Homeschool planning for 4th grade and kindergarten

Here we are 1.5 weeks out from starting school, and I'm barely posting our plans for the year.  Sariah is in grade 4, and Preston is in his second year of kindergarten.  Sariah is still struggling with reading, so we've added mainstream dyslexia-friendly reading and spelling resources and practice sessions to our lineup.

4th grade block schedule:

Resources:

Marsha Johnson's free files (I also got the general order of our blocks from Marsha's ideas, though I've tweaked some things.)
Christopherus Grade 4 curriculum
Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools
Learning About the World Through Modeling
The Write Approach (handwriting)
Making Math Meaningful
Fraction units from www.molletacademy.com
Path of Discovery Grade 4
The Human Being and the Animal World by Kovacs
All About Reading
All About Spelling
Drawing from the Book of Nature
Math by Hand (form drawing book)
Learning About the World Through Drawing
English Manual by Dorothy Harrer
Math Lessons for Elementary Grades by Harrer
Lighting the Literacy Fire
Piano Adventures
Music Through the Grades
www.waldorfinspirations.com


September/4 weeks: introduction to Norse mythology

• We'll introduce each of the main gods and goddesses of Asgard through stories, draw their portraits, and write a sentence about each one.
• Skills: colored pencil drawing, form drawing, cursive handwriting
• We'll also begin reading lessons, math review, piano, and handwork, which will be ongoing throughout the year
• I'm still deciding where to go with handwork.  Options are to continue with another knitting project, start crochet (probably not happening at this point) or begin with embroidery.  One idea I have is to have her sew a handwork bag and embroider her initials on it.

October/4 weeks:  math

• Focus will be on measurement, the wonder of numbers, square numbers, and factoring
• Form drawing lessons will focus on ropes and braids
• Reading, handwriting, spelling, piano, and  handwork will continue

November/4 weeks: the human being and the animal world (zoology)

• Form drawing focus will be on knotted and other Celtic forms
• Through writing about zoology, we'll practice good paragraph formation.
• Grammar will focus on dictionary use.
• Art will be a mix of drawing, painting, and modeling animals.
• A major project will be a written or oral report on the animal of her choice, with illustrations, a papier mache mask, and a diorama showing the animal in its habitat.
• Reading, spelling, handwriting, math practice, piano, and handwork will continue.
• At this point, we need to be moving into cross stitch.  Hopefully we'll be starting some kind of simple project this month.

Thanksgiving break/1 week

December/3 weeks: Norse Mythology and grammar

• No form drawing this month.  We need to streamline during the Christmas season.
• Honestly, we'll probably streamline other things too... maybe lighten up on reading, math practice, piano, or whatever we need to do to get through the season.
• This is the month we'll introduce all 9 parts of speech
• We'll continue with Norse myths and drawing, painting, modeling, and writing about them.

Christmas break/2 weeks

January/4 weeks: Fractions

• This months we'll introduce concepts related to fractions with lots of hands-on fun and lots of drawing
• Form drawing will resume with Norse shield designs
• I'm hoping her cursive handwriting will be solidified at this point, but if not we'll keep regular practice as part of our routine.
• Of course we'll be having regular reading lessons, spelling, and grammar practice to solidify the concepts learned over the past few months.  
• This month for handwork, I'm hoping for the two of us to collaborate on a beautiful needlefelted mural of the World Tree from Norse mythology (found in the Christopherus curriculum)

February/3-4 weeks: the human being and the animal world part 2

• This second block will focus more specifically on the eagle, the lion, and the bull and how they relate to the human being, with appropriate artistic activities and writing.
• We'll be doing lots of math practice with fractions in the afternoons.
• Other practice subjects will continue as in previous months.
• Grammar lessons focusing on verb tenses and the 4 sentence types
• Handwork--this month we need to delve deeply into cross stitch, probably doing a pincushion or beanbag more complicated than November's project.
• Form drawing will be fraction-related forms

March/4 weeks: Fractions part 2

• More work with multiplying, dividing, adding, and subtracting fractions
• Afternoon grammar practice and review from previous months
• Reading, spelling, possibly handwriting, piano, and handwork as usual
• Form drawing: continuing with complicated Celtic forms

Spring Break and Holy Week/2 weeks

April/3 weeks: tying up Norse Mythology

• We'll finish up the Norse stories, drawing, painting, and writing about them.
• Grammar will be active and being verbs, use of quotations and apostrophes
• Continued reading, spelling, math practice (fractions and long division), handwork, and piano
• Form drawing will be similar forms to what we've been doing all year long, just more of the same
• I'm not sure what we'll be doing for handwork at this point

May/4 weeks: Local geography

• I'm really hoping at this point in the year we will be done with all academics and this block will be just fun and no pressure!
• Our focus will be Pennsylvania state geography and history.  We'll look at the geography of our area and the history of our town and how it relates to the land.  I've had a great deal of fun reading up on our local history as we are fairly new to the area.  We'll be talking about lumber and coal, mainly.
• The next weeks will focus on Native Americans in our area and how they lived, the establishment of Pennsylvania colony as a place for religious tolerance, the planning and building of the city of Philadelphia, the Amish, Pittsburgh and the steel industry, and if time permits, railroads.
• There will be no writing.  
• There may be some drawing and painting, but the main artistic focus will be map making as we use different media to map some of the various things we'll be learning about.
• We'll read some historical fiction related to various aspects of our state and probably a biography of Benjamin Franklin
• We'll probably identify and draw the various state symbols such as flower, tree, flag, etc.
• Of course we are hoping to go on lots of field trips!

Kindergarten Plans

Last year we did Waldorf Essentials, which Preston really enjoyed, but this year I longed to tell all the wonderful stories I've fallen in love with through the years.  I thought of trying to meld the two, but in the end decided to simplify and go with just one set of stories.  Here is my list for the year, in order.  We'll spend about two weeks on each story, except for the ones during Advent, which will be told for a few days each, and the December festival stories, which will be told at bedtime or on the day of the festival.

• Harvest Moon Magic from Suzanne Down's Autumn Tales
• The Strong Boy by Christine Natale
• Why Trees Turn Color in Autumn from Autumn Tales
• Bremen Town Musicians
• The Naughty Hobgoblin
• Stone Soup or The Seed Babies Blanket
• Star Money
• Advent stories from Seasons of Joy: Mother Mary's Cloak, The Smallest Star, The Legend of the Poinsettia, The Legend of the Christmas Tree, Robin Redbreast, The Stranger Child, The Light of Peace
• Festival stories: Christine Natale's St. Nicholas and St. Lucia stories
• King Winter, Mother Holle, and the Snow Maiden by Christine Natale
• Shingebiss
• The Valentine Baker of Pink
• The Land of the Fire Fairies or Rumpelstiltskin
• The Spring Beauty
• Lucky Patrick from Suzanne Down's Spring Tales
• Rumpelstiltskin or Little Brown Bulb from Spring Tales
• Little Water Drops
• The Hut in the Forest

I have nature and crafts activities planned, mostly from Earthways by Carol Petrash.  I love that book and have used it for years.  I also plan to have regular informal experiences with watercolor painting, wet-felting, beeswax modeling, pennywhistle, and, later in the winter, woodworking and fingerknitting.