Joel is doing well in 4th grade. All the others have a heavier load so Joel often finishes first in the day. We’ve added in some projects and other supplemental activities to keep him busy and from being distracting.
We do family devotions almost every morning. For school, Joel has a book called Talking With Your Kids About God that Daddy has been enjoying doing with him. He also has a memory passage or two each week along with this Kid’s verses from church or Rangers.
This core is the first half of American History so for history, we started with the Native American cultures and are moving into early European colonialzation. We have a book called American Indian Prayer Guide that highlights different tribes. We have American History: A Visual Encyclopedia and The Beginner’s American History as our spines that we will use all year. During this unit he also read Pedro’s Journal and Explore Native American Cultures. Each week we have a current events assignment and timeline entries.
Nate is primarily doing read aloud time with Joel right now. They read Peacemaker and Walk the World’s Rim. Each week they have a selection from A Child’s Introduction to Poetry. Poetry is a bit of a chore for them both.
Language Arts is not Joel’s favorite but he does fairly well. We have spelling with Sequential Spelling 1, a cursive assignment each week, grammar with The Grammar Ace, vocabulary with Wordly Wise 3000, Book 4, and usually a creative assignment each week. His readers included The Corn Grows Ripe, White Buffalo’s Story, Blood on the River, and A Lion to Guard Us.
Science is a pretty broad overview of science disciplines this year. He is starting with nature with Mysteries and Marvels of Nature. He has a weekly reading from Usborne Illustrated Elementary Science Dictionary or DK Findout! Engineering. And, our favorite (not), weekly experiment with Discover and Do: Level D. The experiments aren’t really hard it is just taking the time to collect all the items, shop if we need to, make the big mess, and clean it up. It just takes more time and intentionality than reading a passage and answering questions. Nate has been a big help this year.
Math is Horizons 4. The beginning of the book is mostly review so we haven’t hit anything Joel doesn’t know how to do yet and he usually does well on his worksheets and tests without much direction.
While Joel doesn’t have a designated extracurricular activity right now, he definitely stays busy with everyone else’s. We babysit for a couple of families on a regular basis based on their needs for the week and Joel has been taking a hand in helping (and getting paid) for that. We started school when the girls started volleyball because it was a good time to get back into a regular schedule, but we still had about 10 days of summer programming at Connections. Some days the kids stayed home with Nate to do school and other days they got to come play. Joel is a good fan at all the volleyball games and enjoys cheering with the students. We had a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Diltz and also from Gram for a few days of volleyball and extra activities. Gram took the kids skating. Joel participated in our Glow Night at Connections and was in the paper for “accepting” the LAMP Ministries certificate at our Ice Cream social and prayer walk. He isn’t missing out on much.