Fourth grade planning 2021-2022

[lulalu]

Most of my planning and buying is done already. Still some things left to think about. 

Math: Not 100% sure yet. Maybe continue with Gattegno, making my own worksheets, games, Hands on Equations. Or finding the perfect program all done for me. 🤣

Latin: Finish GSWL and start KGWL 

Greek Alphabet

Language Arts: Pentime, Rod and Staff English 4, Rod and Staff Spelling, Dictation Day by Day, homemade copywork. 

Writing: Classical composition Fables 

Reading: CLE reading 4, and MP lit. guides 

History: Veritas Press you teach 

Bible: Veritas Press

Science: not 100% sure yet maybe try MP science 

Extra: U.S. geography using trick geography. Piano, Art with a Purpose, swimming

 

[MeaganS]

Plan for DD8.

Math: Beast Academy. She'll likely finish up level 3 by then, so level 4 will fill most of next year. She does books and online. She also does Prodigy Math for fun and Kangaroo Math test prep.

Writing: Writing and Rhetoric. She's on Narrative 1 now. She's not a fan but she deals and I don't think she'd really be a fan of most writing programs.

Grammar: First Language Lessons 4

Spelling: All About Spelling. She's in the middle of level 4 now, so my guess is she'll still be doing that and probably start level 5 in the middle of the year.

History/Science: Unschool. Besides books, movies, toys, etc, we are starting a family project where each child is assigned their own garden bed that they are responsible for planning and taking care of. This should be a pretty cool learning tool and experience, and DD8 is especially excited. She's memorized the Baker's Creek catalog and spend hours planning on her own. And I mean memorized. She can list of properties of weird heirloom varieties at the drop of a hat. Right now her dream job is to work their when she grows up (we visited with a homeschool group as a field trip last year).

Geography: Draw the World. She's just started on Mexico/South America and will likely be working on Asia next year, along with regularly reviewing all the other's she's learned.

Spanish: Duolingo

Literature: Reading a book from a mom-compiled list daily

Piano: Hoffman Academy

 

 

[alysee]

We are relaxed secular homeschoolers. My soon to be 4th grader is an average student. 

Family: Unit Studies, Read Alouds

Brain Warmup: Chalkboard 10min Daily Math

Math: CTC Math

Reading: Her picks & books that go with our unit study

Writing/Grammar: BraveWriter Darts, Weekly FreeWrite, Fix It Grammar 2

Extras: Keyboarding Without Tears, Multiplication Facts That Stick, Times Tales

Edited February 23, 2021 by alysee
Forgot something

[Masers]

Math: Undecided, but may try TGATB after I have a chance to look over their new curriculum. Sounds like a lot of what I’m looking for. Supplement with Math Adventures 5, MathTacular DVDs, and a variety of Usborne math activity books. 

Language Arts: Language Arts for a Living Education 4 (Masterbooks). Supplement with Usborne spelling books.

History/Bible/Geography/Science/Readalouds: We do as a family. I am working on compiling my list of resources. Mostly living books, with no real output required. We will be going through SOTW 1, a whirlwind tour of all the continents, bible stories and Jesus Storybook Bible DVD, studying meteorology, intro physics and chemistry

Handwriting: The last HWOT

Literature: Reading a large variety of books from a booklist I’ve put together from a number of sources. He is a fast reader and goes through books quickly. No output required, but he gives me synopses after each book. 
 

Extracurriculars: Cello lessons, soccer, swimming lessons (knows how to swim well, but getting better at different strokes)

[My4arrows]

This is the one grade I think I actually know what we’re going to do:

Bible: continue working through Apologias Worldview series, Discover 4 Yourself studies probably 4-5, a few Not Consumed studies I have on hand. 
 

