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
