5th Grade Curriculum Ideas – Reading and Writing

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you as you teach, especially if you are looking for no-cost, low-cost options. I have spent less money than ever this year on curriculum, yet it has been our best year by far.

This year, Ian is doing much more on his own. I am directly overseeing his writing, grammar, and mathematics. We are using IEW, Grammar, Fix It and Singapore Math respectively. If you want to read more about these subjects, I posted about them here. In addition to these curriculum choices, we are doing a few extra things for these topics.

For writing, I am spending a few minutes per day dictating to him from Little House in the Big Woods. As I dictate, he writes. He always tries to spell everything on his own, and I will stop and correct him as we go. Sometimes, this spawns a discussion about various spelling rules. So far, this exercise seems to be more productive than regular spelling lists.

In addition,  I have just printed off some texts in cursive that I intend to have him trace. The first one I have printed is the initial paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. We should start this exercise tomorrow. While we haven’t formally taught him to write in cursive, we realize the importance of being able to read original historical documents. I also intend to order a book that contains pictures of some of the originals in order to have him practice reading them.

My excuse for not teaching him cursive was the fact that typing seems like a much more important skill right now. That, and he is still struggling with the physical motion of writing at all, although he is improving in leaps and bounds this year. So he will spend about 5-10 minutes per day typing. We have tried two or three typing programs geared towards children, but Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is still his favorite.

I have been reading to Ian like crazy lately. Not just living history and science books, but Uncle Eric too (which is his favorite series so far). We are also reading tons of fiction together. I am beginning to wonder if we should have gone with the Sonlight curriculum this year! On second thought, they are quite expensive, and we are doing well using whatever we can get our hands on.

I am simply falling in love with our local library. I never appreciated them because they have catered mostly to children, and I never had much use for them before. Almost all of their adult books are either outdated or pop-fiction, neither of which I enjoy. But now that Ian and I are reading together so much, I am rethinking my opinion of our library.

I think there must be a homeschooling family that is selling their old books to our nearest V-Stock, because I have found tons of great resources there lately.

Also, as I mentioned in my last post, we have found LibriVox quite invaluable. Right this moment, we are listening to nursery rhyme recordings. Since yesterday, when he listened to The Story of Dr. Dolittle in its entirety, he has listened to the first hour of The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, a bit of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and now nursery rhymes. I know it seems he is too old for nursery rhymes, but I skipped over them inadvertently when he was younger, so we are filling in the gaps in his education. They are quite pleasant! I am also intending to use this site for catching up on some poetry and perhaps listening to a few things in Spanish. The usefulness of this site seems endless!

Wow, I had intended to fill you in on what we were doing for some of our other subjects this year, but this topic got away from me, so I will save those for another time.

Devouring the Classics

Thanks to Ian’s recent leap in reading speed, I now have hope that he will be able to eat up books very quickly for the rest of his childhood. However, because he still doesn’t necessarily enjoy the act of reading itself, he still isn’t reading for pleasure. I must tell him to read, or it doesn’t get done. Even when I think I am being clever by telling him he can either go to bed or stay up and read for an hour, he chooses to sleep. Even when I allow him to earn money or lego pieces for his time spent reading, he still chooses not to. He flat out doesn’t like to read.

Because I still want him to read, but because I don’t want to torture him, I am only requiring him to read his Bible and 30 minutes a day of something else. (Right now, that “something else” is the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.) So he still reads for about 40-45 minutes a day. Beginning in January, I am thinking of kicking it up a notch, by having him read for two 30-minute sessions per day.

Unfortunately, unless he suddenly develops a great interest for books over the next year or two, he won’t have time to read the classics during childhood. I don’t want him to miss out on this important aspect of our culture. The other day, while wandering around our local library, I stumbled upon some books on cassette tape. Many of them were classics. So I immediately came home and purchased a little Walkman from eBay.

Yesterday, my husband helped me hook the Walkman up to some speakers, and I played “The Boxcar Children” for Ian while he was playing Minecraft. He happily listened to the entire book in one sitting! I started to wonder if there were any online recordings of books in the public domain. After searching a bit, I stumbled upon LibriVox, which is a community of people who have recorded themselves reading books and poetry from the public domain.

As I type this, Ian is listening to the last chapter of Doctor Dolittle. He has been listening for the last three hours while playing with his Legos, and that’s all it takes to get through the whole thing. So, needless to say, I am quite excited. With tools such as my local library and online audio classics to choose from, I feel as though he can listen to a classic all the way through at least once a week. It doesn’t feel like cheating because I am still having him read quite a bit, just not as much as I read when I was his age. I am just happy that he will be able to enjoy the classics growing up!

Sugar Creek Gang: Swamp Robber

I met Heather Idoni on my birthday this year – on FaceBook! She happened to notice it was my special day, and popped on over to say “hi.” And, boy, am I glad that she did! When I asked her how we were acquainted, she remembered that I had been to visit her website, www.belovedbooks.com

I checked out her delightful site (more thoroughly this time), all the while regretting the fact that my son has shown little interest in audio books. That is, until we received our copy of Sugar Creek Gang: Swamp Robber. It came in the mail on two CDs. Each is about an hour and twenty minutes long. I immediately dug out an old CD player, and we began listening to them!

I must admit, I allowed myself to become distracted while these CDs were playing in the background, so I couldn’t possibly give you every single detail. I write a lot, and I totally lose myself when I am reading or writing; I never hear what’s going on around me. I know I’ve been like this since at least the 6^th grade, when I looked up from my book to find my teacher sitting at her desk smiling at me. The rest of the classroom was empty. And where had all the kids gone? To recess! I was so busy reading, I didn’t hear them leave.

Anyway, while I couldn’t give you a book report on the story, I do have several things that I want to say about this audio book:

First and foremost, this book clearly communicates the gospel message to children, or to anyone who might be listening for that matter. While nothing can replace a child’s own parents setting a godly example and taking the time to instruct him in righteousness, this book will help your diligent teachings to gel in your child’s mind.

Second, the narrator is phenomenal! I kid you not. No matter how long I sit here and try to explain to you how fantastic he is, there is no way you can possibly wrap your mind around it without listening to him for yourself. He portrays little Bill Collins so perfectly, it’s impossible to imagine that an older man was actually sitting in a studio somewhere reading from the book while being recorded. He does a great job with the other characters as well.

Third, this book is not only parent-approved, but kids like them too. My son wanted to listen to the story over again, and that’s a first for him. Also, even though I was zoned out most of the time, my son could actually play with his toys and pay attention at the same time. He came up to me several times while the story was playing to remark on something he heard. The book spawned several very good conversations between him and me.

Forth, Beloved Books offers great customer service! (Or is it friendship?) When I mentioned to Heather how much we were enjoying the CDs, until our CD player finally gave up the ghost, she sent me a couple of links to download the MP3 files for free. I downloaded them without telling my son what I was doing. I then pressed the play icon and waited for his response; he was so excited when he realized just what was coming out of my laptop.  We were so grateful to Heather for helping us out.

The only thing I could wish is that the other books were available individually. It’s going to be difficult to save up the money to buy a whole volume at a time (6 volumes in all – 32 different books), but considering how perfectly amazing the first book was, how can I skip this opportunity? I can’t imagine, now that I know what we would be missing, not having these CDs around for years to come. If you’d like to read more parent reviews, check it out: http://www.belovedbooks.com/page/page/1567675.htm

Conclusion: order the sample for $4.95 plus free shipping. You can do that here: http://www.belovedbooks.com/page/page/1567474.htm