Reading: Either continue working through Barton or switch to AAR- I’ll decide when we finish level 4 later this year 

Spelling: Either Barton or AAS

Grammar: This is my one undecided. We have a ton on hand so I’ll probably use one of those resources- Fix it, Grammar Galaxy, Evan moor workbook

writing- Writeshop D or E; copy work, I also may work in some IEW mainly the first unit or two to work on note taking

math- MM5 with Ed Zaccaro Challenge Math 

science- Sassafras Geology and Botany combined with TGATB units to complement 

history- Notgrass 50 states with picture books to go along with each state, Abekas State report and Notgrass lit pack as interested 

Literature- Beyond FIAR and FIAR volume 4 as we are interested.  We already do a ton of read alouds as a family and discussion

Electives/family work- Robotics, Scratch, Phython, Woodworking, 4H, co-op, typing.com, Nature journal, Logic, Cooking, Safety unit

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by My4arrows

[Xahm]

Math: Finish Beast Academy 4, start 5

Spelling: All About Spelling, taking up where ever we leave off. Probably finishing 4 and doing 5 and some of 6

History: As a family: Joy Hakim's History of US based American History, stopping right before or after the Civil War, most likely

Science: Interest led, primarily Perhaps doing comprehension questions from some standard science textbook for practice doing that sort of thing.

Literature: Reading tons, individually and as a family. Mosdos Literature (still thinking about the appropriate level) Possibly participating in the local Reading Bowl

Writing: cross-curricular projects

French: French for Children Primer A Perhaps only the first half. This will be the only formal grammar for the year as she's pretty solid on the basics.

"Electives": Gymnastics, Webelos, Bible, Piano, Art, music

I'm probably leaving out something huge. One great thing about these threads is they give such a great chance to think through things.

[Coco_Clark]

Math- Math Mammoth grade 4.

Language Arts- Treasured Conversations, followed by Writing and Rhetoric Fables as well as Sequential Spelling and copywork. Maybe transitioning from oral to written narrations halfway through the year.

History- SOTW 3.

Science- Astronomy and weather, curriculum undecided.  Her older siblings are using Signs and Seasons but I don't know how much will be scalable to her level.

Typing and Piano.

Plus lots of reading quality books both independently and out loud, and a morning "riches" of bible, saints, memory work, poetry, art appreciation, and nature study.

[Not_a_Number]

Ooh, a planning thread! These threads always make me feel kind of disorganized, because honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll be doing next year, and I probably won't know what it'll turn out to be until the next year is done 😉 . 

Here's the basic game plan for DD8, though: 

Math: do some probability in the summer, probably make a concerted start on more algorithmic high school level algebra. She already does a lot of algebra, but I always start with things informally, and that's where we are now. 

Russian: continue conversational lessons and writing lessons. Hopefully move into reading for real more seriously. Also, we really need to do noun cases... we've worked on gender and verb conjugation pretty seriously, but I've let the nouns slide for now. If we rectify that, she might actually speak grammatically, lol. 

Oh, and she'll keep watching Russian cartoons for fun. The more she watches, the more she understands, so I'm sure we'll probably start the series she's watching all over again sometime soon and see how much more she gets out of them. 

Music: continue lessons with her piano teacher. This one is DH's domain, and she practices for an hour every day, so it's probably one of the things she does the most seriously. She doesn't get tested, but she's already in something like 4th grade by the Royal Conservatory levels, according to her teacher. 

Writing: continue our forays into writing whenever the mood strikes us. Right now, we're doing occasional writing for the content subjects and proof writing for math. She also wanted to sign up for a fun Zoom poetry class, so sometimes she writes for that... it's possible we do something like that next year. 

Reading: totally unschooled, reading tons whenever she has the chance. 

History: reading some fun but totally unserious series out loud together. Continue working on things in chronological order as much as possible. Try to tie things into geography as well by occasionally using maps and her globe. 

Science: reading things out loud together, also meandering our way through the first volume of BFSU. She already knows a lot of stuff in BFSU, but I do like organizing things more than we do usually. 

Electives: I'm hoping she can do gymnastics again -- she misses the physical activity. If we still have way more time at home than I know what to do with, we'll probably continue working on cooking and handcrafting. She's already quite good at sewing and crocheting, although she could stand to be more organized. 

