Looking for advice for fourth grade language arts and social studies curriculums

[Winter]

We decided to take the advice given here and forego our original plan of going cyber charter and stick to our own curriculum for fourth grade. There are two things I'm getting tripped up on right now which is curriculums for language arts and one for social studies/civics and would appreciate some suggestions I can look into.

For grammar, I'd really like to see something that starts teaching sentence diagramming to help with his structure. He already reads like crazy and in the past week he's burned through Harry Potter books 3 and 4. The thing is, I need to make sure he actually understands a lot of what he's reading.

With Social Studies, I'd like something that hits on topics like communities and government. MBTP was okay with this but it seems like they would just glaze casually over topics rather than dig in and actually teach about all these aspects they would talk about which really annoyed me. I've had a lot of trouble finding a proper social studies curriculum for fourth grade though.

Lastly, I'm looking for secular curriculums that are going to have everything we need in them. One of my biggest annoyances with MBTP was that seemingly with every single topic, they would put the most basic of information and then add "Look up more information on the internet" with no guidance on what pages or where to look for solid information or they would say "go to the library and get this book". This was a time consuming task I am trying to avoid and would prefer if the curriculum itself had what needed to be taught inside without me needing to spend hours doing research of my own.

Thanks again, everyone!

Reading Comprehension: ?

Grammar: ?

Writing: Zaner-Bloser Handwriting

Spelling: All About Spelling

History: Story of the World

Social Studies/Civics: ?

[Slache]

In fourth we don't do formal reading comprehension, just read and discuss.

Susan Wise Bauer has a middle scholl grammar which I haven't used, but it looks like what you want. I think it's called Grammar For The Well Trained Mind.

I don't know what you want with Civics in fourth since you're already doing SOTW. Look up Sly Sobel. Or if you can get the Table of Contents from Uncle Sam by Notgrass and cover from that list. It's Christian and a full curriculum, but if you wanted to build your own it's probably a good starting point.

[Not_a_Number]

2 hours ago, Slache said:

In fourth we don't do formal reading comprehension, just read and discuss.

Yeah, that's what we do, although we aren't in 4th grade yet. I will say that I can figure out a LOT more about what a kid understood from an interactive discussion than I can from something more formal, anyway. 

[Xahm]

If you aren't opposed to screen learning, my kid that age loves iCivics. She's getting a lot about the fact that different parts of government do different jobs and serve as checks and balances to each other, what rights are in the Bill of Rights and what kinds of situations are affected by those rights, differences between local, state, and federal government, etc. She'll still need a full civics/government course before she leaves our house, but since we study more history and geography, this rounds it out. Getting a basic middle school or even 9th grade civics textbook and occasionally reading and discussing it together might be another way.

[SilverMoon]

My fourth grader discusses what he reads with me and it's easy to tell if he understood what he read. It's totally okay if some of it is over his head though. It still adds "pegs" to his memory wall for hanging later information. This is so much more effective than any reading comp workbook. 🙂

For English/LA he's used Writing Tales, copywork from his literature (ala Build Your Library level 4, counts as penmanship/endurance), Daily Language Review (Evan Moor), Writing Road to Reading for spelling, and a pile of high quality children's literature (also BYL 4). Next year for 5th he's going to use First Language Lessons 4 (grammar with diagramming), MegaWords (spelling), Treasured Conversations (writing), and another pile of high quality children's literature. Fwiw he tends to struggle with writing and spelling and reads well above grade level. 

Story of the World is social studies technically. My 4th grader has used SOTW 4 as his history spine this year and he covered communities and government through daily life. I discuss local and national news stories with him and the teens regularly. He learned about the electoral college at election time and flipped up the map to see which states lit up red or blue as much as I did. He watched the inauguration live. I show them tweets from government officials and discuss them. Discussion like this is woven into our days organically. 

If you really want communities and government to be a subject this year I'd shelve SOTW. 

Secular options: Build Your Library (love!), Blossom and Root (no experience), Pandia Press (I think? It may just be neutral...), History Quest (no experience)

ETA: He only discusses *assigned reading with me regularly. I don't require this of everything he reads.

