Here is the end of year review for my 3rd grader. She is on the young side for her grade as she would not have made the public school cut off for the year she started kinder, so if in public school, she would have only been 2nd grade this year.
MATH
For Math she has been using Math Lessons for a Living Education since level 1. This year she did level 3. She still struggles with remembering addition facts and is struggling a bit with multiplication, but I am hoping to do some review with this throughout the summer. We plan to continue with this curriculum.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Shay started Language Lessons for a Living Education level 2 last year and did level 3 this year. I do really like this curriculum because she can work on a lot of it very independently. This curriculum has her doing different activities different days of the week (we double up one day to finish in 4 days a week). Exercise 1 is reading, we read the story together, it highlights what the kids should read. Exercises 2 & 3 are usually grammar and she can often do these on her own with the examples they provide. Exercise 4 is a Bible story from 101 Favorite Bible Stories, we read together, alternating paragraphs. Exercise 5 is spelling, and this is the one thing I struggle with on this curriculum, mostly because with her I did not stay on top of spelling earlier on like I did with my son. It did take her a bit longer to start reading (We use All About Reading) and so I held off a bit longer on All About Spelling and then I have not been as consistent with it because it is teacher intensive, and with having busy foster littles the last 2 years, I have dropped the ball a bit with spelling. So I supplemented some with All About Spelling this year. She has finished level 1 and has done a bit of level 2. I plan to focus on finishing level 2 and maybe doing level 3 in the summer, and starting a new spelling program in the fall. We will also do All About Reading Level 4 in the summer, while we are breaking from most of the rest of our curriculum. Then she will continue Language Lessons next year along with another spelling program to supplement.
SCIENCE
She did Zoology along with big brother this year, I did not have her do all the worksheets for the Big Book of Animals, because it was a lot of fill in the blank, and it would take her a long time to write it all. She enjoyed the coloring/dot-to-dots, etc worksheets especially for the Complete Zoo and Complete Aquarium books. Now she is working on God's Design for Life for Beginner's. She still listens to the lessons I read from big brother's Life text, but she only has to do the pages and answer question for the beginner level, which I think works much better for her.
HISTORY
She has done America's Story 2 & 3 with big brother. She listens and helps answer questions as we discuss the chapters. She does not always recall a lot, but hopefully it will be a trigger when she learns the information again later. She does do the sketching and map activities on the worksheets, but she struggles a lot with the review worksheets. She will also be doing a LEGO timeline for her final history project.
BIBLE
She did More Than Words level 1 from Master Books for the Bible. I have enjoyed this curriculum for them, and it was a pretty good level for her.
ART
Shay wants to be an artist, and spends a lot of time drawing, coloring, painting, cutting and taping paper creations together. She also really enjoys Art Hub for Kids videos. She has enjoyed the Living Art Lessons, but I struggle with staying on a schedule for regular instructed art practice. Hopefully next year they will get to take an in person art class.
Aside from their regular school work, we try to sometimes watch videos or documentaries that go along with what we are learning. We try to also incorporate games, but with a little one around, that has not happened nearly as often as I would like. They have also done some typing practice online when I remember to remind them to do that. Both kids enjoy Prodigy game for math and Shay enjoys Math Seeds and Reading Eggspress.
Friday, May 1, 2020
Thursday, April 30, 2020
End of 5th Grade Homeschool Curriculum Review
Every year we are always excited to see all the new curriculum everyone is using, which all looks so promising, but we all know that many times the curriculum doesn't work as we expected or hoped. So this is my end of year 5th grade curriculum review sharing what we used and whether or not we liked it.
MATH
This was Mason's 3rd year using Master Books Math Lessons of for a Living Education I believe. This year he did level 5. He is not a fan of math, and we struggled through several curriculum in the early years trying to find something that fit. We still really love MLFLE, it is the only math curriculum that doesn't end in tears on a regular basis. The story style and short lessons really work best for Mason who gets overwhelmed at a large amount of problems on one page. We still struggle a bit with memorizing the multiplication facts, but aside from that, I think he has done pretty well with this curriculum and we will continue with it.
LANGUAGE ARTS
This year Mason's language arts consisted of Fix It Grammar (The Nose Tree book) and this was his 2nd year of IEW writing class with another homeschool mom. For Fix It Grammar it was quick and easy enough, thankful he had already had 1 year of IEW writing, so he knew most of the terms and was able to actually write the sentences. Had I tried this curriculum before that, I know it would have resulted in meltdowns, because before that even copying 1 sentence was torture to him. I don't feel like he consistently labeled everything necessarily, but I really don't know how important I feel that is. We will be switching this up next year.
The IEW writing class however has done wonders for Mason's writing. He has improved and I think it has been a tremendous help that it was not taught by me. I feel like if I had been teaching it, it wouldn't have gone nearly as well. He can now sit down and write a 3 paragraph paper! I am amazed! However because he really does not want to continue taking the class, we are going to do writing at home next year and see how it goes. He will know that if he gives me a hard time over it, he will be put back in writing class.
Spelling - Mason's spelling is usually ok, but I decided to add in spelling practice about halfway through the fall, so I just got some 5th grade spelling lists online. I let him look at the list and then give him a test on Monday, if he makes a 100 (only happened once) he is done with spelling for the week. If he missed any, then during the week he writes the words he missed and we re-test on Thursday. Any words he misses Thursday, get tacked onto his list the next week, until he gets them all right. Not sure this is really the best way, he often gets different words wrong on Thursday, that he spelled correctly on Monday. So we are probably going to change this up next year.
Reading - he is a voracious reader, so I don't worry about this. We do read some read-alouds all together and we listened to a lot of audiobooks when we were driving back and forth to all of our activities this year.