Phew. I always feel a bit better getting these down, because they make me feel like we are, in fact, doing things 😉 . We unschool quite a lot of things, which always makes me feel odd in this group! 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Noreen Claire]

handwriting: Zaner-Bloser 4

grammar: First Language Lessons 4

writing: Writing With Ease 4 - I know this level is 'optional/remedial', but he fought me over doing any writing at all up until this year. Now, he will do it gladly, so we will keep on with what he's willing to do. 

spelling: Spelling Workout D

math & logic: He'll be starting Beast Academy 4 soon, so we will keep on wherever we are, adding in books from LivingMath U3, and MindBenders/BalanceBenders/Math Analogies/etc.

history: SOTW3 and library books (not using the workbook) / read alouds from LivingMath U3

literature: reading list from the WTM recommendations (to go along with SOTW3), plenty of read alouds, audiobooks. He reads nonfiction constantly.

science: chemistry (WTM recommendations) - we mostly unschool science, and will add in lots of Nova videos and such.

foreign language: Greek with the Memoria Press Greek Alphabet and then Elementary Greek.

misc: He unschools himself in anything that tickles his fancy. He needs a physical activity, but I don't know what yet.

[gradchica]

Latin: finish second half of FFL, begin 2nd

Math: Finish Singapore 5B, pick up 6A. Rod & Staff 5 independently. Mindset Math with friends. 

Writing: Finish Treasured Conversations, move on to CAP Fable.

Grammar: R&S 5 or FLL 4

Reading: Memoria Press 4

History: MP American history reading, From Sea to Shining Sea. 

Science: Life science/Zoology. Sassafras zoology, quark chronicles, and MP Insects. Special topic: orangutan unit study. 

Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding w friends. 

Handwriting: continue 15 min/day work in Intermediate Language Lessons

Spelling: R&S 4, AAS 4/5

Music: continue piano lessons. Possibly add band instrument. 

Art: drawing class at Co op

MP Geography 1, Christian Studies3, Famous Men of Rome 

PE: competitive soccer, cross country, track and field 

[eternallytired]

My youngest will be in 4th grade, and I have the hardest time knowing what to do for him.  He's bright, but he struggles with fine motor and thus hates writing, and his processing speed is super slow.  Thus, I'm always looking for things with a minimum of writing and very little extra work--but it takes him a while to acquire new information (except when it comes to airplane specs), so he also needs spiral to cement things.  Here's what (I think) he'll be doing next year:

Math: CLE (This will be new for us; several people recommended it as having a variety of work in each lesson, not overmuch practice, and a spiral.  He's currently doing a mashup of things I collected for this year because I couldn't find anything that seemed to fit.)

Language Arts: Family Book Club for lit, Jump In! (with his siblings) for writing, and either Analytical Grammar Jr. or Language Fundamentals 5 (LF5 is an Evan-Moor workbook.  He's doing 4 this year and I'm pleased with the topics covered and the minimal writing required, but I'm wondering what retention will be because it never really reviews.  Whether I switch will depend on how well he seems to have retained material at the end of the year.)

Science (with his older siblings): Ellen McHenry Botany, Cells, & Protozoa with CPO Life Science to round things out

Social Studies (with his older siblings): Crash Course World History (free curriculum to go with CCWH YouTube videos)

Spanish: continuing with Duolingo

I plan to continue Fun Fridays, when we do Family Book Club, science lab, an art project, a variety of logic puzzles, and random educational videos as well as a nature outing in the afternoon.

Other: continue guitar lessons and taekwondo (currently both over Zoom)

It's always interesting to see how much my plans change between now and the start of the new school year--and then whether we stick with our choices once we try them out.

 

[ladiekali]

our year typically runs January to October. This is our third year homeschooling and we skipped a year, or I guess more accurately we did grades 2 and 3 in one year. 
 

English- Michael clay Thompson paragraph town series (our second awesome year with mct)

Math- beast academy 3 (a second exciting year with beast) we also use dragon times card game and Tgtb math box.

science- Bearean Builders, science in the scientific revolution (our third year!)

history- historical fiction and nonfiction, liberty's kids videos (started with notgrass OSSS, we did not like it) we also use famous figure cut outs and utilize a world scrunch map for geography, we need the USA version. 

handwriting- cursive logic

exercise - body groove on demand

health - the care and keeping of you.

we are also doing all 6 Roald Dahl creative writing books, reading the books, then listening to the audio, then finishing with the movie)

unfortunately I bought way more than that. And we just really don’t need it. Some I will be able to utilize for next year.  

