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does this sound ok for 4th grade?
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This is what I’m thinking of doing for 4th grade DD next year. Do this sound like enough? There’s not much written work…should I add more somewhere?
Math Mammoth 4
English Lessons Through Literature 3 (grammar, copywork, picture study, poems, some writing exercises which we may or may not do…will skip the dictation)
Spelling Wisdom + memorizing some spelling rules (I want to use this something like Spelling You See because she’s not a great speller and it didn’t seem like using dictation this year helped at all…so I’ll have her do the passage as copywork 3 days and mark the vowel chunks, etc with highlighters so she can see them better, and as dictation the 4th day)
Story of the World 4 + a few go-alongs + Truthquest for the commentary
God’s Design for Life + narration (I think only 1 or 2 of the 3 books…want to spread this over 2 years and add living books and maybe some other science as well)
memory work
personal Bible reading
family devotions and character studies
nature study (in theory…this hasn’t happened very often in practice)
free read booklist
Literature (Robin Hood & King Arthur books by Pyle or Green, Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales)
Exploring Planet Earth
Might add English from the Roots Up flashcards, a weekly drawing lesson, composer studies, Story Starters for creative writing, The Fun Spanish, and/or map drills in there somewhere. They’re on my list, but it sounds like a lot when I try to schedule it all in, and I really, really don’t want to feel overwhelmed next year.
I’ll share my plans for my rising fourth grader. Similar in a lot of ways…
-History: SOTW Audio, Stories of the Nations 2, Stories of America 2, some short independent reads; also, I want him to begin his own timeline this year
-Science: Sassafras Anatomy with either the lapbook or the logbook
-Grammar: English Lessons Through Literature 3 – using the printable workbook for copywork; listen to the literature selections on audio
-Spelling: All About Spelling; we have not done any spelling up until now, and this child is not a natural speller. I think having some rules in place (and possibly transitioning to prepared dictation later) will help him.
-Reading: Daily reading aloud with me. We alternate between a book I choose and a book he chooses. He is a fluent reader, but a reluctant reader.
-IEW: Just because our co-op is offering it; we are going to take it very slow.
-Math: Complete Teaching Textbooks 5, begin TT6; math facts with Xtra Math
-Co-op: Weekly memory work (8 subjects)
-Religion: Scripture memory, Cub Scout religious emblem
Extras include
– Nature Study: we’re doing Pond & Stream through the summer and into the fall
-Music: he is finishing up with some piano work and will begin guitar in the fall
-Artist/Poetry Study as a family
-Shakespeare: one play as a family
Looks great to me – theonly thing I can think of that you didn’t list is art/artist study and music/music study.
But don’t feel pressured! If you don’t think you can fit it in, it’s ok to do those sporadically!
Can you give me a guesstimate on how much time you spend on schoolwork in a day?
I planned out 6th grade for my oldest daughter and estimated the time and it looks like (if we have a “perfect day”) we’ll spend 2 hours doing family subjects and my oldest will have 2.5 hours of individual work.
Is that normal? 4.5 hours seem like a lot, but 6th grade seems to be a little more serious than elem., you know? We live in PA, so I do need to keep track of either days or hours (I track days). So I feel like I must do my best to give our girls a good education.
In Colorado a home school day was considered to be four hours, just to give you an idea. The actual amount of book work during this time would vary widely based on each home school. I found that fifth grade and up four hours started to gradually increase to about six hours for high schoolers. This varied widely based on the individual. My boys took much longer, because they didn’t go after it, and stay on task. If your child is a struggling learner, you may need to set timers and allow them to stop once they have exerted enough effort for the day.
I’m from PA as well. I track days. As long as you have the required subjects covered, you don’t need to worry about time. I have a daughter going to sixth, but I have to adapt the work because of dyslexia, math delays, and other processing issues. I sometimes feel because she is behind what would be considered ‘grade level’, I need to add things to help her catch up. All that does is bring frustration to our days because it drags out the school day. And it does not get her any farther ahead. What I like about CM is the short lesson philosophy. Too much information at one time can backfire. For example, I have planned what we are using this fall, but I need to make sure I don’t overload my daughter with the language arts. I have 5 different books I am using for grammar, phonics (because of the dyslexia), spelling, reading, and writing. I know I cannot use all 5 every day. I haven’t decided how I will arrange them, but I want to make sure that we are spacing things out so that she can absorb the information she is given each day. I can’t say how much time we spend in the books. Because of attention problems, I need to give more breaks. I’ve been learning as I go with her difficulties, but even with a child who doesn’t have an LD, be careful of overload.
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