Grammar is one of my children’s least favorite subjects. They moan and groan whenever it’s time to pull out their grammar workbooks. This is probably a sign that I should set aside the “pound it into their head” method of review, review, review and try something new. I often find that my high school students need a light refresher course as they begin to write more advanced papers. I usually set aside our normal curriculum at this point and use a different style to tie together what they’ve learned and help them apply it in their own writing.

Let’s Eat Fifi, by Sharon Watson, is a light-hearted and straightforward grammar refresher course for junior high and senior high school students. The 92 page e-book arrives as a PDF document download, which you save to your computer, and will require Adobe Acrobat to view. I highly recommend backing up the e-book by saving it onto a USB drive or some other backup device. I’ve lost so much digital curriculum in recent computer crashes because I hadn’t saved them elsewhere.

Let’s Eat Fifi doesn’t cover the different parts of speech, or all the grammar rules, so I do not consider it a stand-alone grammar curriculum. It works very well for review with older students who have already covered the grammar basics. The book is divided into 23 short lessons that a student can work through on their own with a review exercise for each lesson. The answer key is included at the end of the book. The exercises instruct the student to edit/correct sentences using editing marks, so this e-book will need to be printed out for the most effective use. A secondary benefit of printing and completing these lessons is that Let’s Eat Fifi can also serve as a reference. When they are writing or editing, students can refer back to the appropriate lessons to help them punctuate and use words correctly.

The lessons in Let’s Eat Fifi can be used as a month-long daily study to kick off the start of a school year, or as a once-a-week lesson to help build writing skills and refresh grammar knowledge throughout the school year. I personally found it most helpful for my sons to tackle about 3 lessons per week, and move through the book more quickly. This helps keep up the momentum and forms a solid foundation for them to build on as they continue in their writing lessons for the year. I really appreciate the focus toward the end of the lessons on effective word usage and writing in a strong, active voice. These tips are helpful in teaching our students to write clearly and powerfully.

Sharon Watson uses a friendly tone when writing to our students and explains things clearly. Her sentences and passages she chooses for editing are interesting, and sometimes funny. My sons both enjoyed the style of the lessons much more than the review-heavy drill worksheets we had previously used. I prefer it over the two other programs I have used for that final grammar review in high school.

Let’s Eat Fifi is affordable, reusable, enjoyable, and user friendly. In other words, it’s “practically perfect in every way.”

-Product review by April Elstrom, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, September, 2016