4th Grade Year Review
The girl’s 4th grade year is wrapping up! I can’t even believe we’re here!
Unit Studies & Interests
I have done a few blog posts on some of the other areas we’ve studied so today I mostly want to share a little bit more about our experience with math and language arts. I’m hoping to address a handful of questions I frequently get and give a little more broader perspective into our home the last couple of years. In the case you’re looking for some of the other things we’ve done, we stuck pretty close to our 4th Grade Curriculum Picks that I went over HERE. We did two bigger science studies: Birds and Solar System. The girls had chosen to study birds (and my Kindergartner had chosen space) so it’s no surprise their favorite unit this year was our bird study. We also did a few smaller studies like Safety and Entrepreneurship - which I talked a little bit about in THIS post. Last Fall we were in The Old Testament and this year we’ve been in the The New Testament. We did make a big change and ended up switching our history curriculum and reading Story of the World. I wrote more about that here - Ancient History - but I do have another blog post coming up about how it went and what I’d do differently. I will say I am SO glad we did this especially as we’ve been reading the Old and New Testaments. We’re wrapping up our school year with a study of insects and an additional literature unit which I’ll share more about below!
A few months into the school year, the girls expressed interest in starting piano lessons again. We gave them three options: a local piano school, private lessons, or Hoffman Academy and they decided they wanted to do on-line lessons so we went back to Hoffman Academy (Code LEARN will give you 10% off). They’re doing really well with that so we will for sure be continuing with that next year.
The girls had also chosen to do swim, sewing, and wanted to practice more baking. So they’ve done a few private lessons in these areas and then we’ve tried to integrate these things into our lifestyle just as naturally as we can. They also love animals and actually spend quite a bit of their free time reading, drawing, and watching shows about animals - they love the veterinary shows. We did a big Zoology unit last year which I’d definitely recommend for animal lovers. Both of them also love to help their aunt Katie with beekeeping!
One other thing I will quickly mention is that the twins have been part of a pilot program since the beginning of January. They’ve had various mini units on-line in science and social studies. When they choose to participate (usually 2-3 times a week) they spend about an hour a day on it. I’m still watching closely to see how the program continues to develop before I share about it - if I ever do. At first I thought it might be something we could plan our whole homeschool around, but at this point, it’s been more of a supplement in the background to the other things we’re doing and I think that’s how we will continue to use it.
Math
Okay, let’s talk about math and language arts! We’ve been using The Good and The Beautiful for both of these subjects since we pulled the twins from public school 3.5 years ago and I LOVE it. Now that we have a few years behind us, I wanted to share a little bit more about our experience using it.
I feel like TGTB has given me the confidence I’ve needed to step into this world and we’ve just had such a good experience with the curriculum. Especially for math and language arts because they are really important foundational skills for early childhood. Generally speaking, I love that the courses support us as parents in teaching morals and good character. I love that is is from a faith-perspective and references Christ. I love that the books are in full color and very aesthetically pleasing. (No boring math books or dull readers!) And, I love that it’s all open and go for both subjects. I never have to plan and at this stage the kids just all know what they need to do each day which is so nice. To be honest, if we hadn’t started with TGTB, I think I would’ve struggled as a new homeschool mom. I’m not saying every new homeschool mom should use TGTB - just saying it was what we needed at that time - both me and my kids.
Choosing homeschool curriculum can be really overwhelming for some - not only is there A LOT out there - but since we can personalize things to each child - what we use can always be changing and evolving. More than once over the last few years, I’ve found myself doing mental gymnastics when my kids start to struggle with a concept or show resistance to working on certain things. If something feels off, there is always a delicate balance between pushing through it but also stepping back and evaluating and questioning - is this not working because of my child? Is it me? Is it the curriculum? Is it the approach? Overall we aim to have a really positive experience and feeling of joy in our home. And if that’s not what’s going on - we do need to stop and ask - what needs to change?
As I’ve gone through these cycles, I wanted to share a few perspectives and our experience in hopes that if you ever find yourself with the same questions - maybe my experience will help you. Even though I’m talking about TGTB curriculum - I think these experiences will be relatable to any curriculums or methods you use to support your child’s development.