SCIENCE
We started the year with Zoology from Master Books. This was both my kids absolute favorite curriculum of the year. They both love animals, so this was a great fit! We finished this about March, so we started God's Design for Life. We are working through the plant unit right now. I plan to continue with it throughout the summer because I feel like we are behind having not ever done a unit on the human body before. So we will do that unit, and since my kids love animals, I am sure they will enjoy that unit also.
HISTORY
Our history this year was also Master Books. We continued with America's Story 2 that we had started towards the end of last year, finished around Christmas and are doing America's Story 3 this semester. We are speeding it up faster than the schedule because I want them to move on to World History next year because my kids have not really had any world history yet. America's Story has a text book, written directly to the student in a more story like manner which we enjoy. We do not do all the worksheets. Most chapters all have a sketching or art activity and a map activity. They generally do those, but they don't write out answers, we just discuss the chapters. They also include timeline pictures, so we add those and a few other events to our timeline. He will be doing a timeline history project with LEGO for the end of year final project.
BIBLE
We have been using More Than Words Level 1 from Master Books this year. It is quite easy for my 5th grader, but I wanted him to be on the same level as his sister, so that we could do it together. We will move to level 2 next year and I think it will be tremendously helpful to be reviewing the same topics again in a higher level. Mason also enjoys reading his Action Bible.
ART
Unfortunately I never seem to stick with a regular schedule for Art. We having Living Art Lessons from Master Books, and we have done about 12 weeks out of it I think. Mason spends a lot of time drawing on his own though and enjoys making his own comics.
ELECTIVES
I am counting this as an elective because I think it is a pretty neat skill to work on. Mason has been obsessed with LEGO since he was 3, now this is ALL he asks for at birthdays and Christmas. He has been interested in making stop motion videos the last year, so he has been working on this pretty often. He wanted to share his videos, so I have made a YouTube channel for the kids to share their LEGO videos. He has even created a series where he plans to release an episode once a week.
MATH
This was Mason's 3rd year using Master Books Math Lessons of for a Living Education I believe. This year he did level 5. He is not a fan of math, and we struggled through several curriculum in the early years trying to find something that fit. We still really love MLFLE, it is the only math curriculum that doesn't end in tears on a regular basis. The story style and short lessons really work best for Mason who gets overwhelmed at a large amount of problems on one page. We still struggle a bit with memorizing the multiplication facts, but aside from that, I think he has done pretty well with this curriculum and we will continue with it.
LANGUAGE ARTS
This year Mason's language arts consisted of Fix It Grammar (The Nose Tree book) and this was his 2nd year of IEW writing class with another homeschool mom. For Fix It Grammar it was quick and easy enough, thankful he had already had 1 year of IEW writing, so he knew most of the terms and was able to actually write the sentences. Had I tried this curriculum before that, I know it would have resulted in meltdowns, because before that even copying 1 sentence was torture to him. I don't feel like he consistently labeled everything necessarily, but I really don't know how important I feel that is. We will be switching this up next year.
The IEW writing class however has done wonders for Mason's writing. He has improved and I think it has been a tremendous help that it was not taught by me. I feel like if I had been teaching it, it wouldn't have gone nearly as well. He can now sit down and write a 3 paragraph paper! I am amazed! However because he really does not want to continue taking the class, we are going to do writing at home next year and see how it goes. He will know that if he gives me a hard time over it, he will be put back in writing class.
Spelling - Mason's spelling is usually ok, but I decided to add in spelling practice about halfway through the fall, so I just got some 5th grade spelling lists online. I let him look at the list and then give him a test on Monday, if he makes a 100 (only happened once) he is done with spelling for the week. If he missed any, then during the week he writes the words he missed and we re-test on Thursday. Any words he misses Thursday, get tacked onto his list the next week, until he gets them all right. Not sure this is really the best way, he often gets different words wrong on Thursday, that he spelled correctly on Monday. So we are probably going to change this up next year.
Reading - he is a voracious reader, so I don't worry about this. We do read some read-alouds all together and we listened to a lot of audiobooks when we were driving back and forth to all of our activities this year.
SCIENCE
We started the year with Zoology from Master Books. This was both my kids absolute favorite curriculum of the year. They both love animals, so this was a great fit! We finished this about March, so we started God's Design for Life. We are working through the plant unit right now. I plan to continue with it throughout the summer because I feel like we are behind having not ever done a unit on the human body before. So we will do that unit, and since my kids love animals, I am sure they will enjoy that unit also.
HISTORY
Our history this year was also Master Books. We continued with America's Story 2 that we had started towards the end of last year, finished around Christmas and are doing America's Story 3 this semester. We are speeding it up faster than the schedule because I want them to move on to World History next year because my kids have not really had any world history yet. America's Story has a text book, written directly to the student in a more story like manner which we enjoy. We do not do all the worksheets. Most chapters all have a sketching or art activity and a map activity. They generally do those, but they don't write out answers, we just discuss the chapters. They also include timeline pictures, so we add those and a few other events to our timeline. He will be doing a timeline history project with LEGO for the end of year final project.
BIBLE
We have been using More Than Words Level 1 from Master Books this year. It is quite easy for my 5th grader, but I wanted him to be on the same level as his sister, so that we could do it together. We will move to level 2 next year and I think it will be tremendously helpful to be reviewing the same topics again in a higher level. Mason also enjoys reading his Action Bible.
ART
Unfortunately I never seem to stick with a regular schedule for Art. We having Living Art Lessons from Master Books, and we have done about 12 weeks out of it I think. Mason spends a lot of time drawing on his own though and enjoys making his own comics.
ELECTIVES
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