Year 5

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2023-24 School Year – Completed (with M) and Reviewed

M will be in Year 5 and Em will be in Year 2. This is my first time through Year 5.

Once I have made my book purchases and have done some of the pre-reading for Year 5, I then spend some time figuring out the details and how to fit it all into the daily and weekly schedule. See the Planning and Scheduling page for details on how I do this.

Weekly Schedule

Every week I will make a weekly schedule for M to follow (see Planning and Scheduling for further details). I plan out what he will do independently and what he will do with me and make sure it can all fit into the school time allotted. This is not all of his work since we also spend 30-40 minutes in Together Time first thing in the morning (Together Time template here).

Year in Review

This year I have started to really understand how M’s ASD, anxiety disorder, and dyscalculia  are effecting how he learns and have started to shift my expectations of what and how he learns.  With his ASD, if he is not interested, there is no getting him to focus and be able to narrate back what was read.  With the anxiety disorder, any hint that he has done something incorrectly or not well (i.e., no narration), he shuts down.  This means we can’t move on to the next lesson until he is calm and feeling safe again.  With his dyscalculia, we have to allow “cheat sheets” as reference and manipulatives as well as very short lessons.  I also realized the reasons any mapwork is so difficult and anxiety inducing for M is that understanding maps is effected by his dyscalulia.  So I try to make mapwork much less formal and more me just pointing things out than making him remember all the time.  And I have found that with a lot of repitition, he is able to find major landmarks and point out how they relate to other landmarks. Even with all of these accomodations, M is able to keep moving through AO and growing in his understanding of the world and his ability to process and learn the information he is given.

Another major thing that changed this year was our morning time / together time plans. I had such high expectations and planned out multiple additions to the AO curriculum. And then realized that we were squeezing stuff in, rushing, or leaving out some readings. So I took a serious look at how long it actually takes to do each scheduled item and brutally cut out some favorites. However, morning time became much more enjoyable again.

Bible

We do Bible in Together Time and Vespers.  See Year 2 Planning for details on what we will be doing this year.

Bible in Review

I continued to use the Bible time during our Together Time and our Vespers reading to work through the Bible, though not necessarily along with the AO schedule.  

	Together Time	Vespers
Aug – NovOrdinary Time	Luke	Joshua and Judges
Advent	Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins	Advent Readings
Christmas	n/a (no school)	Christmas Readings
Jan/Feb	Special Study – Creation Story using Bible Project videos and Streetlight readings of Scripture	Luke
Lent	The Sacred Sacrifice by Hannah Paris	Lent Readings – selected stories of patriarchs from Genesis and Exodus
Easter	I and II Kings	Acts
Jun – Aug Orinary Time	n/a (no school)	Finishing Act and John

During Vespers time we include a special Sunday reading, and this year we worked through Pilgrim Progress. We will finish these readings sometime this summer.  I’m glad I’ve read it, but I enjoyed the Little Pilgrims Progress by Helen Taylor  so much more.  If I had pre-read both of them, I would probably have decided that Little Pilgrim’s Progress was sufficient.

Reading the book of Kings took a little more preparation than the other readings we’ve done so far.  I wanted to be sure we were following the action, so I found some maps and a timeline of kings, and I created a log where we could list the kings we were reading about as we came across them.  I also broke down the books into readable chunks and created bookmarks for easy reference.  This document is available on the Other Guides page.  We only made it through I Kings 16, so will be continuing this in the fall.  Keeping track of the kings in the log was helping us remember the stories and keep things straight.  And the boys were enjoying noticing how many bad kings there have already been

History

History Booklist here

I will continue to pre-read This Country of Ours every week.  See my description in Year 4 Planning for how I do this.  This year’s readings start focusing on the Presidents.  I learned from An Island Story that having a chart of the Kings and Queens helped us keep them straight in our heads and was an easy way to do a quick recap before readings.  So I will purchase a chart with pictures of all the Presidents like this one to hang above M’s desk.  I will also continue to post any maps or resources that I use for each chapter on the TCOO page. 

