Homeschool World Forum

Easy Grammar is what I have used with all my kids so far, and I really like it. As the name implies, it is easy. It doesn't take long to do the daily lessons.
Grammar has never been one of my strong points, but I have learned a lot by going through the lessons with my kids (one reason I love homeschooling!)

1.) The lessons can be as short or as long as you want. I think the book says to do one page a day, although I assign more than that, and if you need to go through it quickly, you could do as many pages as necessary. There is review work at the end of each section, so you can see if the child grasps the info, or if you need to go over it again (if you are covering the material quickly)
2.) My 5th and 7th graders are currently going through it (it does have multitple levels).
3.) If he needs extra work, there is a companion book called Daily Grams. Or you could go through 2 books in double time.
4.) This has covered the material needed for the achievement tests our kids have to take. In Oregon we have to test at 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th grade. We take the California Achievement Test (CAT). You can buy test prep books that can give you an idea what material they need to know.

Wow...first grade seems awfully young to be doing much in the way of grammar, let alone diagramming! I don't start with much in the way of formal grammar until around 3rd grade or so. They do get a little (very little) grammar in the readers and workbooks we use, but mostly at that age all I focus on is reading (as far as language arts is concerned).

I'll be honest, I've always found formal grammar instruction horribly boring and pointless. Kids learn it just long enough to pass the test, then promptly forget most of it because they don't need to know what x, y, z parts of speech are in real life. Diagramming is even worse. What is far better than grammar instruction, in my opinion, is just doing some writing / dictation at least every few days. This builds not only grammar skills, but spelling, punctuation, penmanship, etc. If you really must cover grammar separate from everything else, start your child on learning a second language - this teaches grammar far better than any English language text will ever do, since you have to learn the parts of speech to learn a new language, and the material will stick with you a lot better as a result.

I'm speaking from personal experience, since while I'm a decent writer and can rearrange a sentence so it's written properly, I didn't retain anything but the most basic formal grammar. The only time I really learned grammar was when I did two years of Latin.

Diagramming didn't do anything except make me miserable.

I agree with Theodore for the most part, although I have found that some of what I have learned from teaching my kids grammar has helped me be more aware of proper sentence structure (not that I always use it! ). We use Easy Grammar which is, as the name implies, easy. It seems to have taught them what they need to know for the testing we are required to do here in Oregon, and I have a better understanding of grammar for having taught it.