Would you like to introduce grammar, punctuation, and other language arts skills to your first grader, without spending a lot of time on a full-blown program? Or would you like to reinforce the language arts skills you're teaching your first grader with a quick daily practice? Either way, I believe you will find Evan-Moor's Daily Language Review a great addition to your resource shelf.

With 36 weeks of Monday through Friday activities, this book will fill up your school year with grammar, punctuation, sentence editing, spelling, and reading comprehension. Each day's mini-lesson, Monday through Thursday, has four questions ranging from fill-in-the-blank to circling the correct answer to rewriting sentences correctly. Friday's lessons are a bit different in that they focus on a particular activity, such as categorizing a list of words or sequencing a group of sentences.

There is a little chart provided each week for the student to keep track of their correct answers. By the end of the week, if they have kept up with the chart each day, the final product becomes a bar graph for them to see how well they did that week. Of course, the chart is completely optional and not necessary for keeping up with the daily lessons.

The lessons could be completed in the book, but they are reproducible as well. Each day's lesson takes up a half page. If you choose to copy the lessons, cutting them apart and stapling them into a little booklet for the week would make for a nice weekly record. On the other hand, I found that many of the lessons could be completed orally if you so desire.

Depending on the ability of the first grader, the lessons most likely can be finished in five minutes or less. In case mom has a hard time knowing the answer, an answer key is provided in the back of the book. A nice scope and sequence of the skills covered each week is provided too.

A small section of hints for a classroom teacher is found at the beginning of the book, but otherwise, the lessons are completely appropriate for a home setting. If you plan to test your children using one of the national SAT-type tests, the publishers believe this would be a good preparation for those.

A daily dose of quick language review never hurt anyone! If you begin grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, contractions, and such as early as the first grade, this would make a nice addition to the program you already use. I believe with a little daily instruction before the lessons, it could make for a complete beginning language curriculum by itself as well.

Product review by Cindy West, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, May 2008