I did all the pre-reading for Answering the Cry (ATC) (see Other Guides), and we completed the assigned readings in Year 4.  But I have decided to use only one story in this book in Year 5.  The four readings assigned this year in the AO schedule include Elizabeth Freeman, Prince Hall, Mary Perth, and Ona Judge.  M will read the story of Elizabeth Freeman in ATC, and then we will move on to the African Icons by Tracey Baptiste.  I will also include the book Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge by Erica Dunbar in M’s Free Reading.  ATC is scheduled only occasionally, but since we will also not be reading Trial and Triumph, I have made room in the weekly schedule to have M read African Icons independently once a week.

In Year 4 M started reading the (non free-reads) independently for the first time.  This year I am assigning more of the history readings as independent work since he did well with the assigned readings last year.  I have decided to see if he can handle Abraham Lincoln’s World on his own.  We did George Washington’s World together in Year 4, but I believe he is ready for more in Year 5.  Just as we did for George Washington’s World, I will assign one (or possibly two short) stories each day and not worry about keeping up with the page count on the AO schedule.  If we don’t finish, we don’t.  

The Story of the World is new this year and does not start until Term 3.  I’ll see how M is doing with his other independent reading and narrations, but most likely I will at least start out reading this to him.  The forward of the book warns that “the events that have shaped the twentieth century…have almost all invovled violence” as a caution to parents about the book being for grade 4 and above.  This is another reason I think I will be reading this to M – so that I can help him process.  I have also purchased the activity book to accompany the reading.  It looks like it will be a useful took to help me remember what we read for the recap and there are many maps for each chapter that I am sure we’ll make use of.  There are even some coloring pages M will probably enjoy coloring while I read.

History in Review

TCCO is sometimes an easy read and sometimes we have to spread it over mulitple days.  And sometimes we only read a part of the chapter.  The chapters are so drastically different in length, that if I try to wing it and not pre-read, I sometimes end up trying to squeeze too much into one day.  I think reading with Em, when he gets to year 5, will be much easier – M can get fixated on something he doesn’t understand or get easily distracted with a detail in the story.  If there are too many different episodes, he can’t keep track so we have to stop frequently to narrate. There is also a lot of pausing to answer questions.  I have encouraged him to stop me when he doesn’t understand what is happening, so we do that often and review what was just read.  This is why it takes several days or we just leave off part of the chapter before moving to next.  Or we get “behind” a week.  Surprisingly for me, we did actually finish reading all the chapters in the book by the end of the year. Having a picture of something in the chapter or a short video really helps M connect and be able to remember the stories later on. See the TCOO pages for resources I’ve found for some of the chapters.

We did not read all the assigned chapters for Answering the Cry.   Many of the stories have flashback elements and are told in a way that is too mature for M to follow.  For the ones we did read, I read to him.

M read Abraham Lincoln’s World on idependendently.  And his narrations – either oral or written, were usually well done (if short).  Sometimes he would only pick out one thing for the narration and miss the main point of the story. I’ve doubted my decision to have him read these on his own, thinking if I were reading to him he might get more from them.  But then I assure myself that he needs to start transitioning to reading on his own and these are good practice.  He read one chapter every day (though for really long chapters, I split it into two days).  We did not make it through this book.  

I read aloud Story of the World and started with a couple of days per week.  But we were not making much progress at our pace, so when I decided not to finish Kim (see below), I started reading SoW everyday.  We still did not finish all the assigned readings, but made it a good progress.  I absolutely enjoyed the stories we did get to.  Some of the stories really connected with M and he would narrate in detail.  Most of them he could narrate at least some of the story.  I had ordered the student workbook through our charter school since I had extra funds and found the maps helpful and M enjoyed the coloring pages which he did while I read to him.  I don’t think I would have paid for the workbook on my own though.

I added in African Icons, assigning one chapter per week to be read independently.  I created a reading guide for me to be able to remember what he was reading each week and to have maps to discuss (see Other Guides).  

