i have to admit, when i titled this blog post i was overcome with emotion. the fact that we not only have a 9 year old but also a 4th grader has me at a loss for words. i remember the very day jax came into this world as if it happened yesterday and i just can't believe 9 years have already passed us by. what i would give to turn back the clock or pause time.
i know so many of you can relate. but here we are and 4th grade here we come!
let's talk about our 4th grade curriculum picks and our plans for the year.
we are eclectic homeschoolers. for those who may not know what that is, it basically means that we do not school using one specific approach, we use several. i would say the majority of our approach follows the charlotte mason method and philosophy but we also fall into wild and free and a tad classical. it honestly is a really great balance for the way our son learns and for our families lifestyle. so with all of the materials i am sharing with you today, you will notice the variety in the choices we made and how we go about using them.
first up is our morning basket.
for our morning basket, i like to include a variety of enrichment such as poetry, art (picture) study, composers, bible, read alouds, etc. and this year we'll be adding shakespeare to that list as well.
with our morning basket we have things that we do on a daily basis and things that we have on a loop schedule. for those who don't know what a loop schedule is, its basically a list of subjects that you rotate. you cover one subject daily, moving on to the next the following day and so on until your list is completed and then you start over again. this ensures that you get to all of your subjects throughout the week.
our daily enrichment subjects are:
bible
read aloud
our loop subjects are:
shakespeare
composers
art (picture) study
book of virtues
treasury of inspirational stories
i also sometimes add in mindfulness activities, breathing exercises or some yoga to our morning basket when i think our day will need it or if it had a rough start and is in need of a reset.
here is a list of the books we'll be using for shakespeare and what i am using as a teachers guide:
how to teach your children shakespeare
a stage full of shakespeare stories
bard of avon, the story of william shakespeare
for poetry we'll be using:
favorite poems old and new
selected poems of robert frost
i sat by the sea
for bible we have several things we'll be using but we will be spreading these out over the course of our full school year.
here's what we're using:
i really love the choices i made this year for bible. i truly want to be intentional this year with having important conversations with my son. he is getting older and i feel that he is ready for topics like personal anatomy, personal hygiene, puberty,
emotional regulation, protecting his purity, etc. so i chose growing up with god for boys by gather round homeschool because they really do an amazing job of covering those topics that some of us may not be sure how to approach appropriately. i also want to focus in on character and really helping my son grow in his relationship with god so i think all of our choices will help with that as well.
as i mentioned above, we are a very eclectic in our teaching and learning approach so when it comes to choosing things that we will use for our year, i like to choose a couple of things for each subject. this not only gives us flexibility but it also allows us to focus in on different areas and lets us change things up sometimes so that we are not using the same curriculum and books every single day.
so let's dive into language arts.
language arts as a whole consists of several different parts. reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing and visual representation. in our homeschool i like to break these topics apart rather then only using one language arts curriculum.
this year we will be using the following to cover all of our areas of language arts:
language lessons for a living education by masterbooks, we'll use this for learning new skills and practicing them. i found this curriculum to be very gentle so i felt it would be a good fit for my son and i also liked the fact that the lessons were very short which would give us room to add in an activity, game or something hands on to bring the lesson to life.
for grammar, we will continue reading grammar land and using the worksheets that tie in with it. we read several chapters this past year and my son really enjoyed it and caught on to the parts of speech really well. we will also be using simply grammar which is a charlotte mason approach to grammar. i would say the best way to describe it, it's "living grammar". what i mean by that is that it's not the tedious workbook approach to grammar but rather an uncomplicated, lively, mind-engaging, interactive approach that introduces your child to grammar concepts through the use of spoken language. really excited to dive into this book.
writing we'll be tackling in several different ways. this is my sons least favorite subject, so it's an area where i have to be extremely creative and gentle in my approach.
we will also be reading
writing magic by gail carson levine. this one i'm pretty excited about. this book is a great way to introduce writing and it is filled with advice and guidance across a range of ages. it will show you how to get terrific ideas for writing stories, inventing great beginnings and endings, how to write great dialogue, develop memorable characters and so much more. i really think this book will help my son in the areas of writing that are challenging for him and god-willing give him a new found love of writing.
