Fourth Grade Curriculum: Language Arts, et al

Going by the title, one would think that this post would be very short. One would be wrong.

I'm grouping all things language related into this post: Literature, Grammar, Spelling, Writing, Penmanship, and Latin! Here we go:

Literature

Since our history time frame this year is from 1850 to the present, this is the year I'm going to cover all nine of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. We've already done Farmer Boy. The remaining eight will be covered one each month loosely using the suggested study helps and activities from this book:

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Grammar

We didn't finish this whole book from last year, so we'll take care of that this year.

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SPELLING

J is a strong speller. In the future I will use his writing as a guide for checking on his spelling, but right now I'm using random spelling books that I pick up at sales to see where he might be weak. This year's book of choice is this one:

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WRITING

J loves to write. His writing skills have been surprisingly good considering his age. I attribute that to the huge amounts of reading he's always done. Now it's time to make sure that he has the tools he needs to be a REALLY good writer. At some point in the future (junior high?) I hope to have him ready to spend a year writing a novel. We need to make sure he has everything he needs at the ready when the time comes.

I picked up this Evan-Moor book at a sale because it looked like it laid things out in an attractive, thorough way.

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Just for fun I'm going to have him do a monthly report using this book (also from Evan-Moor):

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PENMANSHIP

J's printing and cursive has evolved over the years. I think he wrote more neatly in first grade than he does now! I know that computers are the future. I know that good handwriting is useful but no longer holds the same level of respect it once had. Still, I feel that the discipline and artistry of good handwriting is a good thing. Once a week I will have him carefully copy passages from his favorite books with the understanding that I'm looking for the muscle control and attention to detail.

He may not agree with the need. That's OK. I'm the mama.

LATIN

I am still completely enamored with the Latin course I discovered last year. We completed Book 1 and J has kept up with his vocabulary charts over the summer. We're ready for Book 2 now!

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My husband and I have a plan for J's foreign language studies. He will continue to study Latin through the 12th grade. We hope that continuing with Latin will give him a huge help in learning on several levels: history, science, English, other Romance languages and general educational value. It would also be cool to be able to read some of the classics. I know he'll pass me up fairly quickly as I don't have the time to study that he does. That's OK. He can translate for me.

Back to the plan. Beginning in fifth grade, we're going to do four years of Spanish. I've take a little Spanish, so I at least have a basic understanding of form and pronunciation. Fluent I am not. Perhaps I'll be that much closer after we complete the studies.

In 9th grade we are going to let him choose another language to learn. Or more than one. We're going to have him do that completely on his own. With Latin background and a good command of Spanish, this should be a fairly easy transition for him if he chooses a Romance language. If he chooses Japanese or Russian or Swahili, he'll at least won't be afraid to try!

This completes the posts regarding our fourth grade plans. We'll start school officially on October 3rd. It's good to have this finished!

Fourth Grade Curriculum: Bible, Art, and Music

Last year (and throughout the summer) we read through the New Testament. This year we're going to start with the book of Proverbs for the first two months. After that we'll begin reading in Genesis. At some point in the past I was able to download this Old Testament timeline as a freebie ebook. In it the student uses stick figures to help take them through the layout of the Old Testament. It's really cute and provides memory cues.

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In December we'll take a break from the OT reading and go through the Advent story. We did this last year and J wanted to do it again, he enjoyed it so much. I've also got a couple of activity books for Easter that I may go through.

Art

In the past we've studied artists and done lots of crafts using wonderful books such as MaryAnn F. Kohl's Discovering Great Artists. You can see examples of J's artwork using that book HERE, HERE,and HERE,

This year we're going to concentrate on increasing his drawing skills using some "how to draw" books to give him new techniques.  It's a good thing I've got a lot of paper. 

MUSIC

I play the piano, so I will continue to give J piano lessons. Regardless of a person's natural abilities regarding music, my opinion is that at least one year of piano lessons is a useful thing to anyone. Therefore, J will be taking lessons until. It's good for him! If he wants to write his own music in the future, knowing how to play the piano will make that a lot easier.