Timeline

Timeline in Review

We continued to put events into his Book of Centuries when we came across something noteworthy.  Though I was always the one pointing it out.  M never thinks to document in the timeline.  I think this is part of his ASD and/or dyscalculia – a timeline does not make much sense to him.  But I continue working on it because sometimes he does notice and comment on when events he’s added are next to others from before.

Biography

We will read Of Courage Undaunted and follow along on the map of the United States with the expidition.  I have created a guide to help us follow along on the map with each week’s reading.  It is accessible on the Other Guides page.

M will read Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! By Jean Fritz for the Roosevelt book instead of the option listed on the AO schedule.  I chose this one because the reading level is a better fit for M to read independently and it is shorter so it fits in the schedule with the other biography books I’ve chosen.  I have written a guide for this book that will help us follow along on a map that is posted on the Other Guides page.  I may have M draw the locations on the United States map he’s using for Of Courage Undaunted or maybe keep a small one just for this book.    

The Science biographies M will read will be The Radium Woman: The Life of Marie Curie by Eleanor Doorly and Dr. George Washington Carver: Scientist by Shirley Graham and George D. Lipscomb.  We will read Radium Woman together.  M will follow along in the book while listening to the audiobook.  He will read the Carver biography independently.  I have written guides for both of these biographies and posted them on the Other Guides page.

In together time we will be reading picture book biographies of other people of the same time periods to give us a bigger picture of the time and to incorporate a greater diversity into our history readings.  Some of the books I have chosen are:

Biography in Review

Lewis and Clark went well.  M narrated the stories and seemed engaged.  He hates mapwork, and it often sidetracks our day.  So after several weeks I no longer made him draw on the map where we were in the story but just pointed it out to him.  By the end he was able to give a general idea of where the corp went on their journey on the map.
 
For Radium Woman, M followed along on a Kindle version while listening to an audiobook version.  And I sat next to him to make sure he was following along and answer any questions.  M has a picture book biography of Marie Curie that he has read many times, so he seemed interested to hear the story in more detail and even noticed some parts that were told a little differently.  We listened to the story 5 minutes per day and were able to finish on schedule.
            
M read the George Washington Carver book on his own, 10 minutes a day several times per week.  He read it faster than was scheduled and was able to narrate it well.  However, the Teddy Roosevelt book (which I had thought would be more interesteing to him), he went through very slowly.  In Term 3 when he no longer was ready Abraham Lincoln and I started reading SoW, I had him start reading every day.  And he still didn’t finish the book.  But his narrations were well done and his written narrations started getting longer and longer, filling sometimes an entire page of his (5×7) narration notebook – with illustrations.  Though his typed narrations were still pretty short, at one or two sentences.

My lofty plans of reading a biography every week in morning school did not work out.  I had planned to much for only an hour in morning school.  We did read The Journey of York: The Unsung Hero of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Hasan Davis and Sacagawea by Lise Erdick, which M really enjoyed and related to the Of Courage Undaunted readings.

Language Arts

Literature and Poetry

Literature booklist here and Poetry booklist here

Shakespeare

This will be the second year reading full Shakespeare plays with M.  Last year I read a retelling in Together Time for the first two or three weeks of each term – this counted as one of Em’s plays for the term.  Then M and I listened to the Argo Classics audio version while reading along – about a scene or two each week.  I looked at each play and split it up to fit the schedule,  though sometimes we had to stop more frequently to discuss what was happening so we did not always stay to the schedule.  Instead of buying a printed copy for each of us, I made sure I had one printed copy for M to use and I downloaded a kindle version from the library for myself.  This system worked, so I will continue doing the same thing this year.  

Literature

For bedtime reading in Year 3 M and Daddy read through Rosemary Sutcliff’s Arthurian legend books The Sword and the Circle and The Light Beyond the Forest.  And since Once and Future King is scheduled for Year 7, I decided M did not need another Arthur book this year (though I’ve added it as an option for his free reads).  Since Beowulf is scheduled for Year 7, I thought it might be good to have M read a retelling this year so he knows the story.  So I will have him read Beowulf: Dragon Slayer by Rosemary Sutcliff.  I have it scheduled for one chapter per week in independent time during the first nine weeks of Term 1.  

