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my 4th grade game plan


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Unless you're folding a younger child in and trying to keep them together, I wouldn't use Song School Latin with a 4th grader. Way too easy.

 

Grammar unless it's included in Writing Tales.

 

I do a very simple program with my natural speller (who will enter 4th next year). Ten words a week, first day she reads them carefully, spells them out loud, and copies them. Then each day she just copies them once, sometimes in ABC order or something.

 

It takes just a couple of minutes, she enjoys having a quick assignment that she excells at, and I figure better safe than sorry!

 

I've never used an additional curriculum with SOTW; I've always found it pretty pick up and go (with the activity guide).

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I'll have a 4th grader next year (along with a 2nd and K'er), but we've actually started his new materials. What I do each semester is think about where my ds is now and what skills I can work on him with to make the following semester easier. The skills and workload really increase for 5th. I'm focusing on making the physcial quantity of writing second nature, making sure basic parts of speech are solid, and going beyond surface comprehension. What I use is in my signature. You know your dc best though.

 

I also second this; 5th grade is a whole new world!

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have I covered everything? Do I need to add spelling or copywork or anything?

 

Writing Tales

School Song Latin

tons of library books

 

Math Mammoth

 

SOTW vol 1 (maybe use Mosaic curric, it looks really good)

 

Science in a Nutshell physics kits

 

music and art from various sources

 

I would add in grammar.

 

Song School Latin is young (she won't get much from the workbook at all), but she might enjoy the song cd. If your purpose is to indtroduce her to the Latin langauge informally, this would be a good choice. If you're ready to start with a study of Latin, I'd go with something else.

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Unless you're folding a younger child in and trying to keep them together, I wouldn't use Song School Latin with a 4th grader. Way too easy.

 

Grammar unless it's included in Writing Tales.

 

I do a very simple program with my natural speller (who will enter 4th next year). Ten words a week, first day she reads them carefully, spells them out loud, and copies them. Then each day she just copies them once, sometimes in ABC order or something.

 

It takes just a couple of minutes, she enjoys having a quick assignment that she excells at, and I figure better safe than sorry!

 

I've never used an additional curriculum with SOTW; I've always found it pretty pick up and go (with the activity guide).

 

Yes, I'll have a 2nd grade doing latin too, and my 4th grader has never done latin. But I have been keeping something like minimus in mind for her incase she does need something more challenging.

 

From the sample I looked at it looks like WT has grammer and spelling in it, but I've never used it, so I wanted to check with you all and see if it was as complete a program as it appears to be. But as I said, I don't want to overwhelm her here either, we've never done this kind of thing before.

 

I've never used SOTW before, and I really have no idea what's in it. Once I see it, I'll have a better idea of what we want to do with it. But I'm keeping the mosaic guide in my head in case we want to add on to it. My 4th grade devours books and loves lots of crafty stuff. My second grader loves a little crafty stuff, but not all the books. SO I may end up doing this on 2 different levels, and I'm collecting ideas :D

 

Thanks guys

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I would add spelling. Here are a few words from dd's 4th grade level spelling book. You might want to see if your dc can spell them to see if you need to asses further for a higher/lower placement.

Receive

Trickiest

Business

Caught

Strength

Survival

Skimming

Government

 

4th grade grammar covered all parts of speech, clauses, prepositional phrases, direct and indirect objects, capitalization and punctuation (dd just had a section on this on her standardized test- knowing where to place commas and such). Your dc should be able to write a friendly letter and a business letter by the end of 4th grade using correct grammar, capitalization, and punctuation.

 

The 4th grade standardized test dd took covered decimals, fractions (with same denominators), simple geometry (id shapes and find perimeter, etc), addition, subtraction, estimating, multiplication, and division (but only with 2 digit divisors) for math.

 

As far as copywork goes, I would say it depends on how neatly your child can write. We actually do dictation instead of copywork now to help dd with her note taking skills.

 

I would also make sure to throw in some geography with SOTW. Your dc should know about the regions of the US and their features and how to read a map and map key at the very least.

 

I totally agree with the poster who said the expectations and workload for 5th grade is a BIG jump. The best thing I can advise is to hook up with a teacher in one of your local schools. They can tell you the "inside scoop" about what they cover and what they want kids to be able to do when they enter the classroom. You can also arrange to observe a class or visit and see samples of some of the 4th graders' work.

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