Edited March 24, 2021 by SilverMoon

[SilverMoon]

For HP with my 4th grader, we just put the movie on after he finishes a book. He loves yelling at the tv about all the things they got wrong, in a very Hermione tone. He's definitely comprehending. 🤣

[Porridge]

For grammar with diagramming, I wouldn’t do Grammar  for the Well Trained Mind with a fourth grader, but I would suggest First Language Lessons level 4. It’sa great, gentle but thorough grammar program, and it does teach diagramming

[Winter]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Got some researching to do. 🙂

[Servant4Christ]

On 3/24/2021 at 4:55 AM, Winter said:

With Social Studies, I'd like something that hits on topics like communities and government. MBTP was okay with this but it seems like they would just glaze casually over topics rather than dig in and actually teach about all these aspects they would talk about which really annoyed me. I've had a lot of trouble finding a proper social studies curriculum for fourth grade though.

Lastly, I'm looking for secular curriculums that are going to have everything we need in them. One of my biggest annoyances with MBTP was that seemingly with every single topic, they would put the most basic of information and then add "Look up more information on the internet" with no guidance on what pages or where to look for solid information or they would say "go to the library and get this book". This was a time consuming task I am trying to avoid and would prefer if the curriculum itself had what needed to be taught inside without me needing to spend hours doing research of my own.

I find this alot in elementary curriculum in general. For a child who wants more info (like mine), I have to look to a middle school course and tweak the amount of written output to fit the age. 

For reading, if you're just looking to check a box that says he's comprehending, there are several simple workbook programs that should fit the bill. Comprehension Plus and The Reading Detective come to mind. I looked into both before realizing they are Secular.

Something that helps me weed through it all is my Rainbow Resources Catalog. The newer ones don't have a full inventory listed but are so well organized with little icons to let you know at a glance what worldview it supports, teacher intensity, learning style, and whether more books are needed to make it a complete curriculum. I LOVE the new catalogs 😍 

FWIW, DS10 struggles with writing and spelling even though he reads like crazy, too. His comprehension is way above grade level according to his standardized test scores so I don't worry. But I regularly ask questions about what he reads to guage comprehension and vocabulary.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Servant4Christ

[Momto6inIN]

Sly Sobel's book How the US Government Works was good for my 3rd grader. We just read it and talked about it and since it was an election year we had lots of real life stuff to discuss too. It wasn't a curriculum, just a book to read and discuss together.

We don't do reading comprehension either. They just talk to me about what they're reading and I can tell if they're getting it or not. For grammar we do gentle stuff like Fix It at that age, then hit diagramming in middle school with Analytical Grammar. There is a Junior Analytical Grammar program that might be a good fit for a 4th grader.

Do you have a writing/composition program you're doing?

[Winter]

12 hours ago, Momto6inIN said:

Do you have a writing/composition program you're doing?

Thanks for the book suggestion. Added to Amazon cart for next order.

We're doing Zaner-Bloser Handwriting. He hates writing though and it's been a bit of a struggle in that area so we may focus more on typing for larger projects.

[Winter]

On 3/24/2021 at 7:29 PM, Servant4Christ said:

I find this alot in elementary curriculum in general. For a child who wants more info (like mine), I have to look to a middle school course and tweak the amount of written output to fit the age. 

For reading, if you're just looking to check a box that says he's comprehending, there are several simple workbook programs that should fit the bill. Comprehension Plus and The Reading Detective come to mind. I looked into both before realizing they are Secular.

Something that helps me weed through it all is my Rainbow Resources Catalog. The newer ones don't have a full inventory listed but are so well organized with little icons to let you know at a glance what worldview it supports, teacher intensity, learning style, and whether more books are needed to make it a complete curriculum. I LOVE the new catalogs 😍 

FWIW, DS10 struggles with writing and spelling even though he reads like crazy, too. His comprehension is way above grade level according to his standardized test scores so I don't worry. But I regularly ask questions about what he reads to guage comprehension and vocabulary. I also frequently require him to write his spelling words phonetically or have him write the correct spelling of words I write out phonetically which seems to help.

Thanks. Will look into the workbooks. I've used Rainbow Resource before and looks like I'll be using it more since HomsechoolCo-Op was bought out and are missing quite a few things we are using like Math In Focus now. I'll have to give the catalogue a try and see how that works.

We're still trying to decide when to do testing because PA requires third graders to take a standardized achievement test. Likely soon.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Winter