Tuesday, December 31, 2013

4th Grade Evening "Fun" Book List

K will be reading for 1 hour every evening and there will be no narrations for these books.  These are called "fun" books because they are at or below her reading level.

  1. The Family Under the Bridge
  2. The Moffats
  3. Matilda
  4. Mr. Popper's Penquins
  5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  6. Charlotte's Web
  7. Winnie the Pooh
  8. The Giving Tree

She will also choose her own from the library throughout the year.

*Possibly as a Family - The Chronicles of Narnia

Completed 3rd Grade Reading List

Here are the books that K read this past year for 3rd grade and also the read-alouds we read to her.

You will notice the fun book list is small this year because I lost track of what she was reading while taking care of my new baby and we also read a lot more read-alouds this year and that took some of her evening reading time.

Morning/Challenging book list
  1. Robinson Crusoe - Dover Children's Classics
  2. Gulliver's Travels - Stepping Stone
  3. Magic Tree House Research Guide: Pilgrims
  4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Stepping Stone
  5. Les Miserables - Stepping Stone
  6. The Three Musketeers - Stepping Stone  
  7. Pied Piper of Hamelin - Browning
  8. Grimm's Fairy Tales - Classic Starts
  9. Little Pilgrim's Progress - Taylor
  10. Great Expectations - Stepping Stone
  11. Oliver Twist - Stepping Stone series
  12. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Stepping Stone
  13. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Stepping Stone
  14. A Christmas Carol - Dickens (abridged by French)
  15. Alice in Wonderland - Carroll - Classic Starts
  16. The Last of the Mohicans - Classic Starts
  17. Moby Dick - Classic Starts
  18. East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Norwegian Folk Tales) - Asbjørnsen
Evening/Fun Book List
  1. The Mouse and the Motorcycle
  2. Pocahontas - Rookie Biography
  3. Thanksgiving on Thursday - Magic Tree House
  4. Bunnicula
  5. Man in the Iron Mask
History/Literature Parent Read-Aloud Book List
  1. The Sad Night - Mathews
  2. Lost Treasure of the Inca - Lourie (just skimmed photos)
  3. Usborne Book of Treasure Hunting - pg. 60-61
  4. The Legend of El Dorado - Vidal/Laan
  5. Always Room for One More - Leodhas
  6. Katje the Windmill Cat - Woelfle
  7. Don Quixote and the Windmills - Kimmel
  8. The Flying Canoe; A Christmas Story - Kimmel
  9. Three Samurai Cats - Kimmel
  10. Japan ABCs - Heiman
  11. Our Colonial Year - Harness
  12. Colonial Crafts - Kalman
  13. An Early American Christmas - dePaola
  14. The First Thanksgiving - Whitehurst
  15. Sarah Morton's Day - Waters
  16. In the Time of Drums - Siegelson
  17. Little Mouse and Elephant - Yolen
  18. Turkey - O'Shea
  19. The Boy of the Three-Year Nap - Snyder
  20. Hokusai: The Man Who Painted a Mountain - Ray
  21. Liang and the Magic Paintbrush - Demi
  22. Rapunzel - Zelinsky
  23. Ancient China - DK
  24. The Hero of Bremen - Hodges
  25. The Paper Dragon - Davol
  26. Taj Mahal - Mann
  27. The Cat Who Walked Across France - Banks
  28. Look What Came From France - Harvey
  29. Crepes by Suzette - Wellington
  30. The King's Day : Louis XIV of France - Aliki
  31. Seven at One Blow: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm -  Kimmel
  32. The Wampanoags - True Book
  33. The Iroquois - True Book
  34. The Story of William Penn - Aliki
  35. Colonial Home - Kalman
  36. Isaac Newton and the Laws of Motion - Gianopoulos
  37. Galileo's Leaning Tower Experiment - Macdonald
  38. Farm: Eyewitness book
  39. A Farm Through Time - Wickes
  40. India - True book
  41. Welcome to Russia - Schemenauer
  42. Russia: Eyewitness book
  43. The Language of Birds - Martin
  44. Lives of the Pirates - Krull (only read story on Barbarossa Brothers)
  45. A Weave of Words: An Armenian Tale - San Souci
  46. The Fool of the World and The Flying Ship: A Russian Tale - Ransome
  47. The Contest - Hogrogian

Monday, December 30, 2013

4th Grade Subjects Schedule & School Times

The Well Trained Mind gives an average time of 5 hours and 45 minutes for 4th grade.  So I decided to do an estimated time that it will take to do each subject and then a total time of schooling everyday - this includes reading, which for 4th grade is 105 minutes (1 hour and 45 minutes)With reading it is a total of 6 hours and 5 minutes and without counting reading time, it is 4 hours and 20 minutes.  I'm not counting art, music and home economics because we only will be doing those once a week, maybe even on the weekend.  So we are pretty much on target!

*I'm trying out doing history AND science every day this year to "catch" up and be on track for 5th grade with the WTM recommendations.

