Daily and Weekly Schedule

Every day the student should spend between 30 and 50 minutes on each of the following:

• Mathematics
• Grammar
• Nature Study/Science/Health

Every day the student should spend about 2 hours, divided into two 60-minute morning and afternoon sessions on the following:

• Reading

Every day the student should have two sessions of the following, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, no more than 20 minutes each:

• Copywork/penmanship and writing

Two days a week, the student should have 30 minutes devoted to:

• Foreign Language

In addition, each of the following subjects should get at least 20 to 40 minutes at some point during the week:

• Art/Handicrafts
• Music

Do not neglect the fact that kids need recesses for lunch and in the morning and afternoon!

Subjects

Grammar

By fourth grade, phonics shouldn’t be an issue and students should be able to pronounce and read practically any word. What they DO need, though, is thorough development of grammatical skill.

Lessons  20 –  56 in Elementary English Grammar by Reed and Kellogg, one lesson per week.

Grammar will be reinforced through writing assignments.

Reading

In fourth grade, about 1/4th of reading is aloud so that the parent educator can assist as may be required and actively gauge the child’s progress. The remainder of the reading is done silently; but the child should write down any words that are giving difficulty so they can be explored later. The student should become adept at the use of a dictionary to discover the meanings of unfamiliar words.

For in-school reading:

Start with McGuffy’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, two 50-60-minute sessions daily (one in the morning, one in the afternoon) until completed.

After that:

On Mondays: One chapter from Age of Fable in the morning and Grammar instruction/practice in the afternoon.
On Tuesdays: One chapter from A Child’s History of England in the morning, and one or two chapters from Home Geography in the afternoon.
On Wednesdays:  One chapter from Age of Fable in the morning and Grammar instruction/practice in the afternoon.
On Thursdays: One chapter in the morning and another in the afternoon from This Country of Ours, through chapter 72.
On Fridays: Free choice from the fourth grade book list

Fourth Grade Book List:
Black Beauty
Pollyanna
The Secret Garden

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Treasure Island
Flower Fables
Kidnapped followed by the sequel, Catriona
Call of The Wild
David Crockett, His Life and Adventures

Other titles worth considering that aren’t included in the curriculum:
The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
Little Britches series by Ralph Moody
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight
Gentle Ben by Walt Morey
Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright
Return To Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright
By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Writing

Copywork — copywork loses emphasis starting in fourth grade, except as practice for penmanship. Select age appropriate material for the student to copy for 20 minutes in the morning — copying it in cursive.

Penmanship — Your student should have learned cursive in third grade; but penmanship has probably not been perfected.  For any problems, you can refer to  The Palmer Method. There is an error in the book in that a few pages are displaced in the scan. Penmanship is practiced in copywork and in composition.

Composition — The student should compose — in cursive — a short one or two page essay daily in the afternoon. (This should require no more than 20 or 30 minutes.) The subject can be anything you’d like, but will ideally cover material from the curriculum to help reinforce that knowledge. You should review these compositions for spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization as well as content.

Spelling

Select 15 words per week, giving preference to words your child spelled incorrectly during writing exercises. If there aren’t fifteen words, supplement with words from McGuffy’s. As part of spelling exercises, have your child use every word in a sentence to make sure the meaning is understood.

In addition, you should assign your child one lesson per week from Word Lessons, starting with Chapter 37 where the student left off in third grade.

Latin

Beginner’s Latin Book, cover one chapter weekly, chapters 1 through 36. Most chapters have an associated reading/translation exercise in the back of the book. The chapter itself should be taught/studied during the first 30-minute weekly session. In the next session, a brief review of the material should precede the associated reading/translation exercise. For chapters without an associated reading assignment, the second weekly session should be used to practice the conjugations, declensions, tenses, noun-adjective agreement and so forth covered in the earlier lesson.

Mathematics

Goals:

• Division with remainders.
• Large multiplications.
• Decimal addition, subtraction, multiplications and division.

Arithmetic, Lower Book by Sutton and Bruce likewise covers first through sixth grade.

School Arithmetic covers everything for grades one through four.

We’d suggest using lessons as needed from both books.  Don’t forget that the secret to mastery at this level is practice, practice practice!

 

Art/Handicrafts/Music

Art can serve a dual purpose — both artistic and educational.

Get creative with collages, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, boxes, construction paper, water colors, scissors and glue! Try to come up with art and handicraft projects that complement a story being read, or that highlight another subject being learned. Don’t neglect a trip to the art museum.

Music is an important part of optimum brain development in children. Shakers, tambourines and bongo drums are appropriate for grades 1-4, after which more formalized study of particular instruments is a good idea. Find appropriate children’s music for kids to play (and sing!).

Science/Nature Study/Health

In fourth grade, science requires daily study.

Anna Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study is comprehensive, geared toward primary school instruction, and has helpful hints for parent-educators. This book is a REFERENCE, and not intended as primary material. Rather, it is used to further elucidate subjects described more basically in other books.

For the child’s direct study, explore one-third of a chapter daily on Monday through Wednesday from Madam How and Lady Why so that one chapter is covered weekly. On Thursday, an activity should be undertaken to illustrate the associated chapter in a hands-on way. This will last about twelve weeks.

After this, go through one module weekly of the National Institute on Drug Abuse curriculum.
Module 1    Module 2   Module 3   Module 4   Module 5    Module 6

Spend the remainder of the school year doing activities from: “Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You” by Clare Walker Leslie

Purchase Robert Friedhoffer’s “Physics Lab in the Home” and undertake a new experiment from the book every Friday.

Both of these are available from Amazon and other retailers.