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Help for planning grade 4. PLEEEEASE!
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Hello everyone,
I am in the middle of planning next year and am getting a bit bigged down (actually, I’m kinda trying not to panic!) with planning my dd’s 4th grade year. I don’t know why this is so trying for me. I guess I just view this year as an important year. She will have more expected of her in the way of workload and responsibilities and I feel like this year will sort of “set the stage” for the rest of her middle school years. Adding to this is the fact that dh and I have talked and decided that next year we will be “ramping it up” so to speak in the rest of our studies in general as well. Up to now we don’t think that we have been living up to our potential in regards to schooling or expecting enough out of the kids, either. A large part of this is because of me being incredibly sick for a large portion of the beginning years as well as multiple moves and other big and stressful changes. We are in a better place now (physically, emotionally, as well as an actual ‘place’ to live) and are really wanting to make some needed changes to our homeschool. I think I have our family studies all worked out. It actually looks like a lot to me, but I am not sure what I would be able to cut. It seems to all be needed to me. KWIM? So now, I am starting to try to map out a vision, or goal, or at least some sort of plan for my 9dd and I seem to be at a complete loss. I have looked at the curriculum guide and have been poring over old posts and I can’t seem to even put together a starting place in my own mind! I don’t know what to expect of her as far as workload goes and I don’t know how to plan out a language arts program for her in particular. I have so much to get to, how will she be able to cover it all? And when? I was thinking spelling wisdom, but now I don’t know…that may be a little much. Some of those passages seem so long! She has had minimal spelling instruction through her first three grades. I feel that I need to get her writing more, but that has been minimal as well. Also, how can I give her writing assignments if she will just be starting a formal spelling program in the same year? I am seeing others who are starting Latin studies in 4th grade as well and I don’t know if this needs to be done before, during, or after a formal grammar program has been started. We have just done very simple and very gentle grammar type studies so far. I just really don’t know how to work it all out and I can’t seem to pick a book or a program! There are just so many to choose from. I made a few curriculum mistakes in the past and it really seemed to throw us for a loop! I am a little scared of picking the wrong thing again and “screwing things up” for her.
Does anyone have a suggestion as to a starting place or a list of what she should know or be doing at this stage and some resources that are a good starting point? I wish I had a CM veteran living close by who could sit down with me and look at what we have done so far and tell me what needs to be done next and then show me how this will work in a year 4 plan. I am really starting to wonder how I am going to pull this off!
I am sorry for the length of this post, It just seemed to turn out that way!
Any help from some more experienced CM moms? Or at least CM moms who have passed grade 4! Ha!
Kay, I’m going to go breath deep now!
-Miranda
My son was in the “4th grade” last year and I did the same type of ramping up with him. I considered it a pivotal year, too and we have chronic health conditions here, too (4 surgeries in 5 years between me and dad) I had planned on starting Latin then, but didn’t; however, he already does Hebrew. You could start Latin this year; perhaps a gentle intro like the one Sonya used (the name escapes me currently), then begin a more rigorous one such as Latin for Children or First Form next year. He’ll be doing L4C because I like the reader and DVD.
I can tell you what we did and maybe that will help:
LA-Intermediate Language Lessons (ILL). Changed from the year before when he was in PLL. PLL was 75% oral; with ILL, I determined for him to do the dictation exercises and the Composition/Reproduction exercises this time and have him write out the answers to the questions, instead of doing them orally.
Spelling- he struggles here, so he started Sequential Spelling using the CD-Rom version and he started Sp.Wisdom Bk. 1, 1x a week; then I upped it to 2x because he did so well.
Foreign Language-He has to write out his new Hebrew words once for each lesson in a notebook, then test either that week or the next one.
Math-I made him do more pages and push through more than I had required before. Math comes easy to him, he just didn’t like the writing in the book.
Continued with copywork, but not daily. Started learning cursive. Started Hebrew Script 1x a week.
I tried to keep the written requirements balanced, so as not to have one day be ridiculous and another not enough. He periodically moans about it, but he has to do it anyway and there’s less groaning. He hasn’t lost his love of learning as a result of my increases. I didn’t fall into the trap of using a bunch of workbooks, just added onto things he was already doing and held him to a higher standard of workload. He had other subjects, too but this was what he did in the LA and increased writing department.
Don’t worry about a grammar course. ILL has it in there and it’s approached very reasonably. Next year, mine are going to read Grammarland and use some worksheets made up by a HS mom online.
