Christmas in Luke: A Free Sentence Diagramming Challenge

This year, the Grammar Nerds Club Winter Challenge is back- with all-new content!

We’re going straight to the heart of Christmas by focusing on the birth of our Savior as recorded in the book of Luke. This free downloadable set includes 12 sentence diagramming cards based on Bible verses from Luke chapters 1 and 2.

Each card features:

• A sentence inspired by Scripture

• The original Bible verse listed on the card so students can follow along in God’s Word

• A progression designed for easy to medium diagramming practice

In most cases, the sentences have been lightly paraphrased to make diagramming more accessible, especially for younger or newer students, while still preserving the meaning of the text.

This set is perfect for adding meaningful grammar practice to your Christmas school or for slowing down and savoring these familiar passages in a new way. Download the free set now!

Looking for an Extra Challenge?

If you have an advanced grammar student (or just love a good diagramming stretch), I’ve included two bonus sentences below.

These verses are taken directly from the ESV translation of Luke, with no paraphrasing. Diagramming straight from the Bible can be challenging- and these sentences rise to the occasion! At the same time, breaking down these well-known verses can be a true blessing. Studying their structure closely often deepens our understanding of what is being said and how beautifully it is expressed.

The first advanced sentence comes from Luke 1:31:

The second advanced sentence comes from Luke 2:16:

Want Answers?

The completed diagrams for both advanced sentences are provided below, so students can check their work, or you can walk through the structure together step by step.

My prayer is that this Christmas season will be a blessing to you and your family as you dig into God’s Word and celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Merry Christmas from Grammar Nerds Club!

Want More Christmas Diagramming Sentence Fun?

Check out our Christmas Brashcard Sets!

I am currently homeschooling the five of my six children who have not yet graduated high school.  The youngest is 11, so all of them are typing weekly papers and managing a myriad of assignments.  Sometimes they need help simultaneously, and I’ve found that our homeschool day is most efficient if everyone has a flat work surface, plenty of space to stack books for each subject, and a computer for each 1-2 students.

I personally love when my kids are all within my line of sight so that I can make sure we are all on task and so that I’m accessible when they need assistance.  Once we’ve done our “together subjects,” devotions, and read alouds each day, we go to our work spaces.  Our home has an open floor plan with a long dining table, a smaller kitchen table, and a computer desk in the dining room, so we all have room to spread out.  I usually also have a kid sprawled on a sofa with books spread on the coffee table.  (When it’s afternoon clean-up time, we clear all the surfaces and stow our books in IKEA rolling carts or individual backpacks.) 

The family computer is on the dining room desk, and I’ve bookmarked the sites they may freely use:  CCConnected, Google Drive, RightNow Media, CNN10, Latin With Andy, Teaching Textbooks math curriculum, and several others that are appropriate for their areas of study.  

One student is typically on that computer, one is on my desktop or laptop, I am on my other machine, and we have a student laptop if a fourth device is needed.  Everyone can log into their Google Drives, and since Google uses live docs, I can follow their progress at every moment.  We can collaborate and type notes to one another within a document.  I can help with editing and formatting, and I can also copy and paste templates from older siblings’ Drives if a younger student is new to lab reports or a certain type of assignment. 

It’s difficult to multitask and manage multiple grade levels of homeschoolers (especially now that my students are all in middle school and high school, which kind of messed with our “one-room schoolhouse” of elementary school years), but Google Drive has been a wonderful tool for this season of learning in our home.

I have six children (currently ages 11-19).  When they were young I went ahead and opened a Google account for each of them and saved the passwords.  Throughout the year it is easy to email them funny stories that I would otherwise forget, photographs, and keepsakes that they will enjoy when I turn the account over to them in their teen years.

Our family belongs to a Classical Conversations homeschooling community, and Google Drive is a wonderful place to store their Essentials assignments, Lost Tools of Writing papers, history timeline document, and other CC projects each year.

I put the following folders in their Google Drives with additional folders nested in each one:

• Essentials
• 1st Tour IEW Papers
• 2nd Tour IEW Papers
• 3rd Tour IEW Papers
• Faces of History (contains the assignments as well as photos of our community’s event)
• Challenge A
• Grammar:  Latin A
• Logic:  Math
• Research
• Reasoning:  Analogies
• Debate:  Cartography
• Exposition:  Literature/LTW papers
• Challenge B (also with folders of six CC strands/subjects)
• Challenge I (also with folders of six CC strands/subjects)
• Challenge II (also with folders of six CC strands/subjects)
• Challenge III (also with folders of six CC strands/subjects)
• Challenge IV (also with folders of six CC strands/subjects)

Google Drive is an easy way to store my kids’ work without having to print, file, or store reams of paper.  It’s a very simple method for record keeping and also makes a treasured keepsake for them when they live on their own someday.

Diagramming is stereotypically an exercise that is enjoyed by only the most extreme grammar nerds and teacher's pets.  But I want to show you how diagramming can appeal to a myriad of students with differing strengths and interests.

Diagramming is a science that can be appreciated not only by grammar nerds but also by STEM brains, as it is the single most logical exercise performed by students of language. It helps us to make logical connections, understand the meaning of text, and easily spot errors in writing. Would a math whiz enjoy bringing geometry into grammar? The act of assembling words into a physical structure can help a student to logically comprehend how everything fits together.

