Do I hafta??

Do I have to get ready for school? Do I have to place my order PDQ so that it arrives in time? Do I have to sit down and figure things out? Do I have to THINK about school?

Argh.

Actually I've got it all planned out except for language arts.

Thomas got his CAT scores back (and yes, he's a brilliant child -- a mother can brag, right?) and something really knocked my socks off. He scored post high school on language expression. I don't even remember what types of questions language expression covered. He got grade level with spelling (I thought it might be lower) and he got grade level with the grammar part -- I forget the correct name of the sub test.

So anyway, I knew this before I got those test results back, but we have to work on English. Yes, we've done Rod and Staff, the "granddaddy of 'em all" but we really hated it and retention started going down the drain. My enthusiasm died shortly at the start of last school year. It was the dreaded subject.

I used to like Rod and Staff. It's a good program. I think I may have blogged how great it was before...but in reality, it's not a very good fit.

So it's time for a crash course. Well, it's time for an intense focus. Now I just can't figure out which books to get.

I'm looking at:

Grammar Rules!
Better Sentence Structure Thru Diagramming 1 and 2

Exercises in English Grammar Book 1
Mechanics of English Straight Forward Series

I'm linking to Christian books and Rainbow, but CB has better samples.

Any comments, thoughts, ideas? Anything better out there?

We need to review parts of speech and mechanics, both. I want something straightforward. I don't want to have to this every single day, like we had to in Rod and Staff (and didn't.)

Thomas will be starting 6th grade. Where does time go? Sixth grade is the time I really start remember being human. lol Now he's there...complete with brand-new pierced ear. (I need to blog about that as soon as I snap a picture! -- traumatic for mom.)