Essentials Week 1 Grammar - FREE Activities and Lessons
It is the first week of Essentials!
Whether this is your very first year using Classical Conversations, or you’ve been through all three tours before, you’re in for an incredible journey!
This upcoming year, my daughter will begin Tour 2 through the program.
I’ve been through Essentials with my oldest, and now I finally feel well equipped to teach all 24 weeks.
I’ve created weekly printables, games, worksheets, chart helpers and lesson guides for the entire year, and I am so excited to finally be sharing them with other homeschool families.
I am sharing all of Week #1 resources with you for FREE on this blog post.
I am tutoring Essentials this year for the first time!
While you wait for your freebies to be delivered, read this blog post to see how I teach the first week!
However, the manual can be confusing and less than user friendly.
There are no ready-to-go student activities besides the charts, and I originally found myself lost on how to actually bring the material to life for my children.
Only a few of my resources are currently ready to share, but all 24 weeks of my lesson plans, games, worksheets and more will be available soon!
Let’s get started and dive into Week 1 of the Essentials EEL program!
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These easy to read and understand Weekly Overviews help parents and students see our exact goals for each week.
In my daughter’s binder, I place them as the front page of each week.
I am creating student binders for all the children in my class this year.
I found THESE 24 tab dividers that make organizing their binders so easy.
We simply turn to the week we are on, and they can instantly see our objectives.
I love having a quick snapshot of exactly what I am covering for grammar, purpose, structure, etc.
As both a CC homeschool mom and an Essentials tutor, I am so excited that I finally took the time to create these Weekly Overview pages.
I love being able to see exactly what we will be learning each week in our EEL portion, and I created examples, visuals and wrote definitions to make is simple and easy for both my daughter and myself.
If you have had children in the Essentials program, you know how overwhelming it can feel just to figure out what we are covering each week and HOW to teach it. These printable worksheets make it so much easier!
These took me months to complete, but I am so excited they are finally ready to share with others!
CLICK HERE to print a FREE sample Weekly Overview.
Behind the weekly overview pages, I place the worksheets and activities I created to practice each skill.
On the first day of class, we essentially go over everything we will be learning for the year.
I don’t do many worksheets on the first day, but below shows examples of the worksheets we do for Week 2.
Some we complete in class, and some of the printable students can do at home to practice.
My goals for the first day of EEL class:
Make sure students feel welcome and excited!
Play an ice breaker game
Explain what the 3 tours of Essentials mean
Show children and parents how I organized their binders
Explain why grammar is important to learn
Dive into our curriculum: Chart A
Play a game to practice sentence purpose, structure and patterns
Show students the suggestions I have for practicing at home
HAVE FUN!
Everything shown here for Week 1 will be delivered to your email inbox!
I hope you love these activities as much as we do.
I plan to project the slides in class onto our church’s white board (we use a Sunday School classroom.)
The weekly overview pages coordinate perfectly with the teaching slides so students are parents can follow right along.
It is so nice to have examples printed and in front of students while you’re teaching!
But if you do not have this option, simply print the PDF file and slip the papers into a Presentation Easel Book
like shown below. I love that it stands up or lays flat.
I made an easel book to use at home with my daughter to review the slides and examples.
This is incredibly helpful to have the visual support while we are working through the activity pages and sentences.
A three ring binder would work as well… it doesn’t have to be fancy!
You can also show the slides right from your laptop as you’re teaching.
I love this option as you don’t have to print a thing!
Class Activity: Sentence Purpose, Structure, Pattern
For the next 24 weeks, we will be discussing a sentence’s purpose, structure and pattern each day in class.
To help students memorize all of these (especially 1st tour students) we play this cupcake game on the first day of class.
I project these as slides, but you can also print them and use a binder or presentation book.
I also made mini cupcake cards that print 4 per page if you prefer!
Using the cupcake key and their coordinating worksheet, students can find the structure, purpose and pattern based on the cupcake, frosting and topping.
This game really helps students become familiar with the terms they will be using the entire year:
Sentence Structure:
simple
compound
complex
compound-complex
Purpose:
declarative
imperative
interrogative
exclamatory
Pattern:
S-Vi
S-Vt-DO
S-Vl-PA
S-Vl-PN
S-Vt-IO-DO
S-Vt-DO-OCA
S-Vt-DO-OCN
Chart A Helpers: A better way to practice!
I have a love/hate relationship with grammar charts.
I 100% have seen the benefit that comes from mastering these charts and they are incredibly important to master.
My oldest daughter loved copying the charts each week. However, I have a different perspective after watching my second daughter go through her first tour of Essentials last year.
Shown here is my daughter’s binder from last year.
I copied the answer key charts and put them next to the blank charts in page protectors.
This allowed her to copy the chart we were focusing on once each day.
I also found songs on YouTube and we sang songs which really helped her remember the definitions, lists of words, etc.
For some children, the act of writing is tedious and this detracts from the content we are learning.
Mastering the content on each chart is the goal, so I needed to come up with a better way for her to practice.
For over a year, I have been thinking about creating charts that alleviate the burden of writing.
