The homeschool curriculum choices blog posts are great, but what I really want to know is what families thought AFTER they used the curriculum they chose! I have shared many of these posts, you can see them all here. This is my third child to homeschool 4th grade, which is why the post is titled “Round 3!”
Next up, 4th grade! Here’s a reminder of the original 4th Grade Curriculum Choices post.
Below I will give a small review of each subject, if you have more specific questions about anything, just leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer!
Math ~ Teaching Textbooks 5, Spielgaben, Life of Fred
Once again, Teaching Textbooks does the job for us! She completed Math 5 and will be continuing on with Teaching Textbooks Math 6 for 5th grade.
We read Life of Fred together at least a few times a week, we both LOVE LOF!
Our Spielgaben set continues to come out and the pieces are often used for reinforcement. We are using the new math workbooks this summer for review!
History/Geography ~ LIFEPAC 4th Grade
This was a great fit for us! She enjoyed reading together and did the workbook portion on her own.
We will be switching to a different publisher for next year – not because I didn’t like LIFEPAC but simply because I need to combine my kids to save time instead of having two completely different history programs. Next year we will use Notgrass From Adam to Us for 5th and 8th grade.
See more about LIFEPAC History/Geography here in our full review!
Reading ~ 4th grade reading list.
Books read together :
- Island of the Blue Dolphins
- The Wild Robot
- The Wild Robot Escapes
- Endling
- Granted
Books read independently:
- Warriors series
- Wings of Fire series
- more than I can remember
She LOVES reading, but only loves reading books she chooses. Her big change for the upcoming school year will be having assigned books to read. I will mainly be assigning historical fiction for her, since her natural reading choices are mostly fantasy and animal fiction.
Grammar ~ Growing with Grammar then Fix It Grammar
We began the year by finishing up Growing with Grammar Level 3 with plans to move on to level 4. We decided to try IEW’s Fix It Grammar and it is a great fit! We started with their first book and I taught my kids together {4th/7th}. Since we started later in the year, we just got as far as we could and will begin where we left off when we start back to school in August.
Vocabulary ~ Spectrum 4th Grade
No photos of this one, but I continue to like Spectrum Vocabulary workbooks for my kids and will be having her use the 5th grade version in the fall.
Spelling ~ All About Spelling Level 4
We love AAS but my girl is a naturally good speller. We took pretests for many of the units and she knew almost all of the words. We will use Level 5 in the fall since we already own it, but I imagine she will breeze through it too. It’s nice to finally have a kid I don’t have to drill on spelling so much!
Handwriting Practice ~ Character Copywork
I combined a bit of Bible with handwriting having her copy verses using Character Copywork.
Writing ~ IEW
We started the year with Bible Heroes {which we were finishing up from 3rd grade} and paused in the middle to do SWI B {I combined my younger kids for this 4th/7th} and that was a great idea! We will finish up SWI B in the fall {we have 3 lessons left – which purposely saved because I wanted to spend time on them and not rush at the end of the year} and then move on to All Things Fun and Fascinating. IEW is a great fit for us! She is a natural writer, and will write TONS on her own. When she grows up she wants to be a LEGO designer but if she doesn’t do that she wants to be an author.
Science ~ Learning About Science & weekly enrichment class {Apologia Astronomy}
Most of her science came from her weekly enrichment class which she loved. They used Apologia Astronomy and she came home with all sorts of fun stuff! Working on the solar system project together was a highlight! You can see her oral report here on Instagram!
We used Learning About Science as a home addition to read about some additional science topics together.
Art ~ See our plans here!
We tend to be stronger with the “extras” during the first few months of school. I loved our art plan and love the projects we did and artists we learned about. I plan to continue on in the fall and get some good art in for a few months at least!
For Fun ~ Kids Cook Real Food eCourse
Again, I was great for a couple of months and then main subjects took over. I love the cooking course nd hope to do more with it again in the fall!
Stay tuned, I will be sharing our year-end review for 11th grade. I will also be sharing our curriculum choices for 8th grade & 5th grade. See all of our past reviews and choices for other grade levels here!
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