Homeschool 4th Grade Curriculum Questions...

[Carnation]

We started with All About Spelling to help understand the spelling and phonics rules.
All About Spelling - Official Site | Spelling Programs, Teaching Spelling
After 2 levels of that ds was off and running.
We went from there to Sequential Spelling through DVD (student taught and graded) and Essentials in Writing DVD program (also independent learning).
Both are reusable if you have multiple children which brings the cost down as well.
AVKO's Sequential Spelling DVD Series
Essentials in Writing

Another idea to begin with, is to buy a Comprehensive Curriculum workbook to make sure your student has learned all the basics for each grade.
Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills, Grade 2: American Education Publishing: 9781609963316: Amazon.com: Books

HTH,
Carnation

[mrs.b]

From what I've read so far, I love Reading A-Z and All About Spelling; thank you, Jennifer and Carnation! Hubby and I are digging into them to see more.

[cookderosa]

From what I've read so far, I love Reading A-Z and All About Spelling; thank you, Jennifer and Carnation! Hubby and I are digging into them to see more.

Reading A-Z has a promotion that you won't know about until you register, but once you register, they give you a "day pass" for the other products. They cap the downloads you can do, but I used my day passes to print of a lot of material!! Also, a neat trick I found on A-Z after about a year (duhhhh) was that you can pull up the book and click "projectable" and simply read it in a full-screen mode. WAY faster than the other option or printing.

[Daithi]

I really can't help much at all with curriculum recommendations, but my sister is a teacher and I can tell you one of the things she does with her kids. They must read a minimum of a half hour every day. Her older two kids were adopted when one was in third grade and the other was in fifth grade. They had both been in foster-care throughout their lives, living in a new home every year in tough neighborhoods, and they were both way behind in school. The fifth grader even had to repeat fifth grade. However, her 3rd grader is now in 6th grade, and the 5th grader is now in 7th. Both of them are now way ahead of their peers in reading. Just reading every day for a 1/2 hour was all it took. Some days they go over the limit because they like the book they are reading, but they still have to read at least a 1/2 hour the next day anyway. The better they get at reading the more they like reading as well. They complained a lot when they first had to do this, but now it is just part of their expected day. My niece who had to repeat 5th grade now reads books like Anne Frank's Diary and the Hunger Games series. Her mom wouldn't let her read the Twilight series this year. Another thing they have to do is pick books at their age level. The two sites below aren't perfect but they provide the reading levels for most books--

Teacher Resources, Children's Books, Student Activities for Teachers | Scholastic.com (click Book Wizard)
AR BookFinder US - Welcome

Basic math is just as important as basic reading. The difference is that most schools make kids do math everyday, but don't make them read novels every day. One of the the things the school district where my sister teaches does is to really drill basic math concepts. Forty years ago I went to the same school district, and I still remember having to stay inside during recess to practice my times tables because I couldn't answer 100 basic multiplication problems in under 3 minutes (I sucked at memorizing). Forty years later and they are still drilling kids with the same timed math sheets of 100 problems, although I don't think the kids lose their recess.

My nieces and nephews are now in a permanent loving home and all are happy and doing well. They are also all thriving in school. My niece, who had to repeat 5th grade, now gets straight As. She reads better than most of her classmates, and she is taking pre-algebra this year. I say this not to brag on my nieces and nephews (ok, maybe a little), but because IMHO the most important thing is not curriculum. The most important thing is basic reading, writing, and math. Reading is simple once your son can read --- just do it every day. Basic math isn't hard either. Give them a solid foundation of knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide and the rest is a lot easier. Teaching how to write well is a little harder, but being able to read well also makes this easier.

[SoliDeoGloria]

My family homeschools, and the Reading/Phonics books that we have used and that have worked extremely well are the "Explode the Code" books. They have Primer books that are called A, B, and C. Here's the link to A: Get Ready for the Code - Book a: Nancy Hall: 9780838817803: Amazon.com: Books. Then there are 8 books in the actual "Explode the Code" series. Amazon.com: Explode the Code. These books go step-by-step in teaching phonics, spelling, etc.

