How long for LA/English Etc. for 3rd-4th Grade?

[Soror]

Ds is an older 3rd grader, due to his birthday and cut-offs. He will be turning 9 in a few weeks, thus I put 3-4th grade in my title as he's straddled the line between the two.

 

I'm thinking that perhaps that I'm on the verge of doing too much for ds. It feels pretty good right now but I'm hoping for some perspective to see if we are in the normal range. I am really enjoying everything we are doing and ds seems to be doing well with it. So, it seems everything should be fine, but perhaps I am missing something.

 

I haven't started the MCT or GSwL yet but I am hopeful from my reviews of these programs that they will be a good fit for him. He is a pretty voracious reader and seems to do pretty well on spelling but I'd like to fill in a few holes he seems to have in his phonics knowledge. He seems to do well based on memory and I'd like to give him the tools w/ reading and spelling to be able to figure out anything, even if he hasn't seen it before.

 

Fwiw- He is doing about 60 min Math, 20 min of science, 20 min of history, 10 min religion, 10 min drawing - So, his day is about 3.5 hrs not counting his literature reading and read-alouds.

 

current daily schedule:

Spelling/Phonics-Phonogram-Dictation Work 15-20min- Logic of English Essentials

 

Penmanship-10 min- Cursive- LoE

 

Writing- 20 min- Writing w/ Ease3

 

Grammar- 10-25ish- Currently doing the grammar in LoE but will be adding in MCT- I had planned to just use MCT but I like the work done in LoE and it seems it will be a good complement- as it focuses more on the technical that MCT doesn't have such as punctuation, editing work as well as bit on starting to compose, which I don't mind as this is not in WWE. As we dive into MCT I might feel LoE portion redundant but for at least the first bit I think it will be a good addition.

 

We are doing about 10ish min or so on grammar right now but it seems from reading that MCT will take about 15, although I'm not sure how that will change as the program progresses, especially when we are doing 2 things per day- such as poetry and vocab.

 

Oral Reading- 10 min-Treadwell Reader

 

Lit- 30 min required reading about 30 min from good books- although he is a pretty voracious reader and generally reads hrs per day w/out any prompting

 

Latin- 10-20 min GSWL I'm not sure on this as I had thought I'd read it took about 15 min daily, the early lessons look like they will take just a few minutes but I haven't read it all the way through yet

[BakersDozen]

That looks almost exactly like what we do for Language Arts at that age/grade. My dc made a notecard for each lesson of GSWL and reviewed some of their cards daily so that added a few more minutes.

[8filltheheart]

I am completely unfamiliar with the resources you have listed.   Just my thoughts in general.

 

I would drop Latin.   I think Latin study w/o really studying in context is pointless b/c it is nothing more than a list of vocabulary words.   And vocab mastered in context is much easier and more interesting. In my opinion, Latin needs to be studied in "whole" which means they need to be able to do the grammar involved.   Most 3rd graders are not at that level.    I personally think Latin around 5th is a pretty good time frame for kids with solid grammar instruction.

 

My avg 3rd graders are doing copywork, learning grammar/mechanics/paragraph construction from their copywork; doing spelling (which incorporates phonics instruction); and reading.   Their handwriting practice is actually combined with religion b/c they have to copy parts of their catechism in their neatest handwriting.   If they weren't doing that, I would probably figure out another way to incorporate handwriting w/some other task, probably copywork. 

 

All in all, LA/reading is probably 1 1/2 hrs for a third grader in our house---the most time spent on anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Soror]

Thank you ladies so much for your thoughts, it is nice hearing the experience of 2 moms of many.

 

It seems that my timeframe isn't off, so that is good.

 

8- You give me something to ponder on the Latin. I tried starting it for the last 2 years but it just seemed to me a bit pointless as I didn't see him ready to understand the grammar and otherwise it felt we were doing it without any context or depth. I thought we would try GSwL this years as it has such great reviews for it's gentle introduction. Perhaps, that would be time better spent building the foundation of our other studies.

 

Re: Penmanship across curriculum, right now he is just learning the letters, he hasn't even learned to connect them yet. He is scheduled to finish by Christmas though and then our penmanship will just be within our other subjects.

[Soror]

Well, I talked with dh and had much reflection I decided to drop Latin. Our days were verging on too much and I do want to focus more on grammar and writing this year than we have done previously. I also cut out our reader, I did like the selections but I'm just having ds do oral reading from our subjects. I would like to just practice our penmanship within subjects but that will have to wait until after we have learned more cursive. I hadn't thought of using Religion for this purpose but I do like the idea. I'm feeling much better w/ our studies being a bit more streamlined.

 

Today we ended up at about 1 hr 45m and it was really good actually. We did WWE for about 30 ish min- he read the selection outloud and then we worked on summarization, narration and dictation. Cursive took about 15 min, it is coming along beautifully. Spelling/phonics work was about 45, we briefly discussed homophones and did some dictation focusing on our spelling rules for this week along with apostrophe and comma use. Lastly we examined the different spellings of the broad a sound. He then had a pretty big break while I worked w/ dd and then they played a phonogram game together. He did at least an hr reading during quiet time as well but he just loves to read, so that doesn't seem like a chore to him, more often than not I have to force him to stop reading.

 

It was really a wonderful day. I've really been able to engage him well lately. We are making good use of the whiteboard and he loves using it for a bit of something different. I let him dictate and teach me at times as well and that goes over smashingly well. LoE seems to be at just the right level for him as does WWE3, I hope it continues to go as well. I imagine that we won't always have such long days, I believe we'll likely range from 1hr 15- 1hr 45 or so.