For Oliver Twist and Kim  M to read along with audiobooks.  I will listen along with him for both of these books so they are scheduled in his time with me once a week. I decided to do these books with M to help him learn to recap and narrate to himself and create good reading habits using these more advanced books (Besides, I haven’t read them yet and I can’t pass up an opportunity to hear them 😉 ).  Since Beowulf will be done in independent reading time, I will have him start Oliver Twist in Term 1 so we can space both of these books out.  I was debating substituting Kim with something else after reading much discussion on the AO facebook group and forum about how difficult it is.  But I also think it is important to have exposure to India and British colonization.  I could not find an equivalent read, so decided to try it with M.  It was also so strongly recommended by the AO advisory members in the comments that I decided to take a chance even though it scares me! 

As we did in Year 4, we will continue to listen to an audio version of Age of Fable (even though is is a poor quality recording) so that I do not have to guess at the pronunciations.  This is scheduled for once a week in our time together.  I have made it part of our time together and not independent time – mainly because I want to hear it too.  But also because in Year 4 M would often have me stop the reading and explain what just happened, so it can’t hurt to sit with him while he reads along with the audio.

Literature in Review

I continued to use the audiobook version of Age of Fables, with M following along in the book.  Some of the stories engaged M and he was able to narrate most of the readings.  But this book feels less than a “living book” and more of a reference.  The stories are told so matter of factly and in a summarized fashion that it is often hard for me to follow along, much less M.  And the references to all the poets who have ever mentioned the characters goes over M’s head and he is often frustrated with trying to figure out what is meant.  So sometimes I skip over those parts.  After recently reading Mythos by Stephen Fry for myself and D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths with Em, this version of the myths seems so dry. We got behind in the schedule and never finished all the assigned readings.   I’m debating replacing this with something different for E and researching future Bullfinch books and alternatives more thororoughly.
 
M absolutley loved Oliver Twist.  We listedened to the Simon Vance narrated audiobook while M followed along in the book.  He was so invested in what was happening to Oliver the entire time.  It took us all of term 1 and 2 to finish the book reading a chapter a day (about 15 – 20 minutes of the audiobook).  M didn’t just narrate well to me after the readings, he would update his brother, dad, grandparents, and anyone who would listen what was happening with poor Oliver.  He was very concerned that people were being mean to him and very happy with the ending!
 
The Sutcliff retelling of Beowulf was also a hit.  M’s narrations were done well and he finished reading the book before the end of Term.

Kim.   Well, we tried.  I had read so much about this on the forum and facebook pages and blogs.  Others who had tried and given up.  Some who decided to not try it.  Some who had decided to put it off for a later year.  And those who were adamately in praise of it, including many respected mothers and the advisory posts about it.  However, after slogging through 5 chapters, 20 minutes every day I finally gave up after 6 weeks.  At the pace we were going I knew we would never finish by the end of the year.  We stopped every couple of minutes for M to ask me what was happening.  There was so much of the story that depended upon already understanding the culture of India, that I had a hard time following and then explaining it to M.  Every day before the reading, I would read the a summary of the reading from several sources recommended by the forum.  Then we would listen to the audiobook for 20 minutes – though we often only made it 10 minutes or less with all the stops.  I was so determined to make this work that I pushed it too far.  M was hating it and the dread of doing it would put him in a bad mood and the entire school day would be overshadowed.  Even when we did it first, his frustration and anxiety about not understanding what was happenind would put him in a bad mood for the rest of the day.  So I decided to stop.  And both of us felt the relief.

Poetry

We will read through the assigned poets using the AO Year 5 anthology.  For the longer poems I will do what I’ve done in the past and find a Librivox or You Tube reading that M will follow along with.  Poetry reading is schdueled during Together Time.  Monday through Thursday I will alternate reading one of M’s poems and then one of Em’s poems each day, sometimes reading more than one poem if they are shorter.  In this way we usually make our way completely through the assigned poems each term.  I also just like the idea of all of us reading through all of the assigned poets twice. 

