This newly acquired independence allows each of my kids the opportunity to forge ahead with more self-directed learning activities. I no longer need to be the dictator of their days.
To be honest, autonomy has always been a struggle for my youngest. In typical last-born tradition, he follows the lead of all of his older siblings and sometimes finds it difficult to occupy himself So this year, we'll be working on developing the skills of self-directed learning.
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Here's what he'll be learning. Since we only homeschool 4-days a week, you can assume that each of these subjects will only be covered four times each week unless otherwise indicated.
Content-rich Subjects
As always, he'll do all of his content-rich subjects like Morning time/Bible, history, science, art, and creative writing with his older siblings. You can see those curriculum choices here>>>
Personal Devotions- every day
Language
- LLATL The Orange Book (Use coupon code unlikelyhomeschool at checkout to get 15% off your entire purchase from Common Sense Press, the makers of LAHTL.)
- Finish All About Spelling Level 3 and move on to Level 3.
- Read for pleasure every day.
- Read the following books that correspond with the LLATL Yellow Book: The Boxcar Children, Wilbur and Orville Wright: Young Fliers, Ben and Me, and The Sign of the Beaver. (If he's not currently working through an LLATL suggested book, he will read a chapter from a book that I assign to him. These will be classics, biographies, or exceptional fiction.)
Math
- Abeka Arithmetic 4 Video Lessons
- free online review games and apps (like Math Mateer and Monkey Math) for math process review (every few days)
Handwriting
Life Skills/Extra Curriculars
- Udemy for online drum lessons
- Read a section from Indescribable- 2x a week
- Thanks to his 4th-grade status, we were able to grab a fee annual family pass to the National Park Service through the Every Kid Outdoors initiative. We've already used the tickets for a few parks this past summer. We hope to do much more exploring in the coming school year.
- Clean his room and make his bed each day.
- Daily chores: sweep the music room, empty the dishwasher with his older brother, empty all the bedroom and bathroom trash cans
- Weekly Chores for his child-of-the-day privileges and responsibilities: help make lunch/dinner and do two loads of laundry (Fridays)
- Monthly Chores: dust the main floor with his siblings, mop the music room, plus randomly select and complete two chores from our chore jar one Saturday each month
Co-operative Learning
Fourth grade will bring some changes to my son's schedule. He'll be encouraged to take more ownership of his learning. As with all personal growth, there will be growing pains. But, I've no doubt he'll be up to the challenge!
Thanks for sharing your curriculum choices! I also have a fourth grader this year! I was wondering which childrens Bible you prefer, the ESV Seek and Find or the ESV Holy Bible for Kids? Thanks for your input!
ReplyDeleteThey are both great. The Seek & Find is a nice Bible and has several extras whereas the ESV Holy Bible is just Scripture. I purchased the Holy Bible for my younger boys because it was cheaper and came in hard back. Because of their age, I wanted to give them one that could be easily replaced if it got misplaced.
DeleteIt looks like you're doing Abeka math for everyone this year. Did BJU not pan out? We're switching to BJU math this year (from Math U See), so I'm hoping I'm not in for a total bust haha!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think your AAS is supposed to say he's loving on to level 4? ;)
BJU is recorded for homeschool use, meaning the teacher talks directly at the camera to the homeschooled child. On the plus side, this makes the lessons shorter, but on the minus side, the teacher does not have the advantage of student feedback. In addition, I don't feel like BJU offers enough for visual learners in the upper grades. Abeka, on the other hand, is a recording of an actual classroom. While this makes the lessons longer, the teacher has the feedback of a large class. He/she can tell right away if the students are understanding or if he/she needs to re-explain in a different way. Plus I feel like they review the previous day's work so that if a child missed a problem, they can better understand what they did wrong. With BJU, my child was at the mercy of my ability to re-explain or go over missed problems. And math is just not my strongest skill.
DeleteBoth programs have their struggles and strengths. It's quite possible that we'll get started with Abeka and be underwhelmed. But I used Abeka video courses for much of my own high school and feel like it might be a better fit for my boys and relieve me of most of the day-to-day responsibilities.
With using both LLATL and AAS, do you teach both of those to your children yourself or are some using it independently?
ReplyDeleteI teach both of those to each of my kids. It might seem like a lot, but the lessons are short. So all in all, my part probably takes about 30 minutes for both subject combined per child.
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