HTH,
Rachel
I’m in a bit of a rush, so pardon the fact that I really just skimmed through your post–I’ll try to reread it later to see if I can add something. However, one thing I noticed was your comment on the lengthy passages in Spelling Wisdom. I think it depends on which book you are using. My 10yo dd is not a very good speller yet, so we were using shorter passages for her last year, and my 13yo dd was so used to “spelling lists” and predictable units of study (Monday – read the list/spell the list, Tuesday – use each word in a sentence, Wednesday – work a crossword puzzle with the words, etc.), so she needed to get used to prepared dictation as well.
What I did for the really long passages for the 13yo (for example, the Gettysburg Address) was to break the passage into smaller parts and work on one section per week. For the 10yo, if the passage was 4 paragraphs long, I might break it into sections of one or two paragraphs until she was ready to work on a longer passage.
We’ve been homeschooling since education began for the kids, but this year was our first CM year. I think it went pretty well for a first try, but I feel like you a bit, that I need to expect more from them….and of course that means more planning and decisions on my part!
Thank you for helping so far, ladies.
So, would you say that I could use spelling wisdom book 1 with a speller who has not had much formal spelling instruction and it wouldn’t be to overwhelming? Also, Rachel, I think Sequential Spelling was one of the programs that I had looked at. It looked a little “much”. Is it simpler in reality than what it looks like on the website? Maybe it was just because of the fact that I was already overwhelmed a bit when I looked at it but I don’t think I was able to get a good “feel” for the course from the site. Does it work well with SW? How long does it take on a daily basis?
I was also wondering, how long, in total, do your “4th graders” spend on their schooling on average?
Thank you for your help.
-miranda
O.K. This is sort of a bump but also to say that I looked at sequential spelling again without having any other spelling programs floating around in my head and I think I have a handle on how it works etc. Although, I still don’t have any thoughts on how well it would work WITH SW. I think it was misceegee that said she was trying to come up with some supplemental materials that are meant to work with SW that she would be willing to share. Maybe I will put off planning the spelling for a bit to see what those are like.
Can anyone give me an idea of what type of workload to expect of a 4th year student as well as how much time to expect her studies to take on a daily average?
Is Latin recommended to start now? Should she be started on a grammar program before Latin or is Latin foundational to Grammar?
Thanks!
-Miranda
Okay, I’ll share an idea of what my 4th grader did this year, but be aware that we’ve been more unit study than Charlotte Mason. Still, it gives you an idea of workload. I also want to preface it with “Every child is different. There is no one right curriculum/workload for a particular age or grade.”
During the year Makayla was 9. She did the following:
1. Math U See Gamma (multiplication).2. All About Spelling – most of level 2 and the beginning lessons in level 3.3. Writing – She wrote a few days a week all year. Part of the time we did lessons using IEW’s methods/materials, part of the time she just wrote what she wanted to. At the beginning of the year she was writing a paragraph. Today she writes 1-2 pages pretty easily, I’d say in less than 20 minutes. 4. Grammar – we really focus on just one or two things she’s making mistakes with in her writing at a time. No formal curriculum. Fun books to read for grammar are the Ruth Heller books in her World of Language series.5. Science/Health – She did a mix of unit studies with or without lapbooking (recycling, meerkats, tigers, creation camouflage, part of Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology.)6. History/geography – We started the year chronologically from the California Gold Rush to Civil War, and WWI. Then she did a lapbook on American Government and studied some countries around the world.7. Reading – She loves to read, so she polished off close to 100 chapter books. I finally stopped recording her list. 8. Foreign language – We do American Sign Language, which is totally hands on, and we study spanish in a very light way with Speekee as we have hispanic family members from Mexico.9. Art and music – She plays piano, we listen to composers and do picture study as described here on SCM.
Honestly that is all I can think of. She does a lot of learning on her own, studying topics she’s interested in. She kept a nature journal, did handicrafts like knitting, and so on, but it was because she did it, not me.
Life was pretty full for us this year – I had baby # 6 in late Nov. and I’m expecting baby #7 in Jan. So for most of the 4th grade year she also had siblings age 6, 5, 3, 2, and new baby.
Well, I am glad to hear I am not the only one that has this problem! 🙂 thanks for posting. I have been trying to get it all together. I am wanting to start up again after a short break. I have decided to do Around the world in 180 days for geography. My next stop is Europe where I plan on adding music study and art study. I will be doing some homeschool in the woods and some CM for that. I also plan on doing Hebrew holidays and “Latin from the Roots up” to start us on Latin. It looks really simple. I too have thought about the spelling wisdom. I don’t know if that was to much since We did a phonics program the last two years and I don’t know if it fits in right yet. I was planning on just getting the word list for their grade level on line and making sure they know that . Then, I was going to incorperate the new words we are learning about geography and History into their learning instead. That way I hope to sneak it in. 🙂 I also do Math U see and It seems to be doing well for me so far. I will add virtue study and I am stumped as to what I should do for Science because we have aways done hands on and things out of the “What your 3rd grader should know” 2nd grader, 1st grader, and 4th grader. I look at those books as a reference point and study what pertains to our situation of study. This is what I have done so far. I try to keep it simple but feel I need to step it up also. I however don’t want to loose them in the process. So I am doing more Homeschool in the woods to see if that will make it more interesting. Good luck and I hope to let you know you are not alone in how you feel. Everyone of us feel this same way. Even the best of us.
