Tuesday, September 27, 2011

2011-2012 Curriculum

I meant to do this post a long time ago, but I've been busy homeschooling. This year is a bit different as we got off the 4 year history cycle one year (stupid, shiny boxed curriculum!), so we're playing catch up this year and doing an abbreviated version of Early Modern and Modern history so we can get back on track next year.
This is our curriculum this year (4th grade):

SOTW 3 and 4 (abbreviated!)
SOTW Geography
Growing With Grammar 4 (♥♥♥)
Singapore My Pals Are Here Science 3/4
Teaching Textbooks 4 Math
Latin For Children Primer A
Instant Immersion German
Winter Promise Chess
100 Great Poems for Boys
SuperTeacherWorksheets.com Spelling 4
Violin

We are also reading a lot of fun books this year.  Indy reads to me almost every day from the Pirate School series and each week we have a book that I read that ties into what we're learning about in history.
We've already changed a few things up this year.  We were using Writing With Ease (made by the same company as GWG), but both disliked it immensely.  
We're in week 7 (out of 36) and had a scheduled break after week 8, but since we're doing a big move in a few weeks, we're going to wait until that happens for our break.

Monday, September 5, 2011

4th Grade

It's hard to believe that the summer flew by so quickly.  Well, to be fair ours was only 7 weeks, but it was a very short 7 weeks.  On Aug 8th we started back and Indy entered 4th grade!  How did my baby get to the 4th grade already?
Here is is 1st day photo:





Every year on the first day we have the breakfast of his choice (chocolate chip waffles this year) and then we do an "All About Me" page.  I paste his first day photo into my template and then print it off and he fills in the answers.

Age: 9
Grade: 4
Year: 2011
Height: 58"
Weight: 82 pounds
Favorite Food: Pizza, Chicken Broccoli Casserole
Favorite Color: Blue
Favorite TV Show: Phineas and Ferb
Favorite Movie: Harry Potter
Favorite Subject in School: History and Science
When I Grow up I want to be: An Archaeologist

We put the paper in the front of his history notebook and then I put them in the archives at the end of the year. They'll be great to look at when he's older.

As I type this, we've been in school for 4 weeks already. He's doing great in his reading, which is a huge deal since he's dyslexic. He still stumbles a lot, but he tries so hard and is so proud of what he's accomplished.
In history we've studied from Mary, Queen of Scots to the Jamestown colony to the Mayflower and the 30 Years War (and loads of stuff in between). We've read loads of books for each subject and learned a lot. Tomorrow we start learning about Louis XIV and then on to the French Revolution. He's really excited about this as we just went to Versailles in June.
In science we've learned about classification of things and animals. He finds this really interesting.
He's doing excellent in grammar, math, Latin and German. He still enjoys Latin more than anything.
I'm so proud of how much he's retaining and how he thinks things through.
This year is a bit of a challenge due to having to take care of Han Solo, but we're making it work.