D#2, HW#7 --- Grammar Assignment

The grammatical problem that I focused on was the appropriate use of commas. I don't know why commas are so confusing. For some reason it seems like this is a problem for a lot of people. When I am looking at a sentence and it doesn't seem quite right a comma seems to be the easy fix. To understand the rules for comma usage I used the Owl Purdue website (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/) for one of my resources. I studied the power point presentation on "conquering the comma". For my second resource I used the grammar girl website (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/). In this website I listened to the lecture on comma splices.

I am not working on any writing at this moment, so this is a very old writing assignment. Corrections to this project are made in red.

“What am I going to be doing today Mommy?” my daughter asks me every morning, and every morning during the chaos of getting ready for work, taking out the dog, and preparing for the day I tell her to go look at her calendar. This calendar is her guide to daily activities hosted by the Summer Camp at Tutor Time which she attends every weekday. Summer day camps are the answer to a lot of working parent’s worries when another school year has flown by, and there are no daily activities for children while their parents are at work. However, finding a day camp that will fit everyone’s needs can be quite a task. As a parent, I want to be able to rely on the facility and the staff to make the summer months convenient with my work schedule. I also want my daughter to be able to relax and enjoy her summer; as well as, develop mentally, socially, and physically during this time. That is why my choice of summer day camp for my daughter is the Summer Camp at Tutor Time. Tutor Time has one of the best summer day camp programs for school aged children because of it’s compliance with state requirements, the activities offered, and the efforts put in to go above and beyond parent’s expectations.

State requirements in Arizona for summer day camps and child care facilities can be found at www.azdhs.gov, they state that all facilities must have a certification, finger print requirements for staff, and are subject to inspections and investigations. The qualifications to gain a certificate are extensive and constantly changing. The key points important specifically for summer day camps are the field trip regulations and transportation guidelines. According to www.azsos.gov section R9-3-412:
“Each motor vehicle used to transport enrolled children is equipped with an operational heating system, an operational air-conditioning, a first-aid kit that meets requirements of R9-3-314, two clean towels or blankets, and drinking water in an amount sufficient to meet the needs of each enrolled child in the motor vehicle and sufficient cups or other drinking receptacles so that each individual in the motor vehicle can drink from a different cup or receptacle.”
This law is very important because children enrolled in summer day camps are often doing activities outside of the day care facility. Field trip requirements have several more contingencies that can also be found at www.azsos.gov in section R9-3-413. Children are not allowed on field trips if the day camp does not have a dated signature from the parent. This signature must be on a permission slip containing information on the child and all information regarding the field trip. Children must also be accounted for at all times. A staff member must keep a checklist of all children and check it before leaving the day camp facility, when arriving at the field trip destination, every hour, when leaving the field trip destination, and again when arriving back at the day camp. Any day care or summer camp program should strictly abide by these rules, and give proof of it to any parent upon their request.

I have learned that when using commas you must have a coordinating conjunction, or you will have a comma splice error. Also, the simple rule to follow when wondering if a comma is needed is to check to see if the sentence can be split into two sentences. If it can and you have the words for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so connecting the two sentences then you need a comma in front of the connecting word.