What I’m Reading: Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
I read this at the request of my husband. I liked it. It had a lot of food for thought especially as we are teaching our children about setting out a living and giving to others. I am more interested in learning about investments I could make on my own.
What I’m {nature} Journaling: I have spent the last week watching mama bluebird peek out of the birdhouse as she sits on her nest. At first I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but as I watched each day, I was able to figure it out. Sometimes I’ll see her peeking out with her mouth open. I assume she’s waiting for insects to fly in. I did see the male stop by one evening. I thought the chicks hatched, but the next day I saw mama back to her antics.
Fourth Grade (mostly)
Biggest Changes
We’ve completed another school year! The last half of the semester, I did not think we were ever going to finish. We shortened the school year from 36 weeks to 29 weeks and changed from three terms to two semesters. I completely think those were worthwhile changes. We will continue to use two semesters as I feel like we weren’t cramming in anything but able to enjoy short lessons all around. We also had a good rhythm during our day balancing everyone’s one-on-one time.
Daily Riches and Skills
Family Folder
My son had so much fun memorizing lines from Shakespeare and was always excited when we got to the lines in the play. My daughter loved most of our folksongs; I would hear her singing them often. Her very favorite was “The Mermaid” sung by Jigjam.
Bible
Instead of trying to finish a book or accomplish reading a certain amount of stories, taking our time to read one story at a time (meaning only three per week) was so good. My son was able to recall far more during exams.
Spanish
Reducing Spanish was a good idea, too. (I’m seeing a trend here.) I’m going to stick with the way we’ve been doing and lower my expectations of how much we’ll actually remember.
Grammar
I recommend Grammarland by M.L. Nesbitt. It was a good way to introduce many of the concepts and the worksheets were good quality. We finished the book early, so I added in Mad Libs. The kids love Mad Libs! It’s something we’re going to keep doing once a week during the summer.
Copywork/Dication
Our copywork and dictation rotation worked perfectly.
Math
Our math system worked well. I love that my son doesn’t need a lot of assistance minus when I teach a new concept. Now that I’ve pulled out my daughter’s first grade math book, I remember how time intensive it was to do with my son because I had to read all the problems and instructions to him.
Literature
Fairytales
Over the course of the year, my son read Joseph Jacobs’ English Fairytales. For the most part he enjoyed this book. He didn’t always understand what was going on. I wasn’t too concerned since he definitely saw connections with other fairytales we’ve read in the past. He also read these independently which was a big step for him.
The Chronicles of Narnia
The best part of ALL our reading this year was reading the Narnia series. We LOVED them. I loved hearing my son’s connections to the story and how his mind wondered how this connects to our own lives (and eternal lives). I personally liked them because it’s been a long time since I’ve read them. Also, I was able to make my own connections to my own readings in recent years.
Weekly written narrations went well. My son progressed to two to three sentences. Sometimes it was like pulling teeth, but I think it’s because he’s making such a big transition in combining mental work with physical work.
Shakespeare
We had a blast reading full Shakespeare plays together. I don’t know if my son liked As You Like It as much as me, but he did like it. He loves A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
Poetry
I don’t think we were huge fans of all of our poetry reading this year. We were able to find poems we liked amongst the harder reading.
Free Reads
I handed over several of the free reads to my son to do completely on his own. There were a couple I thought I would read with him but didn’t enjoy. He seemed to enjoy everything he read or that we listened to together. We definitely liked Little Britches by Ralph Moody more than any of the other free reads.
Weekly Academics
History
My son read six or seven Discovery biographies. He would give me a video narration every few chapters. I’m not quite sure how much he connected with the people. He did these readings independently which helped free up some of my time; that part was a good move on my part. He used these readings for his weekly entries in his Book of Centuries. He finally (after a couple years of using it) saw the significance of keeping a timeline.
Geography
My son reached the goal I set for him to be able to correctly label a United States of America map with all 50 states and to memorize the capitals of the 50 states. He liked working with Seterra best, but the flashcards really helped him with capital memorization.
Science
Science was divided into three parts – nature study, nature observation, and engineering. We studied insects and space. I liked reducing our work to something more tangible like a book (1st semester) and observation sheets (2nd semester). It gave us something specific to work on each week while I filled in some thoughts along the way as we went outside.
We didn’t do a great job with nature walks, but we did do some fun things like a scavenger hunt and a walk at our favorite nature park.
The monthly projects with his grandpa was great for my son. Again, I don’t think he’ll remember the specific terms he was taught, but I know he will always cherish the time he had with grandpa.
Riches
Composer
I liked taking a step back on the composer study and just listening to the Ravel selections the first semester. It was also super fun to read the Wagner Ring Cycle book the second semester while listening to some of the selections. (It was fun this year to do a special learning book each semester (ants 1st, opera 2nd) as that wasn’t something I’ve planned for us in the past to direct our learning.
Artist
To be honest, I liked our artists this year, but I wasn’t thrilled about them. We did learn quite a bit about composition and color.
Art Lessons
It also seems like our art lessons lined up well with the overall lessons we learned from our artist studies. We got a smidgen better at it all with learning colors, shadows, and lines.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten with my daughter was far less stressful than it was with my son. (It helped not having to rearrange the day around a baby’s schedule.) We leveled up slowly and gently.
Read Alouds
We mostly used the AmblesideOnline Year 0 reading list. We enjoyed the stories. Many of them took us a long time to read, and we still have two left to read over the summer. We added in many that weren’t on the list.
Math
My daughter can count to 100 well and can do some simple addition problems. She’s interested in math, but she’s at a developmental stage where her brain hurts after so much. I would have liked to do more of the Simply Charlotte Mason Arithmetic, but I also feel like we did quite a bit to introduce her to math.
Phonics
We are using The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading and introducing Bob books along the way. My daughter is just a little ahead of my son, and I delayed when I started her in this book. I think I had higher expectations with my son. My laid back approach was far better.
Copywork
My daughter can write all her letters. Often times they aren’t perfect, but she enjoys learning about the letters.
Riches
I am a giant fan of Sing a Song of Seasons. Tea and poetry continues to be one of the favorites for the kids.
Outdoor Time
I think we did a fairly good job with maintaining a daily outdoor time. It wasn’t perfect. I think we should have taken a few more special trips to the park. However, I did a very good job of making it a point for us to be outside when we could be.
Conclusion
This was a good school year. We had a great year of travel. We lost a dog but got two new puppies. The children had fun learning and mostly looked forward to school days. I would have loved for our shorted school year to wrap up sooner, but I feel like that was the only downside to this school year. It was all to accommodate sickness, travel, and Christmas. I tend to look more at the negative, but I should look at the positive. The flexibility of homeschool is a major positive. Living a life of education is too. I would like to make more of a shift in using our curriculum as a tool and not a checklist. It’s difficult when I like all that we do and see so much value in it.
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