Question about diagramming

[Laudo]

We're doing First Form Latin this year. I am wondering how important the diagramming is. I have been kind of skipping it simply because I run out of time and that's the thing that gets skipped. Will there be diagramming on the National Latin Exam? Will there be grammar concepts my son will not learn well if he skips diagramming?
Thanks.

[jeremiah213]

If there's anything that could be skipped it's the diagramming. The thing is that diagramming is really valuable in languages like English where the word for cat looks the same regarless of what grammatical function it's filling... subject, object, possessive... it's alway spelled cat.

But in Latin the endings actually show you the grammatical function of the word, I think pictures, physically arranging the words in diagramming is really helpful for kids, but if you're noticing that they are looking at the endings of the Latin words and are able to tell you what the word is doing based on that ending then you are fine to skip it... other wise if they have difficulty with that, you may want to make some extra time for it.

Glen