For literature in the younger years, we have loved "Five in a Row" (Amazon.com: Five in a Row). It just gets you really reading to your children, who learn so much by listening .

One other grammar book that we have used for little bit older grades (e.g. 5th, 6th, 7th) is a curriculum called Shirley English (Amazon.com: Shirley English). There is a lot of repetition and jingles (literally songs) to go along with each part of speech.

Homeschooling is such a wonderful option to choose! I praise the Lord, and thank my parents for homeschooling me, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!

[namwen]

We are interested in low-maintenence and extremely to the point learning materials for our kids. My wife and i are not really organized by nature so we have to work up front to structure everything fo out kids in case we temperarily lose focus. We have some really hard workers for kids, so that should be helpful.

[namwen]

Sorry, that was random...I didn't mean to hijack your thread.

[cookderosa]

Sorry, that was random...I didn't mean to hijack your thread.

LOL that happens to the best of us!! You might like my favorite low-maintenance curriculum - Homeschool Curriculum Excellence - Robinson Self-Teaching Homeschool Curriculum You don't have to buy it to follow the program. I did buy it once upon a time, but sold it years ago. We would consider ourselves a relaxed "RC" family.

[rebel100]

We used Barnes and Noble "Flash Kids" series for a lot of the lower level language arts/math BARNES & NOBLE | Flash Kids Harcourt Family Learning

Had the added benefit that we could just go to the local B&N to look at it before we purchased. And kind of ridiculously cheap. Cost was a big factor for us for more years than I like to recall.

I should add that I think instilling a love of reading has led my girls to their academic excellence more than any other single thing we did. We never really concerned ourselves much with what the book or subject matter was...so long as it grabbed them and held their attention. With a few exceptions we never really kept them back from tackling anything they chose to read. Comic books, cookbooks, magazines, are all fair game for us. I don't know how the autistic process the written word...but if there is something he likes to read I would include it formally or informally....and be sure he gets heaping doses.

[mrs.b]

After reading all the replies - and we've stalked a few other forums and sites too - I think we are going to go a bit informal with reading. He cannot stand reading right now and we just need to get him past that. When he was younger (pre-K) when most other kids are learning the basics of reading, he was severely regressed (he developed normally until about 3 years, then regressed to about 18-mo development). He's come a very long way in a reasonably small amount of time, but the bug has been playing a constant game of catch up on all those building blocks while trying to keep up with the new content being thrown at him.

Part of his frustration is his lack of confidence because he does struggle to sound out words if they are not immediately recognizable, but we'll back up and focus on phonics for that; we've tried to supplement over the years, but we've always been playing keep-up with everything else, and we've never been able to just stop, let him catch his breath, and focus on that.

The other part is that the last two years, the reading selections in class have been challenging (since he is reading below grade level) and it takes him all week working on the assigned reading to keep up. He works so hard. He does read 20-30 minutes every day, but they are not things he selected, and he finds most of them incredibly boring so it is all a chore. By the time the weekend rolls around, he's so over the whole idea, and if he wants to read anything, he chooses to start in on next week's reading so he can feel a bit better and more confident about it when they read it in class on Monday (he's been teased to the point we've asked the teacher to stop calling on him for it in class). He has a huge assortment of books that he was interested in at the store, but they're just shelf decoration, he can't stand the idea so much.

I think we'll focus on phonics, then have his "class reading" be fun books he picks each week from the shelves here and/or at the library that we'll focus on increasing in difficulty as he progresses. He is capable, he just has a few phonics hurdles to get past, then it's just getting past the "ugh, I don't wanna" hump. I want him to have a love for reading, but need to help him get the basics down so he doesn't freeze when he runs into an unfamiliar word, then an understanding that reading does not need to be a boring, draining, and embarrassing experience.