On Friday this year I will be adding in a poem from Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat edited by Nikki Giovanni.  It comes with a CD, so we’ll listen to a poem a week.

Poetry in Review

We read several poems a week in morning school as planned.  We don’t make it all the way through each poet, but when we read them through again when Em is in year 5, we’ll catch the ones we didn’t get this time.  We spent most of Term 3 listening to the audiobook and following along with Jump Back, Paul by Sally Derby.  We all enjoyed this book.  We listed to it everyday and sometimes there were multiple Dunbar poems in the reading for the day along with his biography.  We all enjoyed it.  When it was finished we started reading through the John Greeleaf Whittier poems on the AO Website.

Grammar

We will continue to use the Grammar lessons from A Delectable Education that are an updated version of Charlotte Mason’s First Grammar Lessons.  We will finish Part II and move on to Part III and possibly Part IV this year.  I have scheduled it so that M works with me once a week and then completes some of the exercises independently the next day so that he is thinking about grammar twice a week (in addition to the grammar he is learning in Latin!)

Grammar in Review

About halfway through the year I switched the Grammar curriculum.  ADE was taking a lot of prep work to have something for M to do for independent work the day after I worked with him.  Also, I felt like we had covered all the lessons that had new concepts for M.  So I started using Fix It! Grammar Book 1.  Which also reviewed some topics we had previously covered, but it covered it in a new way.  I did one “day” per week, so we moved slowly.  I am planning on moving more quickly through the topics next year.

Reading

Free Reading List Here

I will continue to schedule in free reading time every day and curate a shelf of options for this time.  I like to choose a variety of books, so there are more here than he will probably be able to read this year, but it’s never wrong to have too many books in your TBR!  This year I will include the following on that shelf:

• Never Caught: The Story of Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
• Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park
• The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Children of the Longhouse by Joseph Bruchac
• Half Magic by Edward Eager
• Seaman: The Dog Who Explored The West With Lewis and Clark by Gail Langer Karwoski
• The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle
• The Wild Book by Juan Villoro
• The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West
• The Saturdays by Melendy Quartet
• Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham

We also use the Free Read list for Bedtime Reads with Daddy.  The following will be made options for M to choose:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Michael Faraday, Father of Electronics by Charles Ludwig
• Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith

I will do a Christmas reading of A Christmas Carol in Together Time this year.  And I want to read Anne of Green Gables and Rilla of Ingleside with M, but I haven’t exactly figured out where I am going to fit that in.  These are two of my all time favorite books and I want to be the one reading them with him – not Daddy  :).

Reading In Review

M picked a Happy Hollister book for his first free read, and then I found a stack of them at a used book store.  He then proceeded to spend most of the year reading these for his free read.  Near the end of the year he started Half Magic by Edward Eager and will finish it over the summer.  He is also devouring Encyclopedia Brown mysteries whenever he finds a new one – which we have often been lucky to find on the library sale shelves!

In the car we listened to (not in this order):

• The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White narrated by E.B.White
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens narrated by Hugh Grant 
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss narrated by Jonathan Keeble (an abridged version)
• The Adventures of Pincocchio by Carlo Colodi (a re-listen) narrated by Simon Vance
• The Jungle Book part I by Rudyard Kipling narrated by Ralph Cosham
• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin narrated by Janet Song
• Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery narrated by Susie Berneis
• Mooses with Bazookas by S.D. Smith narrated by S.D. Smith and more (this was so over-the-top silly I dreaded listening to it, but the boys loved it and it was only a couple of hours so I pushed through it for them!)
• Harry Potter Books 1 & 2 by J.K. Rowling narrated by Jim Dale
• Currently listening to Green Ember by S.D. Smith narrated by Joel Clarkson

Bedtime stories with Daddy ended up being:

• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

The boys received several books for Christmas this year that I wanted to read too, so I decided to start a semi-regular afternoon read-aloud time.  We got through several books this way and I’ve decdided to keep it up during the summer too:

• The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling
• The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers
• The Day Boy and the Night Girl by George MacDonald
• Currently Reading House of Arden by E. Nesbit

Cursive and Copywork

M’s printing is beautiful, so he will only be doing copywork in cursive next year.  He started cursive in Year 3 and continued practicing it in Year 4.  He writes well but needs practice reading it.  So I have purchased Poems Every Child Should Know in Cursive for him to work through next year. I plan on having M read the cursive to me before copying it.

