5th/6th Grade Curriculum - Not Back to School Blog Hop

It's crazy that it is getting close to starting back to full-time school. We still have several more weeks before we jump in full force. But in order to be effective, planning our curriculum by this time of year is a necessity. This week is iHomeschoolNetwork's Not Back to School Blog Hop Curriculum Week!

Last week my friend Megan and I took our kids to the lake for a few days. While they were swimming and playing card games, Megan and I were digging into our lesson planning. I was able to accomplish three months of lesson planning. It got me really excited about our upcoming school year! We have some fun and exciting things to learn about this year.

We are a literature, unit study based eclectic homeschool, drawing from many different types of curriculum. I posted about our curriculum choices a few months ago, but I now have everything nailed down, planned, and on the bookshelf.

Bible

New Testament Overview, Grapevine Studies - Stick Figuring Through the Bible. We will continue with this much-loved curriculum. It will likely take us the majority of the year to finish it. It's a great way to start our morning.

English

McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader and McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader. Reading the Little House on the Prairie series and watching When Calls the Heart really inspired me to have the kids use these classics to do recitations and to read a copy good vocabulary, poetry and prose.

Fix-it Grammar, The Nose Tree (IEW). We will complete The Nose Tree and then move onto the next level of Robin Hood. This program has been a good fit for us as it involves literature, writing, and a slow-progression of learning grammar.

Soaring with Spelling, Levels 5 and 6. Brynne has specifically requested that we go back to a formal spelling curriculum. She loves spelling. With an emphasis in writing, that we will begin in the next year or so, it's important that these kids can spell. Plus, the lessons are fun!

Winning with Writing, Level 5. When ordering Soaring with Spelling, I saw that JacKris Publishing now has this program. I purchased one level to see how we like it.

Current Events

CNN Student News. Of course we will continue our year with a daily dose of Carl Azuz and his 10 minutes of current events and puns. We love this show! Hopefully we will get in our field trip to the CNN Headquarters in Atlanta next year.

Math

Mastering 5th Grade Math, Volumes 2-4 (Fractions). We are finishing up Volume 1 and the kids have decided that they prefer the teaching methods of Jason over Mr. Demme in Math U See.

Life of Fred, Fractions. Yeah, we are going to bring in some Fred. I like how the books use literature to teach math in real life. It will be a fun supplement to our weekly lessons and with Eli's personality I know that he will love the antics of Fred! Math can be enjoyable, you know.

Literature

Further Up and Further In. We had such success with Prairie Primer and the Little House series that we are going back to Cadron Creek Christian Curriculum. We will spend our year with C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia series. This will be our daily read aloud. The kids are very excited to read this series. It covers Bible, art, cooking, music, English, and reading. We discuss these things from the curriculum guide. But, we really use the guide primarily for the health and safety, geography/social studies, science, and history aspects. This is from where I usually draw the majority of our science topics for the year.

Science

Further Up and Further In. I will draw our science topics from this study and then use various resources, primarily literature, to teach the topics. We try to do experiments whenever applicable and do science notebooking.

History

World War II Unit Study, self-prepared. Narnia is a fictional world. But it was written during World War II, so we will do an exhaustive study of this period in history. We are using World War II for Kids as our spine and will build on that with books, videos, activities, projects, games, and any field trips we can find. We will finish up the unit with a trip to the World War II Museum in New Orleans. (I have done some lesson plans for this already and it is all coming together so great! I am very excited to teach the kids what I have learned!!)

Reading

The kids will continue to read books of their choice. Brynne is pretty hooked on the Warriors series and there are a gazillion books in the cats series so she will be busy for a while. There is also a series involving dogs and bears from the same author that interest her. And she would like to read the other eras in the Little House series, The Rose Years, The Caroline Years, etc. Recently Eli started reading the How to Train Your Dragon series, and he loves it!

We will also have a read aloud going at all times that corresponds with either our Narnia series, WWII, or a desired field trip. At this time our selections include:

• The Miracle Worker (then going to see the play)
• Under the Blood Red Sun (WWII)
• My Side of the Mountain (Narnia)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (then going to see the play)
• Number the Stars (WWII)
• Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (then seeing the new upcoming movie)
• Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (WWII)