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How do these plans look?
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I’ve been working and reworking our plans for the rest of this year/next year. Due to a rather chaotic schedule these days thanks to appointments, medical travel etc… we need something very quick, easy, and flexible. Something that it really doesn’t matter if we miss a day or two. So, I think this is what we’ll do to finish out grade 3/K (now till end of July, then we’ll break for the month of August, then start grade 4/1, following the traditional school year):
Grade 3:
Daily reading practice, HWT cursive, copywork, oral narrations, math (we decided to purchase Shiller math, so starting that as soon as it arrives). Then nature study, music study and picture study once a week, and history (Canadian) twice a week. Plus a daily family read aloud (currently doing James & The Giant Peach, but we’ll be alternating between reading literature, poetry, fables and Shakespeare). I’ll have my son narrate science, history and his reading.
Kindergarten:
For her, we’ll do daily phonics using McGuffey’s Reader, daily reading practice using I Can Read It!, HWT print, copywork, oral narration (with prompting/guiding), hands on math games, and she’ll join in for nature study, music and picture study, and the family read aloud. For her, oral narration will be on her reading and science. I know technically she doesn’t need to at her age, but she has ASD, so it’s a good skill-builder.
Then, I think moving forward, next year we’ll do the following:
Grade 4:
– Daily Family read aloud, reading practice.
– Daily copywork
– Daily oral narration, with at least one written narration (likely in nature study)
– Daily math using Shiller
– Daily Spelling & Grammar using Spelling Wisdom/Using Language Well
– Formal picture study once a week (I’m a bit torn on the artists we’ll use and I’m going to be posing a separate question thread)
– Starting “formal” art lessons using Art through Literature once a week
– Formal music study (Beethoven and Mozart, using SCM guides), once a week
– Nature Study, twice a week
– History/Geography, twice a week (still unsure)
– Formal poetry study (R.L. Stevenson, SCM guide)For our daughter, for grade 1:
– Continue daily phonics with McGuffey’s Primer
– Continue daily reading practice
– Family read aloud
– Daily copywork
– Daily oral narrations
– Daily math with Shiller
– She’ll join in the art, music, poetry, nature study etc… as she choosesSo how do those plans sound? I don’t include Bible because we do something else for Bible, and don’t necessarily include it in “school” time.
Looks good to me! 🙂
Are you planning on having your year 4 student do a written narration once a day or once a week? Once a day seems a bit much at his age. Once a week sounds perfect.
I’m looking at this schedule and it looks great to me because I have a 4th grader who is at 3rd grade reading level still and im pushing him to do language arts through literature. It’s failing miserably! It’s a little overwhelming for him so looking at copywork and maybe one narration a week looks so much more laid back! I guess I just feel like it’ll hold him back more just copywork and that’s all. Spelling wisdom takes 15 minutes and it just doesn’t seem enough for language arts. Public school kids are spelling very hard words and writing papers at this stage. At least the school kids here where I live are.
It’s much the same here Kimberly, the writing expectations are insane. Though, the public school takes a CM-approach to spelling now. There are no longer “set” words to study – all students get individualized spelling lists, based off errors found in their writing. Great for the students, hard for the teachers. My mom has to prepare individual lists for over 60 students, every week 🙁
But what’s really hard are their writing expectations. They expect students to be able to write entire stories, at least a full page long. Here’s a brochure with a sample of writing and reading that is expected by the end of grade 3:
My son is not anywhere near capable of those achievements for writing. Neatness yes, content/output, no. 2-3 sentences is typically his maximum. That said he does have a sensory disorder that makes writing physically hard for him.
To answer the question about frequency of written narrations, no, I am thinking just one written narration per week, hopefully starting with one paragraph (2-3 sentences), and by the end of grade 4, hopefully he’ll be up to 2-3 paragraphs of a few sentences each, but we’ll see how it goes.
I’ll admit, I’m still a bit torn on grammar. My son struggles somewhat with irregular past tense verbs, using them properly in speech, and I’m not sure Using Language Well, will give enough practice on that. We may use a “workbook” approach, but time will tell. In the meantime we’re just trying to correct him in speech and then we also bought some flashcards that we do as a game.
I hold off on formal grammar until middle school. I only cover basic parts of speech in elementary.
I also wouldn’t worry about him writing several paragraphs this year. That’s a lot for a 4th grade. He’ll write more on his own as writing becomes easier for him.
Thanks for the links and info..2corin57
Melanie, what would your schedule look like for a 4th grader going into 5th this fall??
I have a question…I will have three starting the SCM “curriculum” next year. One will be in 4th as well! Wouldn’t there by copywork incorporated into Spelling Wisdom/Using Language Well? Or would you be doing copywork in addition to this? I was planning to use SW/ULW as the copywork, too. Although I am planning to have him make a Book of Mottos, but this would be probably only once a week. Maybe I should do the Book of Mottos every day?
Kimberly-My schedule for a 4th or 5th grader would look something like this:
Copywork 4 times a week, dictation once. I would use this time to point out parts of speech. I may also read something fun like Grammarland to work on grammar in a relaxed manner.
A written narration once a week. I wouldn’t expect any predetermined length for these narrations. I would give my student plenty of time (up to a year) just to get into the habit of putting his thoughts down on paper. I wouldn’t correct any narrations for the first year.
Math for 25-30 minutes per day.
At this age, I would be reading most of the history and science books aloud still. I may assign additional reading in history and I would definitely have the student reading on their own each day for 15-30 minutes depending on their reading level. If they are still struggling with reading, I would have them read aloud to me for 15 minutes or so each day instead of reading independently.
We would do picture study, composer study, nature study, poetry, hymn study, etc. weekly.
I would also add in a 1 or 2 stories from Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare sometime during the year.
We would do devotions together each day and we would take turns reading the scripture passage for the day.
Mmmmmmmm………..that’s it off the top of my head.
One might want to do latin or different language as well but we hold off until middle school for formal foreign language study. We might fool around a bit with duolingo but that’s about it.
Thanks so much! This really helps me, Melanie. I love charotte mason approach it’s just I have a lot of flack from other people about it. Including my husband. Just a lot of pressure to do a curriculum like A Beka or ACE. I will try this type of schedule and see how it goes! Do you have a blog or anything? I need a few charotte mason sites to read for encouragement
I don’t have a blog but there are several wonderful CM blogs out there. I can’t think of any off the top of my head (it’s too early!) but I will think about it and post some later.
I did want to add that we would also do map drills once a week. I love the way Sonya Shafer does map drills in her family and we have adopted that practice. It works wonderfully and only takes 10 or 15 minutes a week.
Regarding a more formal type of curriculum: if your husband is really uncomfortable with a pure CM homeschool, you could try something in between CM and Abeka-something like Heart of Dakota, Wayfarers orMy Father’s World. They all use real books and some CM methods and I would much rather use them than something as dry as Abeka.
As far as ACE goes…..ACE is a far cry from Abeka. I am not a fan. I think it’s behind most programs and doesn’t foster a real learning atmosphere but a hurry-through-the-workbooks-and-finish-school mindset.
I’ve heard the same thing as Melanie with regards to ACE. It’s really not a strong program. There’s many who have used it that were unable to get into college/university etc… Not saying that some haven’t used it successfully, but… overall, I hear more negative than positive about it. I know some who have used it personally (in fact they themselves were homeschooled with it) and they weren’t a fan. I read once on another board that ACE is really good at preparing a student to work in fast food (not that there’s anything wrong with that! But, just it’s being said in the context of, ACE doesn’t prepare you well for further academics – and I could definitely see that with the people I knew that were homeschooled with it. Oddly enough, they both worked in fast food.)
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