[Janeway]

Math-TGTB new math

Language arts-TGTB LA and handwriting

Science-Considering God's Creation and some Apologia

History-Story of the World

French-no clue, might just use the variety of resources we have and free youtube videos

Edited August 10, 2021 by Janeway

[Elle Tee]

These threads are super helpful! My oldest will be in 4th grade next year and I have a decent idea of what to do, and just placed a big curriculum order...

Bible: Year 4 of Telling God's Story, and Slugs and Bugs CDs for memorization

Math: Singapore 4A and 4B

Language Arts: FLL level 4

Spelling: AAS 4 and Homophone worksheets

Handwriting: Finishing up the current cursive book, then playing it by ear to see if he wants to do another one

Writing: Finishing WWE 2 and hopefully moving on to 3 before the year's over

I want to start Word Roots eventually, but I think it would be too much at this point.

History/Social Studies: Second half of American history (starting with Civil War). Doing a combination of Sonlight D and K spines in order to include my 1st grader in it, and using a bunch of other books for the time period. I'm looking forward to using the American Girl sets of Addy and Molly as read-alouds. We're also using Scholastic newspapers for current events, and I have a workbook for geography of the 50 states.

Science: Real Science Odyssey Astronomy level 1. Even with supplementation, it will only be about 18 weeks, so I'm not sure what to do for the rest of the year. Probably something with nutrition and other health topics, since our state requires covering health each year. 

Fine Arts: He doesn't have any trouble finding things to draw, and makes comics, so I'll probably just let him do his thing. I'd like us to learn the recorder next year though... not sure if I should try and include my 1st grader too.

I keep telling myself I'm going to find something on YouTube for Spanish and maybe yoga too, but it never seems to happen....

[bluemongoose]

Math: CLE finish 3 and start 4 and Singapore Word Problems book

Science: The Good and The Beautiful

Writing: IEW Myths, Fables, and Fairy Tales

Spelling: AAS 4

Grammar: Easy Grammar finish 3 and start 4. Fix it 1

Handwriting: HWOT

Lit/History/Geography/Art History/Bible: TOG year 4

Spanish/Latin: SS 2

Variety of Logic books

Art: MTM and Mark Missed drawing books

Poetry: we are trying out the IEW poetry memorization program.

Music: violin and piano lessons. Theory time. Hopefully we can continue with Orchestra, but we may take a year off to wait for vaccines. 

 

 

 

 

[Momto6inIN]

DD will do:

Reading list to go with modern US History 30 min/day
HWT Cursive Success
AAS - she's currently in the middle of level 4
Fix It 1
W&R Narrative Book 1 & maybe 2, depending on how fast she goes through it
Wordly Wise book 4
MM 4
Reflex Math (I think it might be called Time4MathFacts now?)
Homemade science using a mishmash of resources focusing on birds, insects, mammals, human body, health, and weather
America's Story post-Civil War to present
Memorizing US States & Capitals using misc stuff online
Piano
Artistic Pursuits Elementary book 1
PE at the local private school 1/week
Building Thinking Skills
Mind Benders
Typing.com
Finish Song School Spanish 2
Junior Speech with our speech and debate club

[valleyhillfamily]

I love these threads! I have a rising 4th grade son and two younger children (1st grade and preschool). I'm really excited for fourth grade. My kid has recently gone through a major developmental leap both in maturity as well as in the level of academic work he is able to complete. 

History: We are going to finish our study of the Renaissance, focusing on science, art, and Shakespeare. Then we will jump into Early Modern History with Curiosity Chronicles, which is one of our favorite resources. We will listen to Story of the World 3 (love Jim Weiss's voice!) We have been using the Classical Conversations timeline, although we don't participate in CC and aren't Christian. This is our first year using a timeline and it has been really fun. 

