The Evan-Moor Skill Sharpeners Grammar & Punctuation workbook can help your learner become a better writer and also learn more about grammar and punctuation rules. (I mean, the title does give it away.)
Every unit in this workbook covers a grammar concept and a punctuation concept! At the end of each unit, there is an assessment to test the grammar and punctuation skills learned.
This post contains affiliate links which means that if you purchase through my link, I’ll get paid a little bit at no extra cost to you. It’s just one lovely way to support your friendly “local” secular blogger.
Unit Breakdown
Every unit follows this following topic pattern:
- Story
- Grammar Rule
- Grammar Practice
- Punctuation Rule (and Practice)
- Grammar Fun
- Application
- Punctuation Fun
- Review
Unit Example
I’m going to walk you through the first unit to give you a better example.
The theme of Unit One is Weekend Fun. There is a story about a paragraph long with several bold, green words for your learner to find and check off. Along the bottom of the page are grammar rules to discover with questions to solidify their understanding of the information.
I like the boldened words in the story. This gives more of a realistic way to learn new words through context and meaning. It makes for a great activity to be able to check off words as they’re read.
Because my daughter had to struggle through reading the word (#dyslexia) in order to check it off, she was already ahead of the game with learning to spell it.
The next page is the Grammar Rules page and lists Common Nouns which happens to include a word bank of the vocabulary your child was looking for in the previous story. Then there is a light reading and common noun underlining activity.
The page after that, titled Grammar Practice, offers a fun Noun Riddle activity. This would be really enjoyable to do together.
Following this is a page called Punctuation Rule and it highlights End Marks such as the period, question mark, and exclamation point. It is followed by a retention activity!
Then on the Grammar Fun page, there is a coloring activity that utilizes the vocabulary words. It’s themed after a pet shop which is something my daughter loves.
The Application page is where your child will get to apply their knowledge further with a fix-this-sentence challenge.
The Punctuation Fun page has an end marks matching challenge that is very visual and colorful. This would be very easy to explain to your child and then let them have at it.
The Review page is the last in this unit and it has a fill-in-the-blank activity as well as a sentence-writing activity to further practice end marks.
The end of the book, as with most every Evan-Moor workbook, includes easy to follow answer-keys for parents. If you’re planning to hand the workbook to your kiddo, you can easily tear out the perforated answer keys for assessing purposes later.
Verdict: Super Secular!
Evan-Moor, as I stated in my previous review post, is my go-to for homeschooling workbooks. They could easily be utilized in the standard classroom as well. They’re engaging, very well organized, colorful, and appealing.
When I handed my 2nd grader this workbook to peruse (see video above) she was interested within moments. And, heck, getting her excited about something she knows is schoolwork is hard enough. I’m happy to report that she had a blast working through some of the exercises so far.
The units could easily be spread out over a week and take only a few minutes each day, internalizing the words and concepts well in your learner’s mind. Otherwise, it’d also be easy and fun for your child to dig through a unit within an afternoon.