His true love, though, is the drums.

My husband plays the trumpet, guitar, violin, and has a fantastic singing voice. I play the piano, flute, and have a mediocre singing voice. What does our son, our only child, our flesh and blood want to play? The drums.

So, for this year we're going to use a video series for lessons. He has a natural aptitude for them (I might try to upload an audio some time if you're game), but I can take him only so far. Soon we'll need to get someone to teach him actually knows what they're doing!

The final post for this series will be about my intention to cover many facets of language.

Fred and J

I'd like to introduce you to a new friend of J's. His name is Fred. Fred Gauss. (Rhymes with "house.") He's 5 1/2 years old and is a professor in Mathematics.

We met Fred a couple of months ago and he assured me that he could help J overcome his distaste for all things math. Fred has lived up to his word!

The books are entertaining, yet they're written so that it's clear that math is important to everyday life. It's important to be pretty well versed in the addition and multiplication facts, but the rest seems to make so much sense to J that he's absorbing the processes along with the stories. (He quotes passages from the stories when the mood hits him.)

The series currently begins with Fractions (lower grade math books are supposed to be for sale soon) and moves through Decimals and Percents, Pre-Algebra, then Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and finally Calculus, Statistics, and finally Linear Algebra!

According to the website, this means all the way through to college math. We're both very excited about this possibility.

There are a LOT of good reviews and I am adding my own "thumbs up" from our experience so far.

One thing that many families commented about was that there didn't seem to be enough review. I think I may have an answer to that. If you're using Life of Fred and want to know my take on that, please leave a comment and I'll fill you in.

If you're intrigued, please use the following links for more information:

Books for sale with descriptions of every volume.

Reviews from Amazon.

Reviews from Homeschooling families.

Cathy Duffy review.

Fourth Grade Curriculum: Geography, History, Science, and Math

Another year, another custom-made curriculum. This is my fourth for J. I absolutely love it! As I've said before (if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know this), I would find a boxed curriculum stifling. It works for a lot of people, but it's just not for me. Of course, that means a WHOLE lot more work for me on the front end, but I'm delighted to get to do it. I find it, well, fun!

For those who are interested, I'm going to break this subject down into three separate posts because, believe me, it is a lot of material. It's a good mixture (I think) of the challenging, enjoyable, and stimulating. If knowing my plans for the next school year would cause you to glaze over in boredom, the title will give you advance notification and you can wait for non-curriculum posts which will follow this series.

In this post, I've grouped together the four areas of Geography, History, Science, and Math.

GEOGRAPHY

J has a really great handle on how the world is divided up since we went through it a few years ago. Now I'd like to build on his previous exposure and enjoy doing a continent a month. Beginning in October, the order will be North America, Australia, Antarctica, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Krypton.

Each month we'll head to the library and just absorb everything we can about each continent. There might even be some activities and food tasting. What? Oh, you noticed an 8th continent? Well, we had an extra month and I asked J if he wanted to do something different. He did. He decided that we'd study Krypton and its 14 continents. This should be interesting.

HISTORY

We've been working through history chronologically using Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World series. I did not use the workbooks or the test books that she also provides. Instead, we read the series and then went to the library to add to our knowledge with a variety of books. After that, J's imagination would run amuck which would solidify the information in his mind. HERE is an example of the results of learning about the Ishtar Gates and HERE shows how he absorbed what he learned about Egypt. This totally works for us!

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SCIENCE

In following the suggested order of presentation from The Well-Trained Mind, the history and science time periods match up. This year we're studying Physics. I decided, since we're only at elementary level, to use this book about Isaac Newton that includes experiments and

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THIS really cool book! The lady who does our end-of-the-year evaluation recommended it. We'll do one experiment a week out of this book.

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MATH

We'll be enjoying learning with a mathematics professor whose name is Fred. I will do a separate post about him in a few days. J and I LOVE Fred.

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Post 2 of 3 will be about Bible, Art, and Music.