For some perspective we started using TGTB with the old Level 1 Math and LA courses. Up until last year, when the girls were in the new Math level 3 we never had any issues. The girls sailed through the books and really enjoyed it. But, during the Math 3 course - they really started to struggle with a few concepts. There are a couple of reasons why, but I felt the most prevalent reason behind their struggle was that the spiral was too big for them. Not saying I think every child would struggle with this - it was just a personal challenge for them. They were getting confused on some abstract concepts (like place value) and I remember thinking that with a mastery program - they may not have had these problems. So I looked into math curriculums and did a TON of research.
I am so glad I did this because I needed this experience. We had started with TGTB because it was an easy place to start and we’d always loved it, but I started to wonder if maybe it was just time they needed something different. I spent hours researching and ultimately concluded - I felt SO good about staying with TGTB. After I’d done this, I knew I needed to walk on faith even though they were having some struggles. I think this was such a valuable lesson for me not to just jump ship when something got hard. I knew this, but I needed to experience it in this context and learn that sometimes our children just need to work through hard things and so do we. Practice and time is a big part of growth and development and in this case - that is what they really needed - time for their brain’s to mature and extra practice on the hard things. We slowed down with the course (which sometimes can be hard to do) but that is what they needed! And in the end, they did so well and finished it up strong and had a really good foundation moving into the next level.
This year, Math 4 has been such a delight! I am SO grateful we stuck through the hard in Math 3 even if it just meant we could get into Math 4. Beginning with this level, the course starts using short but very powerful video lessons. They are so well done. Really, I can’t emphasize enough how amazing their video content is. The lessons are engaging, fantastic quality, and there are often little history and science lessons thrown in there too. It’s a big bonus the girls can do their math independently now. Their routine is to watch the video lesson, complete as much of the lesson practice page and review practice page as possible (so they work on 2 pages total). They’ll often check their own work (there is an answer key) and then I’ll sit down with them and go over what they don’t understand or need extra help with. I sit down with them every day to make sure they’re getting the support they need, but I’d say it only takes us 10-15 minutes to wrap up the last little bit of what they need help with. And I love that the course has really aimed to support them as independent learners.
So, hands down, loved this course and we’re definitely moving onto Level 5. It’s already bought and purchased!
PS - If you’re planning on using TGTB Level 4 - mastering multiplication facts will be so helpful! I wrote a blog post on our experience mastering multiplication facts which you can read HERE.
Language Arts
Another reason I wanted to share our experience about math is because we had a very similar experience stepping into Level 4 Language Arts - but with a completely different outcome. We LOVED Level 3. It was probably my favorite course of all TGTB courses we’ve done. But, since the day we started Level 4, the girls just haven’t loved it. We actually started this course January 2022. We had finished Level 3 in December 2021 so it just made sense to keep going. But, by about 4 weeks into the Level 4 course - the girls were really pushing back on it and saying they didn’t want to do it which isn’t typical behavior for them. I would say they’re enthusiastic learners. They’ve always been more on the self-driven side so when they aren’t enjoying something (like what happened with math) I start to question again - what do we need to adjust? Level 4 is also designed to be done more independently and on top of not loving it - they were not where they needed to be to work independently. Which, to be honest, I wasn’t really prepared for because they’d done so well up until this point.
Ultimately, for the rest of their 3rd grade year, I decided to put it on the shelf and have them practice some of the other english books we had (just a bunch of random workbooks like Evan Moor and Brain Quest). I didn’t see a lot of progress from them during this time, but I did feel like they maintained and practiced what they’d been learning which can be just as beneficial sometimes, right? Just reinforcing that foundation. Anyway, I ultimately decided they could benefit from slowing down - especially since TGTB LA courses are known to be advanced and they were already young 3rd graders (August birthdays). We picked back up the course last Fall and for the first little while they did pretty good. I worked through mostly every lesson with them and we were back to seeing good progress. But, by about Christmas - I could tell they just weren’t loving it again and I was also finding it was hard for me to want to do with them. So, I was back to questioning and evaluating what needed to change.
