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New to CM and Homeschool need help Grade 4th
- This topic has 21 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 8 months ago by
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Hi there! I just thought I’d jump in and share how my more relaxed homeschool looked for 4th grade in case it might help. 🙂
For Math we simply worked through the Math U See levels at each child’s pace.
For history, we used truthquest and just read the books that were available at our local library.
Science-I allowed my children to choose the topic they wanted to study and we went to the library and checked out books on that topic. They read, or I read to them, for 20 minutes or so each day until they had read them all and then we moved on to the next topic. They narrated for every reading. I also chose books I wanted to read and read them aloud to my kids each day. We did nature study but I didn’t make my kids draw things in a nature notebook all the time.
Literature-I read to them and they read on their own for an assigned amount of time each day. I chose classics as much as possible.
Writing-We did copywork only at this age. Dictation should be added in the 4th or 5th grade. We didn’t do it consistently until the 6th grade but I would do it earlier if I had it to do all over again. My kids also wrote some short narrations.
We read from the Bible each day, sang a hymn and read from a devotional book or a character training book each day as well. We really liked The Millers series.
We listened to classical music every day and read and studied art books here and there.
That was pretty much it. 🙂 As you can see, I don’t usually preplan the exact books we will read. When I have tried this, it never pans out. I find it best to take it a week at a time. I plan what we will study and how much time we will spend on each subject but I take the rest week by week. I find it less stressful and easier to tweak as we go along. This is also a great way to homeschool if you’re on a tight budget. Some years, I only bought math curriculum and used the library and used books from thrift stores for everything else!
I am scheduling Heidi for term 1. So let’s use that book for an example. If you have 12 weeks for a term, then look at how many chapters are in the book. The edition I have of Heidi has 23 chapters. I will take 23 and divide that by 12. That lets me know that I need to schedule 2 chapters a week with the 12th week only having 1 chapter left to read. So I will schedule 2 chapters for 11 weeks and then the last chapter in week 12. If it doesn’t have chapter divisions, then I look at how many pages are in the book and divide that by the number of weeks in the term.
So that’s just a general example. I make a term chart where I schedule out all the subjects/materials/resources for each term. Then I will break each term down into weeks.
Is that helpful? I have a weekly schedule that I print out each week for my daughter, I have my individual term charts that show me what is scheduled for each week, and I have a general chart that I follow for each day during the week. I like charts and checklists. 😉 So does my daughter. 🙂
Melanie, that sounds much like my year. Did you offer topics for science for the kids to choose from? And did they all have to agree on one?
Mrsmccardell-I didn’t really have a set plan. If the kids were interested in different topics, I would allow my son to read on his own (as he was older and an independent reader much earlier) while I read aloud to my daughter. Other times, I offered a list, or chose a book I wanted to read to the kids, or went with one of the kid’s interests for the whole family. I only have 2 children so it wasn’t too complicated here. I can understand how that might change when you have a larger family.
How do you make it work for your family?
Mrs K,
Yes it did make sense. I guess this first year will be a test for me as well for my daughter to see what works and what doesn’t. I like to be organized too, weekly charts are a must.
Thank you
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