Thanks for the encouragment and examples. I hope I can get my head wrapped around this soon! I have soooo many other things that I need to get to around here and we really need to have a plan in place for next year so that we can start finding some of these resources. Plus, dh says that he wants to go over everything that I have planned before we buy anything so that he can “be in the loop” and also so that he can catch any problems that I may have not anticipated and help with the scheduling etc. We think very differently and have very different perspectives on things, so this will probably be a good thing…come at things from varying angles so to speak. So I really need to get this done. I am going to take a small break from year 4 and work on my youngest’s K year. I can do Kindergarten! HA! Still feeling a bit apprehensive about gr. 4 but appreciate the encouragment and advice. So thanks again.
-Miranda
Out of curiosity, what other subjects have you planned for her – what’s the whole schedule look like?
Miranda,
Seq. Sp. is very easy to implement. However, I got the CD-rom version, so he does it independently. He puts the CD in, it provides him with the words and the contextual sentences and then he writes them in his book. Then he self-checks. If he gets any wrong, he circles the number and rewrites it immediately. Then I look at the words he missed. Very easy and independent when done this way.
I only got it for my son; my dd doesn’t need the extra instruction, so she just uses SW. SW is so quick. They each do the SW Lesson on Mon. as copywork. Takes 5 min. Then on Tues. they review it. Then on Wed. we do Dictation on it and they also copywork the next lesson for a Dictation on Fri. Next year I may change it to Mon-copy,Tues.-Dictate; Wed. copy, Thurs-dictate. My son does his Seq. Sp. almost daily and whenever he can fit it in; it’s flexible and he enjoys it since it’s on the computer. If your dd hasn’t shown any struggles in this area, I see no reason to use it; just do SW, which is worthwhile.
It’s the combination of CM’s LA methods-copywork, dictation, reading quality lit., grammar after age 10 (or 4th gr.)and narration-not their parts-that make for a successful LA program. If you remove one of the parts from the whole, the results won’t be the same; doesn’t mean it will fail, just that the results won’t be as consistent. Having said that, there are some children who, for whatever reason, like my son, just has trouble with spelling. It defies reasoning-he is an advanced reader, narrates beautifully, is visual and auditory, but it’s still been an issue. My only guess is that because he was basically a self-taught reader (he flew ahead), that he just didn’t get the same level of instruction in phonics as his sister, who I had to take time with in phonics teaching to help her reading skills.
As for Latin, like I said before, if she has little to no grammar familiarity then it will be harder, but if she has some, through exposure and a gentle LA program, like ILL like we use then it would be fine. You could use Getting Started with Latin, which is very gentle and apparently a good early intro.
Has she done any LA program, like Primary Language Lessons or English for the Thoughtful Child or another? You can start ILL in 4th or Simply Grammar.
As for how long her studies take her or a workload, it depends on the child and your goals for that child. If she dawdles, it will take her a long time. Her individual studies should be around 20 min. more or less. Our days are about 4 hrs. long, give or take with the majority of that time with them on their individual Lessons; they usually have about 10-13 individual things to do on their own or with me (not as a Family subject) depending on the day. It sounds like a lot, but some things take less than 10 min., like reviewing Hebrew word cards, SW, copywork; some 10-20 min. and others a little longer.
Pray about it earnestly and ask the L-rd to show you all that she is capable of, the direction she needs to go in to give her the means to fulfill His Plan for her life; provide her with challenge and give her a schedule that she will rise to meet, not a dry one that will destroy her love of learning. What is important to you and your husband for her to know to meet your spiritual, educational and character goals for her?
I agree too with Becky-what does your schedule for her currently look like? Sorry this was long, just trying to answer your questions.
Rachel
Hi Rachel and Becky,
Thank you for your reply, Rachel. It made sense to me. I feel that in the past our school years were not what they could have/should have been. Because of a lot of reasons. They have not had quite enough expected of them as far as school work goes in the past and I am thinking that this next school year may hit them like a ton of bricks! The bare essentials will not cut it anymore, we are bringing things up to the proper level! Add on top of that the fact that the grade 4 year is a step-up, so to speak, I am wanting to make sure that my dd is not taken by surprise to the point of being scared of school. Yet, at the same time, I really don’t want to shortchange her capabilities and not expect something of her that she really should be learning. O.K. I’m trying to explain myself to much again and making this longer than needed!