Literature: Shakespeare, of course. We will read most of the books on Torchlight's reading list. We also love this curriculum, but use it for inspiration rather than requirement. I also want to introduce him to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He'll love it. 

Language Arts: We will continue with Writing with Ease 3 and First Language Lessons 4. He participates in a weekly debate club and will continue with debate or public speaking in some format. 

Math: Finish Beast Academy 3 and begin Beast Academy 4. 

Art: He will continue with both violin and voice lessons, his favorite. We are going to study the artists of the Renaissance and orchestra music with SQUILT. 

Geography: He is currently working on drawing and labeling all the states and capitals in the U.S. When that is complete, we will focus on world geography. I'd like him to be able to sketch the continents and identify at least 20 countries and capitals by the end of the year. We will be doing Atlas Crate boxes for various countries and reading books to go along with the countries we study. 

Science: We are going to try a new resource, Scientific Connections Through Inquiry, Level 3. We will see. I haven't loved elementary science curriculum. We usually just read a lot and try to take classes from content-level experts at museums or nature centers. 

Latin: We will begin Latin for Children A. 

[SillyOldMom]

My youngest is heading into fourth. 😲

Math -- BJU, probably

Grammar -- FLL3-4

Writing -- WWE2-3 + Write by Number

Spelling/Vocab -- Spelling You See and possibly Vocabulary/Spelling City

History -- U.S. History; currently Notgrass America the Beautiful, but I'm not thrilled with it

Science -- The Elements by Ellen McHenry w/ my rising 7th-8th graders; second time through a family favorite

Geography -- Seterra.com

Literature -- uhhhhhhhh...

[Winter]

Maths: Math in Focus 4

Language Arts: I'm still on the fence with this but leaning towards a mix of First Language Lessons/Grammar for the Well Trained Mind. Reading through chapter books and discusing it chapter by chapter with questions.

Writing: Zaner-Bloser 4

Science: Mixture of Supercharged Science and Real Science Odyssey though we may end up dumping RSO as a curriculum depending on how the year goes with Supercharged. We've found the stuff we've done so far to be super engaging and a lot of fun to have someone like Aurora teaching it.

History: History of the World

Social Studies: Will use some online resources to discuss governments, culture, economics, etc.

Health: Kidshealth.org

Spanish: Duolingo

Music: Piano - Playground Sessions, Syntorial synthesis training, music production, and music appreciation

Technology: Self-made computer curriculum learning how to navigate and use Windows and other applications properly, typing (moving from TTRS to typing.com)

PE: Swimming, Soccer at home until we feel it's safe to return to the team.

[Janeway]

On 3/6/2021 at 11:18 AM, ladiekali said:

our year typically runs January to October. This is our third year homeschooling and we skipped a year, or I guess more accurately we did grades 2 and 3 in one year. 
 

English- Michael clay Thompson paragraph town series (our second awesome year with mct)

Math- beast academy 3 (a second exciting year with beast) we also use dragon times card game and Tgtb math box.

science- Bearean Builders, science in the scientific revolution (our third year!)

history- historical fiction and nonfiction, liberty's kids videos (started with notgrass OSSS, we did not like it) we also use famous figure cut outs and utilize a world scrunch map for geography, we need the USA version. 

handwriting- cursive logic

exercise - body groove on demand

health - the care and keeping of you.

we are also doing all 6 Roald Dahl creative writing books, reading the books, then listening to the audio, then finishing with the movie)

unfortunately I bought way more than that. And we just really don’t need it. Some I will be able to utilize for next year.  

Please tell me about Notgrass OSSS. I recall not liking Notgrass at the high school level, but then the samples of OSSS look nice, but I am wondering if it would just be busy work and such and not worth spending the money on. I already have tons of books.

[ladiekali]

I just found this message. For us it was just not an interesting read. Lots of pointless info for the age. My daughter had little recall of the information. We were coming from story of the world, which she has loved. We are moving to the good and the beautiful. The pictures in notgrass are beautiful. And I’ve held onto the book, there’s just better options IMO.