Copywork in Review

M has continued working on cursive for copywork.  He is working his way through the Poems Every Child Should Know in Cursive.  However, I don’t think I’d recommend this book.  As you can see here, he runs out of room, so he’s not actually copying the entire peice.  PICTURE.  I am having to include a time in the weekly schedule to review the cursive with him because I’m finding that though he can write it well while copying the sentence above, he doesn’t really read it well.  So I have him practice reading the cursive and identifying the cursive letters correctly.  I have also added in a requirement that some of his other work be done in cursive.  He does it well, but extremely slowly.  Next year I’ll come up with something different for him.

Recitation

I was relieved to see AO has posted recommended recitation work for each year.  So, this year I will be working through the list for Year 5.  M memorizes the passages and poems quickly, but he needs extra practice and encouragement with the speaking part.  So I will continue to have him practice with a recording of the passage I find on YouTube.  We’ll incorporate the Bible verses into our Together Time, rotating between M and Em’s passages.  As before, I will read the Bible verse every morning until they are able to say it along with me. 

Dictation

We will continue using Spelling Wisdom.  I hope by the end of the year to have him writing his dictation in cursive, but I’m not sure that will happen.  

Dictation in Review

It took more than one week to do a lesson from Spelling Wisdom, and sometimes when we moved on to the next lesson, I would write some words on the page for him to practice from the past week. M is not progressing with spelling very well, so I might rethink how we’re doing dictation next year.

Foreign Language

I have decided to put off Spanish this year. See my thoughts on this on the Year 4 planning page. M will continue with the Getting Started with Latin book he started last year (see Year 4 Planning and Review for details).  

Foreign Language in Review

We made it through lesson 99 in Getting Started with Latin.  Some weeks we did up to three new lessons and some weeks we spent in review of a tricky concept.  Though M complains about doing his Latin and often says he doesn’t know what it means and leaves his independent work blank, when I sit next to him he can translate it correctly more often than not.  I think he just doesn’t like writing out the translation.  So what I have been doing is giving him all 10 sentences from the workbook to translate but letting him choose 3 to do on his own.  And then in his Latin time with me I have him do the others orally.  Since the book is not really a workbook, I retype all the exercises into a format with space for him to write.  This is a lot of prep work each week, but I count it as my own “homework” as I am learning along with him.  While I am type the exercises, I translate them for my own practice.

After school started, Em expressed interest in learning American Sign Language.  Since I had decided not to do Spanish, I thought we’d try out ASL casually.  So I found  You Tube Videos  to work our way through basic words and phrases. We watched about 5 minutes several times a week and reviewed the other days.  M tolerated this. He liked the idea of sign language, but he did not like using his fingers, especially his thumb, to make the sign. He would tell me not to look when he made signs that needed to have the thumb out or do the motions really quick so no one could actually see it. I think if Em is still interested next year, I will do something just with him instead of forcing M to do something he is uncomfortable doing.

Geography

I plan to do the Book of Marvels with M so that we can follow along on a map of the world.  I will have him mark the U.S. Map that we are using for A Courage Undaunted for the landmarks in the U. S. and then print a smaller world map for the other places.  Beautiful Feet Books has a World Map that would be fun to use, but I just don’t have room for 2 large maps on the walls!  I will be using the website Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels: The Classic Journey Updated for Today along with our readings.

For Term 1 geography topics we will continue working through the list I made and started last year.  We will be able to finish it this year.   This is scheduled for Together Time for one day a week.  See the Other Guides page for my list.  The Term 2 and 3 topics have or will soon be covered in nature study so I will not address them specifically.

