Sunday, April 26, 2015

Fourth Grade Curriculum

My son was ready for longer class periods by fourth grade and I changed all of them over to thirty minutes or longer.  He was also ready to begin doing more work on his own, so I slowly began leaving him more to himself for certain work.

Bible

We began the morning with Bible work, as usual.  I was ready to get back into a more formal program, and chose Memoria Press Christian Studies III, which covers the last third or so of the Bible, a portion we had not yet really fully covered.  This text uses the Golden Children's Bible.

                    

Language Arts:

Literature

Our read-aloud time consisted, as always, of mostly books that went along with our history studies.  We began our Modern Era history studies at the time of the Civil War in America, so mid-1800's.

A sampling of books I was reading from the first week:


At Her Majesty's Request
Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Shipwrecked!




Spelling and Word Study

Finishing up Spelling Workout E and then following up with Spelling Workout F beginning in week 8.  At this level, the words begin to become a word study.  Also, we stayed on a 3 day schedule and finished in week 29.  The next week we started Wordly Wise 3000 for the remainder of the year.

                 


Grammar and Writing

He began Abeka, God's Gift of Language, level A.  My older son used this series with great success.  It would take me a few years to realize that this series just did not work well for this son.  It certainly has plenty of work!  I also supplemented oral lessons with Oral Language Lessons, part of this same learning series.


        


Handwriting

Getty Dubay, level E.

  This book allows you to explore the world of science as you write!  Love these!



Reading

His reading, like our literature, was tied mostly to the history time period we were studying for the year.  A sampling of books he read for week one:

Florence Nightingale
A Little Princess
The Drummer Boy's Battle

 (Charge of the Light Brigade)


Math

Singapore 4




In my unceasing quest to find the perfect math combination, I also added in Math-U-See 1 at this time for drillwork and review. We began doing math 5 days a week.  I wanted him to get faster at multiplication.  I think it is the Delta level that covers multiplication.  My son didn't ever even really use the manipulatives, so it was really a waste of my time, sigh....





Geography 

My mother gifted my son the Which Way, USA? books and so I used them all year with him this year.  It gave him both some geography practice as well as some logic work.




Spanish

We started out the year reviewing McGraw Hill's Complete Book of Spanish, adding in review of vocab cards and worksheets from outside Spanish classes, then he played some with a computer CD I had that contained lots of Spanish games (sorry, don't recall what it was)....  Then we moved into a review of the Powerglide program as well as Spanish in the Kitchen, both of which we used last year.

Nothing really new here.  Young children are really just developing their vocabulary in a different language.  I didn't work on much in the way of grammar until he was in the logic stage (grades 5-8).

Latin

During this year I alternated Latin and Spanish study.  So one week he did three Latin (M,W,F) and two Spanish (T,R) and the next that was reversed.  In this way he got the same number of hours of work in each language by the end of the year.

Again, as with Spanish, nothing really new here.  We reviewed our Minimus and Minimus Secundus books for the year, continuing to work on developing a decent vocab in Latin.

History

We continued our history studies with Story of the World IV and activity guide, plus loads of living books.  For fourth grade, we covered history Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 1:30 - 3.  Please see my history reading list for more info:

http://greenapplesblush.blogspot.com/2015/04/reposting-fourth-grade-history-and.html

Science

We studied physics topics for science during fourth grade.  We did this on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30 - 3.  We used How Science Works for our intro to the subject, covering the "Force and Motion" section.  We also used various other books to cover background info on the topics that we were experimenting in.  For instance, for our first topic, we read from Experiment with Movement (Force and Motion), then started working through the Delta Education Science in a Nutshell kit on "Force and Motion."  Next, we read the section on gears from Experiment with Movement and How Science Works, then started a Nutshell on "Gears." 

      

http://www.delta-education.com/productdetail.aspx?Collection=Y&prodID=1052

http://www.delta-education.com/productdetail.aspx?Collection=Y&prodID=1049

Our third topic was "Simple Machines."  Again, we read from various books at home and checked out library books on the topic, then used the section from The Complete Book of Science 3/4 that covered simple machines to experiment with them and do other activities.  I also had a computer CD on The Way Things Work and another called Pinball Science that he was able to play with.

(I see that Delta now carries several kits on simple machines....)

           

Other topics covered that year (again, using library books, Complete Book of Science pages and kits):

Electricity and Magnetism
Review of Force

http://www.delta-education.com/productdetail.aspx?Collection=Y&prodID=1054

We also did a little work pertaining to:

Sound and Light
Cameras
Flight!  Gliders to Jets

http://www.delta-education.com/productdetail.aspx?Collection=Y&prodID=1051

Some of the books we used for the year:

http://greenapplesblush.blogspot.com/2015/04/reposting-physics-readings-for-younger.html


Regena




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