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    With the Robinson Curriculum, students 10 years old, or older, are required to write a one page essay daily.  The parent then corrects the essay for errors, and the next day, the student corrects their errors before writing the next essay.
    To prepare a student for writing an essay, the youngest students begin learning to write with penmanship pages.  Penmanship pages are included on the Robinson CD's, you can buy penmanship workbooks, or you can use these links to find other sources for learning penmanship.

    Once they know how to print well, they then begin copywork from a well-written book.  It is best to start off small with just one or two sentences at a time.  When they are ready for cursive, cursive penmanship pages are started, and then copywork using cursive.  If a young student chooses to write their own essay, they may do so -- but it is not required until the age of 10.  Until the age of 10 let them read a lot, and copy from good quality books.  This process alone teaches good grammar and spelling in an informal way.
      For my 7 year old, to help her notice the punctuation and capitalization, I have her color code the punctuation and capitol letters.  I printed out an extra McGuffey Primer for her to write in.  When I printed it, I printed it on full-sized paper without increasing the size of the print.  I then had wide margins on each side of the paper to write or print out directions on what to do on each page.  One new activity is gradually added.  (For those who do not have the Robinson Curriculum, you can use any source of print that is all right for someone to write on.  The larger the print the better.)

Starting at lesson 1:    Circle all capitol letters brown.
Starting at lesson 3:    Circle all periods red.
Starting at lesson 5:    Circle all question marks green.
Starting at lesson 8:    Circle all exclamation marks purple.
Starting at lesson 11:  Circle all commas orange.
Starting at lesson 18:  Circle all apostrophes blue.
Starting at lesson 19:  Circle all semicolons pink.
Starting at lesson 36:  Circle all quotation marks black

    Later, I plan to do something similar with the First McGuffey reader, only we will color code the nouns, subjects, verbs and etc.  Again one new activity will be added gradually.

All subjects will be circled red.
All verbs will be circled green. (Remember helping verbs too.)
All pronouns not already circled will be circled brown.
All nouns not already circled will be circled orange.
All adjectives will be circled blue.
All adverbs will be circled purple.
All prepositional phrases will be underlined brown.
All conjunctions will be underlined green.
All Interjections will be underlined red.

    Once the student is doing well with copywork, you can then have the student use a tape recorder and read a portion slowly.  Then put the book away and listen to the tape, stopping the tape as necessary, while writing down what they hear.  Then they can get the book again and correct their work on their own, looking for spelling errors, and punctuation errors.
    The updated version of the Robinson Curriculum now contains a spelling book.  You can also buy this spelling book pre-printed at Robinson Books.
    If your child needs more help with spelling you can make spelling list of the words that they misspell a lot.  Again a tape recorder can be used with spelling lists.  I also have books by Dr. Fry on hand.  Dr. Fry has spelling books that contain the most used words of the English language.  In his spelling books he also includes Language Arts sections of:

• phonics - (gives some of the phonics rules needed for correct spelling)
• homophones - (words that sound the same but are spelled differently like meat and meet)
• phonograms - (words that end with the same letters like make and cake)

    The updated version of the Robinson Curriculum now contains grammar books.  You can also buy these grammar books pre-printed at Robinson Books.
    Another book that is excellent for learning Grammar in the Robinson Curriculum style is "Learning Grammar Through Writing" by Sandra M. Bell.  "Learning Grammar Through Writing" covers the different grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling rules.  Proper writing style, and how to write letters are also covered.
    In the book "Learning Grammar Through Writing" all the grammar rules are separated by section, and each rule is given a special code name.  For example all rules about the sentence is in section 5.  The rule that says all statements need to end with a period is given the code name 5c.  (The third rule in the section on sentences.)  If a child forgets a period at the end of a sentence, the parent will then write 5c in the place where the period should be.  The student will then need to look up the rule in the book, read the rule, and then figure out how to correct the mistake.

 Easy Grammar
 Daily Grammar - Sends E-mail messages with a grammar lesson five days of the week and a quiz on the sixth day.

    Memorization and speaking skills are good skills that should be encouraged in the homeschool.  Children can memorize Bible passage, poetry, hymns, and historical documents to recite to other family members at special occasions (Don't force though.)  Sometimes copywork helps a child memorize better.  They can also read the passage and listen to the passage over and over.  The more they hear themselves in the tape recorder, the more they will notice on their own how to make their voice sound better, and how to enunciate words better, and how to add emotion and variety to their voice as they are talking.  Instead of writing all their reports, have them give their reports orally into a tape recorder, and/or in front of a family audience.  Give them a time limit and see how close they can get to the right time without going over.