar.” Little did they know they were getting a short lesson every day that packed a lot of punch! 

However, you get no punch if the teacher doesn’t know how to go deeper. The teacher's book lists important concepts in each week's lesson, which are easy for me to explain and supplement being the grammar nerd that I am. For other homeschoolers, this is just a good way to supplement another curriculum. As Burnette calls it, they get a daily grammar vitamin!​

GUM Drops

These very simple workbooks give students passages based on classic literature to proofread. Scattered throughout these passages are mini-lessons on different grammar concepts. I love that students aren’t forced to mark or copy pages and pages of dry sentences. On the other hand, parents weak in grammar may not be able to give further examples or explanations to what is provided in the book. In our homeschool, once my kids finish First Language Lessons, they do Daily Grammar Practice plus G.U.M Drops through middle school (these only go through 8th grade). They do the passages on their own, then I go over it with them. For the mini-lessons, I teach it on our white board first, then they do the short exercises on their own. There is no teacher book, but answers are in the back.

The Giggly Guide to Grammar

This is another fellow English teacher after my own heart! This text is written to teenagers in an engaging and hilarious way. My son actually laughs out loud as he does his grammar lesson! Dry can never be used to describe this book, that’s for sure. Sentences in the exercises are laugh-out-loud funny, and avoids busy work. It also incorporates reading passages and writing exercises. I’ve seen some bad reviews on Rainbow Resource and Amazon from parents who think there’s too much potty humor, but that sort of thing has never bothered me. If you spent seven years teaching high school and middle school, it wouldn’t bother you anymore either! That’s the humor of adolescence, after all. 

This book is non-consumable, so your student would have to write the answers on notebook paper. I don’t need an answer key, so I didn’t bother purchasing the teacher’s edition with the CD. Therefore, I can’t give an opinion on how helpful it is. In our homeschool, my kids graduate to this after finishing level 8 in G.U.M Drops, and we continue to do DGP.

Our Mother Tongue

I have not used this yet in our homeschool, but I did use it when I taught at a classical private school. I really like how this book gives the history of the English language. Very rarely does a curriculum explain the “why” of grammar, but this book does. This is far from busy work! Most of the examples are from classical literature and the Bible, and there is a short writing exercise to practice the grammar concepts with each lesson.
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However, this is definitely a book for those with a good foundation in grammar. I would only recommend it for high school students as a way to keep grammar concepts fresh in their minds. The answer key is a must, as the writing examples are very complex in structure. However, don’t hesitate to use this with your teenager. For higher levels, it’s a great way to keep their grammar skills sharp without assigning dry, busy work. 

Eats Shoots and Leaves

I had the privilege of being the private English teacher for two homeschoolers. I taught them from their freshman year through their senior year. I used this book with them their senior year, and we had a lot of fun reading it. I know, that sounds crazy, but we really did! This book was a bestseller when it came out, believe it or not. It’s strictly about punctuation, not a complete grammar course, but by senior year, that should be all you really need. I also had the girls do the level twelve book in DGP. 

Since this is a book, not a curriculum, there are no assignments or exercises. I created my own short writing assignments to go with each chapter. Obviously, there’s no teacher book or answer key. However, the author does a great job of explaining in easy terms how to use punctuation correctly. (It was a bestseller for a reason!) 

One other thing: be aware that the author is not a Christian, and this book isn’t meant for kids. I don’t remember specific objectionable material, but I do remember thinking that I was glad the girls were older. The author has also written picture books for kids about grammar concepts, but I have never read them. 

So there you have it: a list of grammar favorites from a certified grammar nerd! I’ll be completely honest: most of these are not loved and adored by the majority of homeschoolers. On the flipside, the popular grammar choices, as you probably noticed, are missing from this post. I get that not everyone shares my enthusiasm, and that’s okay. I want my kids to love language just as much as I do, so I chose to use my strengths, put in a little more time and effort, and go with resources that bring the English language alive. 

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