After a lot of conversations with the girls we ultimately concluded that they were getting tired of workbooks and they weren’t enjoying the writing. I think Math 4 was different enough this year with the videos that it felt fresh and new, but as we were knee deep into our fourth workbook for Language Arts - it was starting to wear on all of us. The girls also have handwriting and seperate spelling books and we’d been notebooking on and off for history/science. So, I honestly think it was just too much of the same type of things for them - especially since they were writing more in Level 4. Just as a heads up, I’ve heard a lot of people split this course up and do the course book one day and writing shop another day. I think this is a really good idea and wish I’d thought of that sooner. So, for anyone who does this course, keep that in mind if it feels too much for your child. For the girls though, since they weren’t enjoying what they were writing about and I think combined with all the workbooks - it was just becoming too tedious to keep going in that direction.
After Christmas break, we only had one more unit to finish up in Level 4 so they did decide to finish it. I could’ve spent time trying to make their lessons more engaging, but I do that in so many other areas - I just didn’t have the mental energy to want to do that and I knew change was on the horizon.
One thing we did adjust in this course was skip the sentence diagramming. Hopefully we won’t regret this and I wouldn’t say I recommend doing this, but, personally, I don’t find a lot of value in doing that at this age. They really enjoyed the readers so they finished those. Our favorite story was one about Louis Braille. And then they did choose to stop their writing workshops. 3 months later and I still feel really good about doing that.
In an effort to cut down on workbook load - we also stopped their spelling work books (we’d been using Evan Moor) and I’ve just been giving them weekly lists to work on which seems to be working for now. And we cut back on how many notebooking pages we were doing. They have done great with their TGTB handwriting books though (they’re so short) so we’re staying with those for next year too. See our Morning Handwriting Basket for more on how we do handwriting.
Moving forward I knew we needed something to practice writing that was a bit lighter and spark their interest again so I ordered an Illustory and they LOVED this. For the entire month of January and into February they worked very hard on writing and illustrating a short little story about gnomes and fairies. We sent it in to get “published” and we should be receiving it any day now. For our unit studies, they wrote their own science reports on each of the different planets. And, then we’re finishing up the year with a mini-Cinderella unit. We’re currently reading lots of different versions of Cinderella stories and then they’re each going to write their own version over the next few weeks. With all of these things their enthusiasm is back!
So, what now? They’re done with Level 4 and we’re going to put TGTB Language Arts on the back burner for a while. We may come back to level 5 in the future, but for now, the girls need something different and also a little lighter in the writing department.
Walking into next year, I’m still piecing together what we will be doing, but I know we’re headed in the right direction. So far, I do know we are going to be doing the monthly writing projects suggested in the Jot It Down guide from Bravewriter. This particular guide is geared toward early elementary grades, but I think the girls will still love all the projects (fairy tales, photo journals, animal mini-books, designing posters, ect.) and it’s an easy guide to modify so I think it’ll work well for them to just write on a bit higher level. I am not sure I would’ve felt confident enough doing this a few years ago, but with a little experience behind me now, I’m feeling really good about it. We’ll also be able to do these with my younger son and so I think it’s going to be a great family style unit.
The main area I am still working on for next year is something for grammar and punctuation practice. I am leaning toward the Fix It from IEW, but I’m being slow to decide because it is another workbook. The lessons and work pages are super short though so I think it may still work - we’ll see. We do lots of art and geography (which are subjects integrated into TGTB LA) so I am not too concerned about having separate curriculums for those. The girls love using pastels, we have lots of drawing tutorial books, and we also have the Lily and Thistle watercolor school we’re going to be utilizing more. In May, I’ll do a blog post with a collection of all the things we decide to use, but for now, this is where we’re at.
Books
Last but not least I wanted to highlight a few of the books the girls read this year. I wish we’d kept a book log because I can’t remember everything they’ve read and it’s something I am going to try to be better at next year. Over the last 18 months they’ve been reading the Harry Potter series. They’re on book 6 right now. They’ve read the first book of Keeper of the Lost Cities and are 4 books into the Percy Jackson books. This was a borderline series for me - I ultimately decided to let the girls read it, but it may not be for everyone.
They read a handful of TGTB books - all of the level 4 books I have pictured - and probably a few other higher level books but I didn’t keep track. They also read/listened to the Burgess Bird Book, Boy of the Pyramids, Charolette’s Web, The Hobbit, Wizard of Oz, Classic Starts Greek Mythology, The Iliad and The Snow Queen (we listened to this on our Yoto).
I think that’s it for now…5th grade will be here before we know it!
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