I came up with two ideas shown below, and I am so excited to be using these now instead:
Color coordinating is perfect for Tour 1 students, but I also made black and white versions for students ready to recreate the charts on their own. I love having differentiated options available as every child needs something different.
Task Card Chart Helpers:
THESE photo boxes are fantastic for storing your chart pieces and word lists.
I use these for storing quite a few things in our home including card games and smaller travel games.
I removed the top of the carrying case, so the kids and I can pull it out and quickly grab the box we need.
I have used many different label makers in my home, but THIS is my favorite and has been going strong for two years now.
I use the color boxes for our games and crafts, and I chose the clear for our grammar task boxes.
I also made grammar task card boxes for the many word lists we memorize such as linking verbs, helping verbs and prepositions.
These lists and cards make it so fun and easy for students to memorize the words.
I highlight suggest having them listen to and sing the songs on repeat as well.
Grammar task boxes are an absolute game changer for us. Once they’re prepped, it is so easy to have your lessons and activities lined out for each week. My girls are excited for grammar time instead of dreading it.
Hands-on activities, games and songs are truly the best ways to teach grammar (and many other subjects as well!)
For the parts of speech that have both charts and word lists, I store the cards altogether in one box.
I made multiple versions for each of my grammar chart helpers.
Print and use all of them, or just the ones your child/class needs.
I purchased a PROCLICK binding system in 2020 when we began our homeschooling journey.
It is a little spendy, but it has been well worth it and makes it so easy to print and bind quickly.
I use it all the time since I purchase and create many digital items to print for my kiddos.
I also love that I can reuse the spines, and if I forget something, I can open them and add additional papers.
One of our goals for Tour 3 students is to recreate the charts on their own.
Using the black/white pieces in a task box is an excellent way to scaffold this for them!
Place the mini charts inside the boxes in case they need assistance at first.
If you have toddlers at home, or you may be worried about losing the pieces, have students recreate their charts in THESE plastic bins. After completing a chart, pick up the tray and pour the pieces right back into your little task box.
We love these bins (I used them often when I taught kindergarten in the classroom) and at home we use them for painting, sensory trays, crafts… and now grammar charts!
I especially love using these trays for my 5 year old’s FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES shown here.
Everything stays contained, and when he is cutting tiny scrap or strips of paper, hole punching, etc., these little trays are perfect.
Velcro Chart Helpers:
I love these velcro charts!
They work well for all students, but especially Tour 1 children.
I am using the velcro charts with my third grader this year just to help her become familiar with our grammar charts before she starts Essentials next year.
I have tried a couple different kinds of velcro, but THESE work the best.
They do not come off and they are thin. Your Chart Helper Book won’t be bulky!
You can use the black and white or color charts with the velcro.
I love these because all the pieces stay right in the binded book.
Children simply pick up the pieces and move them over to the correct section of the chart.
I have them sing or do our chants while the move the pieces.
You could also store the velcro pieces in a task box and combine the two methods!
There are so many possibilities, but these are incredibly engaging and effective ways to help students memorize the content without the burden of writing.
We do a lot of writing in essentials, and this is not an activity I wish to have my children using up their writing energy!
That’s a wrap for Essentials EEL Week 1!
In student binders, I put these printables that have suggestions for families as they are studying at home throughout the week.
As a parent, I used to have a hard time figuring out what my daughter should be mastering each week and what we could “let go for now” during each tour.
This breaks down what children should be focusing on and mastering each week on all three tours.
Don’t forget… everything for the first week will be emailed to you for free to try!
As I mentioned at the top of this blog post, I absolutely love the Classical Conversations Essentials curriculum for grades 4-6.
However, I have always felt that the curriculum lacks engaging materials, activities, worksheets, etc. to help children master the incredible content it offers.
Each week, I was spending so much time creating my own activities to help my daughter master the material.
I have been writing curriculum and creating activities for my classroom students for years, and I am so excited to pivot and create engaging resources to use at home with my own kiddos.
I have heard multiple times that going through Essentials your first year is like trying to drink from a fire hose.
I couldn’t agree more!
But with these lesson slides, weekly overview pages, worksheets, games, etc. it truly doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
I have created everything for Weeks 1-24, however, I am still working on formatting them and writing the lesson guides to share.
Right now, I only have some of these materials ready to share!
Click the pictures below or visit my homeschool resource shop HERE on Teachers Pay Teachers or HERE on Etsy.
All 24 weeks of EEL resources will be available very soon!
I am writing additional blog posts and making videos to share how I am teaching.
This upcoming year, my children will be in kindergarten, 3rd grade, 5th grade and 8th grade.
I plan to share what I am teaching for all four of them!
Visit my Pre-K Homepage or 1st Week of Kindergarten blog for ideas.
I love reading about how other mamas teach their children at home, and now I am excited to share our journey with you as well.
I just setup these pages in June 2024, so I am still working on sharing pictures and videos of what I’ve been creating over this past year.
Be sure to follow along as I can’t wait to share everything with you in the coming weeks… resources, organization tip, FREEBIES and more!