In place of formal map drill, I will be continuing our U.S.A. state-by-state study in Together Time. We started this when M was in Year 3, but it was put on hold for our charter school required 4th Grade study of California last year.  We will spend the first term reviewing the states we covered two years ago and then Terms 2 and 3 on the rest of the states.  I have written a little about why and how I do this in the guides posted on the Other Guides page.

Geography in Review

We mostly kept with the schedule for the Hallburton books and did finish all the assigned readings, though not necessarily in the weeks assigned.  We got behind several weeks and read more than one some weeks.  These readings are really long.  I find them facinating, but Malcolm often had trouble following along when the story jumped from present to past to present again.  So some weeks I would read only the history part or only the present story.  When we started the Orient book in term 3, he started enjoying the historical stories more since they were following the same boy on his vacation.
 
We finished all the geography topics, drawing the definitions in our geography journals once a week during Together Time.  
 
We also completed our study of the U.S. States in Together Time.  Each week or two we started a new state and looked at the geographical features, historical peoples, and sometimes read a picture book or watched videos about the state.  For the last several weeks we reviewed the major moutains and rivers of the U.S. and the state capitals.  The boys each had their own map where they drew some of the main geographical features of the state.  M has a hard time with maps, so he did not like doing this.  But he got really good at the state capitals!

Citizenship

This will be our first year reading Plutarch since we started with Stories from the History Rome in Year 4.  I am still a little intimidated, but have decided to go with The Annotated Plutarch: Publicola to start our Plutarch adventures.  There are 12 lessons included so it will get us through Term 1.  I will decide how to proceed with the rest of the year once I see how things are going.  

I have decided to add in a citizenship component in Together Time for both M and Em.  I will be reading from Conversations on Government by Jane Marcet.  I have scheduled this to alternate with the picture book biography so that I will be reading a chapter every other week.  The readings will take us through Term 1 and 2.  In Term 3 we will watch videos on general govenment topics.  I have realized that M and Em don’t have even a general understanding of how our government works, so I wanted to cover basic topics like how a law is made and the three branches of government.  Conversations on Goverment is from a British perspective, which I think will help them understand our history readings better.  But in Term 3, I will focus on the U.S.   I have made a You Tube playlist of the videos I will use.

Citizenship in Review

We only made it through two Plutarchs this year:  Pericles and Romulus.  I used the Annotated Plutarch for both.  But since this is our first year doing “real” Plutarch, I am proud of us!  We stop frequently to figure out what we just read and when there is an actual story, M was able to narrate well.  Most of the more descriptive, political, or background information did not get narrated.
 
We started reading the book Conversations on Government by Jane Marcet and the boys were enjoying it and following along with the concepts.  But I ended up cutting it from Together Time because I was trying to squeeze too much into the morning and our days kept getting longer and longer.  I want to finish this book, so will keep it in mind for the future.  We did not get to my planned U.S. Government topics at all.

One thing that did get added in, even with all the other schedule cuts, is current events. We started watching The World from A to Z, a 10 minute news program aimed at middle schoolers, most mornings. Both boys loved it. In fact, most mornings they spent time during the break after morning school re-watching segments of the news again. I also subscribed to The Week Junior. I don’t require anything from their readings of this, but M devours it every week when it comes and Em has even started reading some of it too.

Nature Study

Nature Study is done in Together Time.  See my plan for this year in Year 2 Planning and my weekly schedules on the Nature Study page.

Science

Science and Nature Study book list here

I have scheduled Wild Animals I Have Known to be read indpenedently once time per week.  I have pre-read the first several chapters and since the assigned readings are relatively short and at his reading level, I believe he will be able to handle them well.  I have decided to do the rest of the pre-reading the week before so that I have the reading fresh in my memory.  Also, from the first several chapters it does not seem like much preparation such maps or pictures or anything will be required, so a quick pre-read the week before will be all that is necessary.

Great Inventors is scheduled once a week for me to read to M.  I will be using a cheat sheet written by Roxanne Ruffenach and posted in the AO Google “CheatSheetCreation” group.  For each chapter, it includes a summary, lists of characters, and locations to map.  