As a child my brother Jason loved taking things apart. My mom would find her calculators and small kitchen appliances stowed under furniture, disassembled into dozens of pieces. She began purchasing old gadgets at yard sales to inexpensively quench his appetite for taking things apart and fiddling with the individual components, attempting to either put them back together or, better yet, form something entirely new and superior to the original structure.  

The student who loves to examine small parts of a whole can appreciate the science of diagramming and fitting words together in an orderly, logical fashion. When you give your student a sentence to diagram, you are teaching him analytical reasoning: how to disassemble something, observe each of its component parts, and fit it all back together.

The art of diagramming appeals to artists as much as mathematicians. The jumble of straight lines, curved lines, angles, and words form a structure that is as beautiful as it is logical.  

Students who are visual learners benefit from seeing an idea spread out before them. As charts and graphs help a student to organize information spatially, diagrams assist him with visualizing the possibilities that a jumble of words presents.

A sentence is a multi-dimensional puzzle that can not only be taken apart and put back together again, but can also be manipulated in such a way to increase pleasure for its author as well as its reader. When one fully understands this tool called diagramming, he has full power to thrill readers as a master wordsmith. When he understands how words relate to other words, he has more control over the process and can eloquently and masterfully communicate with the written word after finding the perfect combination of nouns, verbs, and modifiers.  

If you assume that your student will find diagramming too boring, difficult, or useless, I encourage you to present this dialectic exercise to him with enthusiasm. The skill of diagramming is an implement that will prove to be an asset in any student's toolbox.

If you are in search of an engaging way for your students to practice diagramming sentences, check out our Brashcards! 

Last year's challenge included 20 sentences that accompanied the book Detectives in Togas. We also provided a downloadable packet of resources for teachers and tutors that included Brash sticker charts, flyers for parents (with instructions on printing their downloads), Clubhouse ID cards (punch cards), and Brash Ca$h.

In preparation for this year's challenge, we'd love some feedback from our Brashcard fans. Which of the following books would you like to see our #WinterBrashcardsChallenge feature? Put your choice in the comments, and let us know if you used these successfully last year with Detectives in Togas!

• King Arthur:  Tales from the Round Table
• One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
• The King's Shadow
• Robin Hood
• The Door in the Wall
• Adam of the Road
• Crispin:  The Cross of Lead

Check out all of our Brashcards!

Every sentence you'll encounter fits one (or more) of these patterns no matter how simple or complex the sentence may be. But how do these sentence patterns relate to Brashcards? We're glad you asked! 

Once you've diagrammed a sentence, all you have to do is look at the main baseline of the diagram to identify its pattern. Although a sentence may have multiple modifiers (e.g. adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases) that branch off the baseline, a student will easily be able to see all of the pieces that make up the heart of the sentence and quickly identify which of the 7 patterns it is.

The diagram above from our Ancient History Brashcards set illustrates a compound-complex sentence that has 4 separate clauses representing 3 of the sentence patterns. Although it's fairly complex with multiple modifiers and even a gerund, notice the light grey designations for sentence patterns under each verb, which are shown in blue. These sentence patterns clearly reflect what you find on the baseline of each clause:

• Augustus Caesar became emperor (Subject + Linking Verb + Predicate Nominative)
• who was Octavian (Subject + Linking Verb + Predicate Nominative)
• he commanded taxing (Subject + Transitive Verb + Direct Object)
• which resulted (Subject + Intransitive Verb)

So identifying sentence patterns is easy once you complete your diagram, and Brashcards make it simple to check your work! Next time, we'll discuss how the color-coding of Brashcards helps students easily identify parts of speech!

That's an awesome deal. It's basically the same cost as two really fancy cups of coffee or whatever type of decadent treat that you occasionally enjoy. Like that fancy coffee, you don't have to have our cards to teach your students how to diagram sentences, but they sure to do make it enjoyable and add something special to what otherwise might seem like drudgery. Unlike that fancy coffee, once you buy them, you have them forever!

And our Ancient History set is just the beginning. With plans for theme-specific sets ranging from science to literature to Bible stories, there's sure to be something that will pique your child's special interest and enhance his understanding of sentence diagrams. Beginning in August, you'll also be able to access a members-only "Clubhouse" with complementary content designed to be used alongside our Brashcards. Our app is currently in development as is a top-secret product that tactile learners are going to adore!

So thanks for stopping by our clubhouse. Please come back on May 1 and check out our first set of Brashcards. We really think you're going to like it here!

The 96-card pack will be available on our website on May 1. Throughout the summer we will release other packs corresponding to different eras in history or classical literature selections. Let us know what kind of Brashcards you’d like to see us release!

If you don't think you can diagram this Week 24 sentence, how about trying to diagram the title of this post? What is the sentence pattern of "Christ is risen!"? What about the purpose and structure? Leave us a comment or give us your own Easter-themed sentence to diagram! 

Specifically, in Page Sizing & Handling, be sure that you've selected:

• Actual size
• Print on both sides of paper
• Flip on short edge

If you'd prefer not to have the diagrams on the backs of the cards, you can just print them one-sided and keep your answer keys in a separate binder or ring. 

Once you've printed your cards and started using them, we'd love to see them in action. Post a photo to our Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #brashcards and share with your fellow grammar nerds!