This is what she will already be doing as part of the family next year:
Everyday- Spanish
Script. Mem.
Lit. Read Aloud
Something of the Mod.3 hist/geog/bible
Not sure
how often- science (term of plants, one term on animals, one term on bugs)
Canadian studies (probably once a week)
1x a wk- poetry study
Composer
Hymn
Picture
Nature walk/study
Sometime during the year- shakespeare play with a children’s book
These are the things that I KNOW she will be doing for her indv. work:
-Ballet class and practice during the week
-spelling (SW probably. Not sure about supplemental material or not)
-drawing/art program (not sure what program)
-book of mottos
-assigned reading corresponding with hist. and science above just family readings (other than the planned hist. books in mod. 3 and reading “Jack’s Insect’s” during the bug term, I do not have a book list planned for her)
-MUS (little bit everyday)
-personal devotions (don’t know what yet, here, either)
-handicrafts (probably continuing learning sewing, crochet and possibly knitting)
-chores and helping with some of dd’s Kindy work
-possibly the Grammarland book with corresponding worksheets? Not sure on this yet.
I don’t have anything for teaching writing but I don’t know if that is needed yet or not. This looks like a lot and I don’t want her to balk at her workload when school begins but at the same time it almost seems like she will be missing things somehow or that there will be little things that will be forgotten that will cause gaps in her learning.
I am talking things through with hubby and praying as well. Thank you again for all the help and encouragment, ladies! I certainly needed it!
Blessings,
Miranda
From what I understand, I thought grades 1-3 were a gentle approach to grammar…copywork using poems, literature, and scripture. Then for grades 2-3 It’s suggested to use English for the Thoughtful Child. That is all we’ve done (or are doing right now). My oldest dd is going into 3rd grade. All she knows for sure is what a statement, question, and exclamation type sentence is. She isn’t the greatest speller either. lol She likes to spell things HER way. I have to tell her one day I will be kicking things back for spelling errors. Right now I gently show her the correct spelling and have her spell it again. I also use the spelling worksheets from http://www.superteacherworksheets.com. They have simple words to spell. I have her look the spelling word, cover it, then try to spell on the two remaining lines. Then they have a worksheet to cut and glue in alphabetical order. My dd loves it!
I’m sorry I can’t help with your 4th grade planning, but wanted to let you know you may not be as behind as you feel you are. I would take her where she is at and if she ready to move her up a step, to be challenged but not to frustration level, kwim?
I think Sonya recommends Getting Started With Latin (I have the Spanish book for me!)
Tara
Miranda,
How are things going? Are you seeing a plan forming more solid now? I hope so. Grade 4 is bigger, I get that for certain! So here is what my daughter is doing for her grade 4 year:
Language Lessons for the Elementary Child – Queen Homeschool (she did the 1st Language Lessons lev 1-4 now in her little carreer and we are So done with that )
Spelling Through Copywork Book B – Queen Homeschool
Poetry Patterns – Charla Jones (christianbook.com)
Pictures in Cursive Book B & C – Queen Homeschool
The Louisa Alcott Reader – got it from chapters.ca but you can get it free online e-book too
Paragraph Writing Enhanced e-book – Evan Moore from Currclick.com
Discovering Nature Series Parables From Nature – Queen Homeschool
New World Explorers CD of projects – Homeschoolinthewoods.com
Teaching Character through Literature – bfbooks.com
Discoveries in Art – Calvert got it from Veritas Press.com
Discoveries in Music – Calvert Veritaspress.com
canada & provinces notebooking pages notebbokingpages.com ( avail at currclick.com too)and library books
So as you can see I am only Charlotte Mason ish. I am using that Evan Moore paragraph writing book to load my reluctant writer with some basic tools of structure and planning as painless as possible. This plan has taken me 2 months of research online and at a homeschool convention to put together but I am very pleased with it. I can’t wait for it all to arrive and to start my simply charlotte mason education planner DVD and workbook! I LOVE that thing! Makes my year flow SO much smoother!!!
Thank you for sharing, cedargirl. I guess I do feel a little less overwhelmed now. I still do not have a whole lot planned in the way of specific resources but after last night I at least have a better idea of the subjects and topics that we should do in the grade 4 year. I am still having to think about things and am still talking them over with hubby as well, but I think I am in a little bit of a better place mentally.
Thanks for asking.
-Miranda
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