I will not be using the anatomy science book recommended by AO.  After reading through it, I found it to be very textbook like. And I also do not like how the book references the Bible as if the Bible were a science text to teach us about our anatomy. So I have prepared a 36-week schedule using living books (and some of one that is more textbook like). Most of the books are available for free on archive.com and suitable for a 5th grade reading level. Though I will be reading these texts with M, at least at first until I see what he is capable of. See the Year 5 section on the Other Guides page for the schedule I’ll be using.

I decided in Year 4 to drop Madame How and Lady Why (see Year 4 Planning for details), so I will not do it this year either.  This leaves me room to do a little extra science to meet our Charter School requirements. 

To meet the requirements of our Charter School I have decided to cover a different topic each term, following along with the guides from Sabbath Mood Homeschool.  We will do this in Together Time and some of the experiments will be done in the evenings or weekends with Daddy.

• Term 1: Machines
• Term 2: Chemistry
• Term 3: Weather.  This compliments our Nature Study on Weather and Climate this term.  I will also be including a Nature Lore called The Story of the Trade Winds by Ruth Brindze.

See Biography section above for what we’ll be doing for the Science Biographies.

Science in Review

M did not finishe Wild Animals.  Near the end of the year when he had finished other books, I started having him read for 10 minutes each day, but he still didn’t finish. He was able to narrate what he did read well.
 
The Great Inventors book was difficult.  I had trouble following some of the techinical descriptions and M rarely understood them. When there was a story with little technical details, he would follow and often enjoyed them.  However, by Term 3 the chapters were getting so technical that he was not following at all.  So I stopped reading this book – which gave us time to catch up on the Halliburton chapters we were getting behind in.
 
M followed along with the anatomy topics I had prepared and seemed to enjoy learning about how his bones and muscles worked.  Some topics he could not handle and would get grossed out at – for example, any talk of the esophogus or epiglotis made him cover his ears and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to know. This is part of his ASD – there are words and images that have always made him uncomfortable. But he was interested in the readings from It Takes Guts by Dr. Jennifer Grady and could narrate them back well and the lessons on nutrition really interested him and I even noticed him choosing to eat certain foods he had refused to eat in the past after these lesson.
 
In morning school we made it through the Machines and Chemistry Books, but ended up not doing the Weather book because the topics were covered in the Weather Nature Study we did in Term 3.  We read  The Story of the Trade Winds by Ruth Brindze in Term 3 and M mostly followed the concepts.

Mathematics

We will continue using Simply Charlotte Mason Math for Year 5.  M finished book three in Year 4, so we will start with Book 4 this year.  Books 5 and 6 will cover fractions, decimals, percentage etc., so I am looking forward to them coming out soon.  There are some topics that this book will not cover that are required by our charter school, so I will use education.com or Khan Academy to supplement those topics.

Math in Review

By the time we got to Christmas Break this year, M had been diagnosed with dyscalulia.  And it helped me realize that the SCM math was not working, not because I was failing, but because M’s brain was working so differently than I had been expecting it.  All the guidence I read for working with students with dyscalculia described homeschooling – one-on-one help, lots of review, using manipulatives and cheat sheets, short lessons, and moving at a slower pace.  We decided to switch back to MathUSee so there were consistent workbook pages slowly working through one topic at a time. We were able to get through a lot of the division book by the end of the school year and will probably spend the beginning of next year reviewing and then moving on to fractions.

Art and Music

These are done in Together Time.  See Year 2 Planning for what we plan on doing this year.

Physical Education

M still is reluctant to join any sports teams or classes.  So I will continue having him do a yoga or other exercise video.  He is considering swimming lessons, so there is hope. I may try to tempt him with archery classes, if I can figure out how to work it into our schedule.

P.E. in Review

M did choose to take swimming lessons this year and has made much progress. We also tried to get to the pool several more times a month for additional practice (and play!). I finally realized why he was reluctant to start swimming lessons – he does not like having any part of his body exposed. To the extent that he wears long pants and long sleeved shirts all summer (in the desert heat!). I found him some long swim pants to wear under the swim shorts and with a long sleeve rash guard top and he now is comfortable getting in the pool.