Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A Saturday Morning Education

My oldest is using Rod and Staff English 7 this year. Apparently, the first few lessons are a review of everything they learned last year.

Also apparent, he's forgotten a few things over the summer.

"Mom, What's an interjection?"
I break out into song: "Interjections show excitement or emotion .They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point,Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong. So when you're happy (Hurray!) or sad (Aw!)Or frightened (Eeeeeek!) or mad (Rats!)Or excited (Wow!) or glad (Hey!)An interjection starts a sentence riiiiiiight."
The 12 year old stared at me and he did that little fast blink thing. "Okaaaaaaay, thanks Mom"

A couple of minutes later....."Mom, Which part of speech connects words, verb phrases, and clauses?"

Yep.....those of you who grew up in the 70's know exactly what's coming next.
"Conjunction junction, What's your function? Hooking up verbs and phrases and clauses. Hey, boy. You know I learned my grammar from Saturday morning cartoons. You might need to watch more TV." He gave me that look that says, "This is why I never ask you anything." and walked back to his school books.

He never asked me about adjectives or adverbs. I would have been ready if he'd asked though. "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly....get your adverbs here."

4 comments:

Pensguys said...

LOL!!!! Yep, I learned my grammar that way too!

Kathy Jo DeVore said...

LOL Yep, me too. :) In fact, we have School House Rock on DVD.

Hopewell said...

Hilarious! I think I know all of those, too!! My whole history class did the preamble by humming it!! My kids give me the same look!

Tish said...

Well, you know Mr. Morton, right? Because Mr. Morton is the subject of my sentence, and what the predicate says, he does. Mr. Morton walksdown the street. Mr. Morton walks.