for vocabulary we'll be using
vocabulary cartoons which are mnemonics designed for learning new words. in case you don't know what a mnemonic is, it's a fancy word which simply means "assisting the memory". this book uses rhyming mnemonics (a form of word association where you rhyme a word you want to learn with a word you already know) and visual mnemonics (pictures in your head). memory experts say mnemonics are just about the best way to remember anything, so we'll be giving this a try. very curious to see how this plays out.
lastly for language arts we have spelling. for spelling we'll continue using
all about spelling.
this year we're using level 4. i have to say, we love this curriculum. we've been using it since we began homeschooling and it has taught my son so much about spelling and the important rules needed in order to spell words that we cannot sound out. however, the only change i am making this year is that i am adding some written independent practice with
building spelling skills by christian liberty press. all about spelling is currently in the process of creating workbooks for their spelling curriculum however they only currently have up to level 2. so i did my best to find a workbook that tied in well with the lessons he will be learning in all about spelling this year.
so that completes the area of language arts!
next up is science.
for science i like to take a unit study approach instead of purchasing a full years worth of curriculum that gives us its own line up of topics to cover. my reason for this is because i feel that this offers us flexibility in learning and also gives us room for child-lead learning, meaning if there is something that my son wants to research and explore in science we can easily jump in and do that without feeling constrained and tied down to a specific curriculum.
we love using the unit studies from the good and the beautiful. they are very well written and offer a variety of learning on different topics.
this year we are diving into the following units:
health and the human mind
safety
weather and water
health and the physical body
i love the variety of topics we'll be covering this year. science is one of my sons favorite subjects so i think this will keep things interesting and spark even more curiosity and learning.
now let's talk math.
for math this year we are taking a completely new approach. for the last three years, we have used singapore math which we loved, however math is not my forte. so with jax going into 4th grade i feel confident in my decision to hand it over to him learning on an online program called teaching textbooks. jax is great at math, so i feel that giving him the freedom to learn independently will really work for him. we will still work on some skills together and i will also be giving him practice assignments in his math notebook to follow up with whatever he is learning on teaching textbooks. my son also really enjoys bringing math to life with hands on activities and practice so for that we will use learning games, wood learning boards, our jack and link erase grid, etc.
for art, i am in the process of writing my own art curriculum which you can read about here. so we'll be using that curriculum for art this year, along with jax participating in the art classes that i will be giving at brooklyn homeschoolers. jax also takes cartooning drawing lessons at litte pulp art studio so he will continue with those lessons come august. i am also planning some really fun field trips to the museum of modern art, the metropolitan museum of art, the guggenheim museum, etc. so the inspiration will be flowing!!
and for music my son will continue with piano lessons at hoffman academy until we change over to in-person lessons with a piano teacher.
last but not least, we have history.
this year we will be studying american history and we will be taking a unit study approach. i did not purchase a history curriculum for the very same reason that i did not purchase a science curriculum. i wanted the flexibility in learning and also wanted room for child-lead learning,
meaning if there is something that my son wants to research and explore we can easily jump in and do that without feeling constrained
and tied down to a specific curriculum.
we'll be using
the united states, it's history and neighbors as our spine (where i pull all of the topics we will cover). as we are learning about different topics in american history, i will be tying in geography so that we also explore the state that the occurrence took place in and as we learn about the history of america we will note it down in our
history timeline notebook. i will also be throwing in some world history through out the year where we will explore different countries, their cultures, foods, lifestyle, etc. we will use our
letters from afar as the spine for this and then tie in lots of books and documentaries.
and that's a wrap y'all. those are our picks and plans for our 4th year of homeschooling.
my most important goal for this year however, is to be intentional with our time. i do not want to get wrapped up in the pressures of thinking we need to cover a ton of subjects every day in order to say that we learned that day. i want learning to come from a variety of things such as playing games together, read alouds, field trips, art projects, extra curricular activities, nature walks, etc.
learning doesn't have to happen within four walls.
i want the world to be our classroom.
skies the limit.
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