Saturday, August 17, 2013

Finishing Up 3rd Grade Plans

We won't be starting 4th grade until January as I laid out in this post, Homeschooling With a January Start.  We are finishing up some 3rd grade materials and then going ahead into the next level before our "official" start because K is ahead in some things and other things she needs more practice.  One of these she needs more practice on is dictation, so thanks to advice from Susan Wise Bauer's curriculum advisors for Writing With Ease, K needed to go back through WWE 2.  They stated that if the child can not get the dictation after just 2 recitations - you need to stop and go back until they can.  I know several that just forge on ahead and they find themselves ignoring the rules and their child hits a wall around 5th grade.  Even Susan Wise Bauer's own son, Dan who was 13 at the time, had to go back to WWE 4 because he also struggled with dictation.  K also had some issues with spelling but is advancing with All About Spelling (AAS) and we really love this curriculum!  She also does Spelling Workout (SWO) on the side as extra practice but the meat of our spelling program is in AAS.

K is very strong in math and science, and we do hope to advance further ahead and eventually and even skip a level if need be to feed her love of math.  With science, I needed something more scheduled, so we recently switched over to Elemental Science's Chemistry and it is a good fit for us but we won't finish it until next summer most likely but that is OK because science (and history) are content areas.

Here is what we have left and what we plan on starting early for 4th grade and when we will complete what.  We have 15 weeks left of schooling until Thanksgiving and we don't plan on taking any weeks off, so that we can take off from Thanksgiving until January 6th.

Bible
Christian Studies 1 - finish September 20th
Christian Studies 2 - start September 23rd

Latin
Prima Latina - finish by Thanksgiving
Christiana I - start January 6th

Grammar
First Language Lessons 3 - finish by Thanksgiving
First Language Lessons 4 - start January 6th

Writing
Writing With Ease 2 - finish by Thanksgiving
Writing With Ease 3 - start January 6th

Math
Saxon Math 3 - finish October 18th
Saxon Math 5/4 - start October 21st

*At this rate we are moving through Math since it is K's strongest subject and if all goes according to plan, she will start Algebra 1 in 6th grade - finishing up high school math with Advanced Mathematics by 8th or 9th grade and able to go on to the higher maths for her high school years in Calculus, Physics & Trigonometry if she chooses, but I will probably hire a tutor lol.

Spelling
All About Spelling 3 - finish September 13th
All About Spelling 4 - start September 16 & finish January 24th
Spelling Workout D - start August 19th & finish January 24th

*You can see with spelling that we will finish AAS 3 & 4 mainly in "3rd grade" and then finish AAS 5 & 6 in "4th grade."  We will also finish SWO D in 3rd and E and F in 4th.  Giving us only SWO from 5th grade on because we will have completed all levels of AAS by the end of 4th grade.  So less time in spelling comes in 5th grade!

History & Science
*We aren't really concerned when we finish these because we like spending more time than just a year in Story of the World and we love doing science kits, etc..  However, for planning purposes, I went ahead and gave an estimated time of completion but we have a lot of detours due to interest in a certain topic or time period almost always!

Story of the World 3 - finish March 21st
Story of the World 4 - start March 24th
Elemental Science Chemistry - finish May 9th
Elemental Science Physics - start May 12th


There is my plan and how everything is flowing currently.  I like to do this every so often to gauge our progress in various areas.  I do plan on doing a 4th grade curriculum post to show you what we are using for the next levels in all subjects.

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