Estimated Times per Subject per day
Bible - 15m
Reading - 45m morning/60m evening = 105m
Spelling - 60m
Grammar - 20m
Writing - 15m
Latin - 30m
Math - 40m
History - 40m
Science - 40m
Weekly
Art - 60m
Music study - 60m
Home Economics - 60m
Schedule
Here is my schedule as it is right now, it will probably change as we start and get adjusted and find out what works best for us.
 We are doing school 5 days a week and doing all subjects every day with the exclusion of art, music and home economics, which are done once a week.  Spelling is going to be a tricky one because we are trying to stay on track with Spelling Workout but also aim to finish all of the All About Spelling levels this year.  I'm not sure yet if I will alternate days or books.

  • Bible - together for 15 minutes
  • Reading - K reads independently for 45 minutes while I feed the baby, make breakfast, chores, etc.
  • *If it is NOT Z's naptime - K does 40 minutes of math independently with the video teacher
  • *If it IS Z's naptime - We do language arts for about 1 1/2 hours (spelling, grammar and writing)
  • Latin - K does Latin independently for 30 minutes
  • *During Z's afternoon 2-hour nap - history and science
  • reads for 1 hour in the evening after dinner

4th Grade Curriculum Index of Posts

Here is an index of what we are using for 4th grade.  I haven't added in a new science post because we are still fairly at the beginning of this past year's chemistry since we changed curriculum in the middle.  We may finish it by summer and then I will update a new post with what we will be using for physics.

4th Grade Math

Math is K's strongest and favorite subject and we love Saxon!  However, she wanted more math, so we started adding in some more with Life of Fred books and they are fulfilling her desire.  This year we are using Saxon Teacher video lessons.

Saxon 5/4 



Life of Fred Elementary

4th Grade History and Geography

We are finishing up Story of the World 3 and continuing on with book 4 towards the end of the year.  We will also be doing state history this year for about 3 weeks.  In addition to memory work for history, K will be memorizing the 50 states and their capitals. 

We also purchased several games to go along with our studies this year!



Games


4th Grade Art, Music and Home Economics

Art is sorely neglected but I want to actually do the curriculum this year.  K does do art, she does do coloring, painting and crafts but we don't do art study and learn new things, so this is the year to add that back in.

Art - Artistic Pursuits Book 1 and 2


Music - Story of the Orchestra, Great Composers Book 1 and Beethoven Who



Home Economics - Pearables Home Economics 



4th Grade Foreign Language - Latin

We are finishing up Prima Latina this year and starting Latina Christiana I both with the DVD teacher.


4th Grade Language Arts - Spelling, Grammar, Writing and Reading

3rd grade was a hard year adjusting to a newborn and we barely finished the basics, so we have a lot of things to finish in other subjects.  We also had to take some time off of writing because K was really struggling with dictation.  Some guidance I got was to go back to the Writing With Ease Level 2 book.  However, upon listening to Susan Wise Bauer in 2 videos she posted about dictation, I realized I was expecting too much for dictation.  You can give it one sentence at a time, you are just trying to stretch the child's memory capacity to see how much they can hold.  K can hold 12-15 words easily in her mind and then write them down, which is about 2 sentences.  So we are going to go ahead and do Writing With Ease Level 3 this year.

Reading - Morning Independent reading list and Evening Hour reading list, along with our history read-a-loud list as well.

Spelling - we will be finishing up the All About Spelling this year with levels 4, 5 and 6 and Spelling Workout D and E.  This will be the last year of AAS and we will continue on with SWO through to 7th grade.


Grammar - First Language Lessons Level 4



Writing - Writing With Ease Level 3


4th Grade Morning Independent Reading Book List

K will be reading from a list of classics in the morning for 45 minutes.  Upon completion of each book, she will do a full page of narration on the book.

  1. A Child's Garden of Verses - Stevenson 
  2. Kidnapped - Stepping Stone series
  3. Treasure Island - Audio by Jim Weiss
  4. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Stepping Stone series
  5. Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes - Stepping Stone series
  6. Heidi - Spyri
  7. Pinocchio - Classic Starts 
  8. War of the Worlds - Stepping Stone series
  9. The Time Machine - Classic Starts 
  10. Little Women - Stepping Stone series
  11. Little Men - Classic Starts
  12. Blue, Orange or Lilac Fairy Books - Lang 
  13. Secret Garden - Audio 
  14. The Little Princess - Audio 
  15. The Wind in the Willows - Grahame 
  16. Peter Pan - Classic Starts 
  17. How the Camel Got His Hump - Kipling 
  18. The Jungle Book - Stepping Stone series 
  19. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - Kipling 
  20. Just So Stories - Kipling; Audio 
  21. Laura Ingalls Wilder - all the novels
  22. Beatrix Potter Tales
  23. Walter de la Mare - poems 
  24. Poetry for Young People - Sandberg 
  25. You Read To Me, I'll Read To You - Ciardi
  26. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - Eliot 
  27. Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre - Ross
  28. Jane Eyre -Stepping Stone series
  29. Frankenstein - Stepping Stone series
  30. Phantom of the Opera - Stepping Stone series

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Free Printable Homeschool Yearly Goal Sheet

I'm working on the upcoming new year for us and designed this today, feel free to use for personal use.