New to CM and Homeschool need help Grade 4th

Hi Daphne and welcome!

SCM offers some really wonderful choices and you can use the drop down menu under Our Curriculum at the right hand top of your screen to plan out your child’s education using SCM recommended resources.

My family has used resources from Simply Charlotte Mason and Ambleside Online. Mostly, I design my own course of study for history, science, Bible, theology/religious studies, and literature. I begin using Apologia science in 8th grade and I use Math U See for math most of the way through.

My youngest daughter is going into 4th grade too. We have used AO for several years. The website is a bit more user-friendly now I think. We’re switching to the SCM history this year and I’m really excited about that. So far, I’ve got sort of a combination of SCM, AO, and other resources I’ve picked out. I can pm you what I’ve got planned so far if you’d like. Just let me know.

Literature:  Family Read-alouds are marked RA.

The Railway Children by Evelyn Nesbit  (RA)

Rascal by Sterling North  (RA)

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry  (RA)

Samantha’s Blue Bicycle (An American Girl Short Story)

Stormy, Misty’s Foal by Marguerite Henry  (RA)

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder  (RA)

Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (RA)

Samantha’s Winter Party (An American Girl Short Story)

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder  (RA)

Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge (RA)

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sidney Taylor

(There were lots of read-alouds due in part to the fact that I combined literature with

DS who is autistic and was yet able to read most of these books on his own.)

Language Arts:  Spelling Wisdom Book 1, English for the Thoughtful Child Volume 1, and Handwriting Without Tears cursive.  (Interesting note:  DD crossed out the “out” portion of the word “Without” in the title….none of my kids were crazy about it, but they all write well in cursive except for DS who has successfully mastered manuscript, which is fine for his situation.)

Geography:  Stowaway by Karen Hesse (which we substituted for Sailing Alone Around the World that we didn’t particularly care for), Material World by Peter Menzel, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel, and we did map drills of South America.

Physical Education, Fine Arts, and Health & Safety were generally covered through co-op classes.  We did some simply Picture Studies for Art by looking at prints or computer images of works by Audubon and Georgia O’Keefe.  Composer Studies featured some works by Vivaldi and Handel.  I don’t recall who we studied for poetry, but we typically used books from the Poetry for Young People series, read the brief biography in the book, and read several of the poems for each poet selected, maybe 3 poets in all over the course of the year.

So that’s basically what my 4th grade DD did that year.  We had a lot of fun with school at that age, especially sitting around reading a lot. Some of our read-alouds took place at bedtime, but mostly we read literature at lunchtime.  When we finished reading Rascal, we planned a special lunch where each of the kids took a large sheet of paper and drew their favorite part of the book and then used them as placemats.  We discussed the book during lunch, and we watched the Disney movie based on the book afterwards.  We talked about how the book differed from the movie and why some things have to be left out to make sure the movie doesn’t turn into a 5-part miniseries. The kids were particularly annoyed at the very last scene in the movie which never took place in the book.  Since then, we have made a rule not to watch a movie based on literature until we have read the book.

HTH,

Sue

I’m more than happy to share! As I’ve continued to plan, at this point, the only thing left in my plans from AO Year 4 is poetry and one of the literature books. Anyway, here’s what my plans are looking like so far (they are still a work in progress…I hope to finalize plans this coming week):

History, Geography:
SCM Modern Times (plus the Bible that’s included in the guide but I will additional things to our Bible/Religion readings)

Additional Geography:
Long’s Home Geography spread out over the whole year. We read up to Chapter 11 last year so we will pick up where we left off and finish the book this year. At least for now that’s the plan. I may just end up focusing on the SCM geography. 🙂

Science:
Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics by Jeannie Fulbright…And I’ve added in a short book on Marie Curie that we already have.

Language Arts:
We will continue with copywork and dictation. I’m using Spelling Wisdom Book I for dictation/spelling. We will use Simply Grammar for grammar. And we’ll continue with oral narrations and written narrations for composition.

Math:
My daughter will continue with Life of Fred for now. And we will be working with MEP Math as well.

Latin:
Prima Latina by Memoria Press

Spanish:
Beginning with just learning songs and listening to books in Spanish. I hope to begin with the Cherrydale Press Spanish series after that.

Poetry:
For right now, we’ll stick with the AO Year 4 poetry selections.

Literature:
I was thinking of keeping AO Year 4’s choice of The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. I already have this book but I haven’t pre-read it yet. I want to read it first before deciding on keeping in the schedule. So what I have right now is:

• Term 1 – Heidi by Johanna Spyri
• Term 2 – Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
• Term 3 – Still be to determined

These literature books will be ones my daughter will do narrations for. We will do other books as read alouds and free reads that aren’t for narrations. Usually I try to schedule one literature book per term for assigned literature that is narrated. And those will be on the term exams as well.

Recitation:
We do several different types of memory work for Recitation. Right now for Term 1, on the schedule is one poem, one short passage from the Shakespeare play we will be reading, one Latin Hymn, one Bible passage, and one Latin prayer. The Latin prayer is a part of the Latin program we are using. My daughter loves to do memory work so I try to incorporate a variety of things.

Shakespeare:
Right now I only have plans for us to do one Shakespeare play this year instead of one per term like AO does.

Other: We will also do artist study (1 per term), composer study (1 per term), handicraft (clay modeling), hymn study, solfa lessons, drawing lessons, start a Book of Centuries, and complete a United States geography notebook.

Ok. I think that’s everything……

If you have any questions, just let me know. 🙂