The In & Outs of Our 5th Graders Day
It’s the 1st week
of school & things are going surprisingly fine. I say fine because they
could be better & smoother but overall things are good.
My 5th
grader has a schedule & seems to be following it without any problems. I’ve
created a planner on my computer & print it front & back. Each subject
has what she is supposed to do for that subject for that day. Every Thursday or
Friday I rewrite her next week for her so that the following week we have it
ready for her to jump on. The only caveat was that we could not get our
Switched on Schoolhouse to work & she missed the first few days because we
were trying to download it onto my computer & work through it. The other
caveat was trying to get my keyboard to type in Spanish. SOS was closed already
so I called my friend, whose husband is an interpreter, & asked them how to
change my keyboard to ES instead of EN. For those suffering the same problem:
- Start --
- Control Panel --
- Languages --
- add Spanish* --
- click on EN button on task bar (mine is bottom of my window) --
- then click on ES.
*We did Mexico
because that is what the curriculum asks for.
Let’s take a
quick look at the curriculum & thoughts.
BIBLE
Heart of Dakota (HOD) Resurrection
to Reformation Bible Girl Option
**So far this has
been a great system. I’ve paired it with a virtues curriculum called Polished
Cornerstones:Doorposts Polished Cornerstone It’s a great spiral bound book that offers different virtues that
are very important for a person to have. Each week I give her a verse that is
recommended from the book and give her a task from the book as well that
reinforces the virtue it is discussing. Then I have her read the Beautiful
Girlhood and do the tasks out of the companion guide the rest of the days. I’m
hoping to instill Godly character into these girls of mine and I hope these two
curriculums will be helpful!
MATH
Math U See (MUS) Epsilon
MUS
**Another score so far is this great curriculum. It has my daughter thinking outside her comfort zone & challenging her to solve problems in different ways than she would have. Math isn’t always so cut & dry & this curriculum brings color & manipulatives for her to play with so that she not only memorizes but sees what she is memorizing. The worksheets are not tedious like some of the other curriculums we have used so she doesn’t come to me complaining about doing too much math! ~yet!
**Another score so far is this great curriculum. It has my daughter thinking outside her comfort zone & challenging her to solve problems in different ways than she would have. Math isn’t always so cut & dry & this curriculum brings color & manipulatives for her to play with so that she not only memorizes but sees what she is memorizing. The worksheets are not tedious like some of the other curriculums we have used so she doesn’t come to me complaining about doing too much math! ~yet!
SCIENCE
Apologia Zoology: Marine Animals
Apologia
**I have to say that I love – love - love Apologia & I’m excited for my 5th grader because I got the idea of a collage notebook from her Literature pack (HOD). Each chapter is supposed to take about 2 weeks so I’ve sectioned off each section to spread it out over that course of time. As she reads each section, she makes a titled collage with definitions, Latin & Greek words, & anything else that seems appropriate for the collage. At the end of the year I’m going to spiral bind it for her for her future memories!
**I have to say that I love – love - love Apologia & I’m excited for my 5th grader because I got the idea of a collage notebook from her Literature pack (HOD). Each chapter is supposed to take about 2 weeks so I’ve sectioned off each section to spread it out over that course of time. As she reads each section, she makes a titled collage with definitions, Latin & Greek words, & anything else that seems appropriate for the collage. At the end of the year I’m going to spiral bind it for her for her future memories!
GRAMMAR
Fix it Grammar by IEW
**Again, nothing too tedious in these workbooks but it is covering
the basics of grammar as it goes hand in hand with Institute of Excellence in
Writing Structure & Style.
LITERATURE
Heart of Dakota (HOD)
**So far so good. This pack comes with girl or boy books, a
teacher’s manual, & student manual. The books, from what I’ve read from the
descriptions are fun & interesting. I was a little worried about them seeing
as my daughter is reading higher grade level than the 4/5 level we picked but
we are also doing U.S. History & I really wanted her to read books that
would run hand in hand with the subject.
SPELLING
Spell U See (SUS)
**Written by the creators of MUS, SUS is supposed to run using the
same features. I understand that by repetition the child is getting the words
memorized but this really is our first year of using it so I’m not sure how it
will work for my daughter. There are colored pencils to find blends &
dictation so I’ll have to come back on at the end of the school year & give
my opinion then.
HANDWRITING/KEYBOARDING
Handwriting/Keyboarding without
Tears (HWT/KWT)
**As my daughter gets older she has come to me asking me to read
something that is written in cursive. This last time she received a postcard
written in it & I told her she needed to read it herself. When she couldn’t,
I explained to her that there was a reason for learning cursive & she
agreed. Thank God! As for Keyboarding, my mom taught us at a young age to work
a type-writer…LOL…so that we would have a skill right out of high school. I saw
that my daughter was going to have to start typing reports & such & I didn’t
want them to take her whole school day so we started KWT. So far she has been
flying through them having fun & I was finally made aware that she was
doing too many lessons a day so I had to make her slow down…I think that may be
a good thing!
HISTORY/SPANISH
Switched On Schoolhouse (SOS)
**I put both together because they are the same curriculum & I’ve
mentioned them before (above) but I will say this: This curriculum takes very
little time for one subject. This is great because my daughter is playing
games, watching good-educational videos that deal with the subject that she is
on. We had a little issue with figuring out the download & the keyboard but
once we worked though those problems, we haven’t had any others. She isn’t on
the computer for hours & it’s not a tedious lesson. So far we like it. As
for Spanish…my husband hemmed a bit about starting to teach her a language but
I thought that at least we had it if she was interested. I told her that
Fridays (light work days) were her day to do a Spanish Lesson is she was
interested & so far…the answer was yes.
WRITING
Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)
**This has been recommended to me over & over again & now
that she was in 5th grade & needed to do reports etc. I wanted
her to understand the hows of writing because one thing I love about IEW is
that they teach the writing so that it affects their speech & vocabulary.
So far my daughter has enjoyed the articles that she has read & turned them
in excited to see my reaction.
This is the 5th
graders curriculum & although it may seem like a big load, it only takes
her a few hours to finish it. The longest items are the collages that she
creates in word & paint art apps for her science. As we go through the year
we’ll discuss more items but for now I think this blog post is long enough!
Happy
Homeschooling!
***next week we talk about my Kinder...
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