2023-2024 Curriculum Picks: Morning Time & 5th Grade
I am really looking forward to the study materials we’ve selected for this next school year! When I select curriculum I am very prayerful about the process and always include my children. I have felt the Lord’s guidance in this process and am so thankful for the clarity we have walking into the next school year. Yesterday in church I was sitting in with my son’s class and one of the teachers commented on how we were all there to feed our souls good nutrients. This is exactly what I aim for when selecting the curriculums we’ll use in our studies. Materials that will uplift us and inspire us to progress and grow and learn more about our Creator and His world. Good books, good media, good mentors, and good curriculum that will fill our homes and souls with the proper nutrition we hunger for. We need these things, our children need these things, and we need to see the Lord in these things. Doing so, gives us the depth and the roots necessary to not only survive the turbulences of our world, but also to fulfill the potential He sees in each one of us and our children.
Morning Devotional & Gospel Study
For our morning devotionals we transition from the hustle and bustle of breakfast, getting ready, and tidying our home and invite the Spirit into our day with a hymn. Sometimes we spend time learning a new hymn, sometimes we study one, and sometimes we simply just sing one. One of us shares a spiritual message that usually aligns with our gospel study or another subject we’re studying and then we say the pledge. I want my children to know respect for our flag, for our nation, and always remember how blessed we are to live in a free nation. We pray together and then dive into our studies.
Gospel Study: This year we are reading The New Testament and are about half way through our study. I have a full blog post on the materials we are using here: Our New Testament Study. We utilize materials that align with our faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and primarily pull from Come, Follow Me & The Red Headed Hostess.
All That He Had Made Nature Card Set from The GoodNewsBrand (Discount Code: HCL10 will you get 10% off) These cards are stunning and something I am really excited to have in our home. There are 52 cards with uplifting and spiritual messages relating to nature. My plan is to rotate through a new one each week and let it be a theme we use through our other studies all year - especially in our science studies - which I am excited to share more about later this week.
Family History: We have a beautiful collection of stories on both my husband’s side and my side and I want to be more intentional about reading them during this time.
Family Read-Aloud: We’ll be using books from our science and history studies for our read-alouds.
5th Grade Independent Work
We are switching up our language arts this year and it has been hard for me to let go of using The Good and The Beautiful. You can read more about this in our 4th Grade Year Review. Since it has been such a blessing in our home, I wouldn’t be surprised if we return to it at a later time, but this year we all needed to go a little different route. I researched a lot of full language arts programs, but kept coming up against the problem that I felt like it would be too much in conjunction with what I felt like the Lord wanted us to utilize for our science and history study next year. So, I’m walking in faith and pieced together a very simple plan for our English studies.
The study of language arts includes grammar & punctuation, spelling & vocabulary, writing, reading & phonics, and literature. It certainly takes more time to plan out each area, but I feel good about where we landed. At this age, my twin girls are very independent in most of their work so this is what they’ll be working on independently each day…
Grammar & Punctuation: Fix It Grammar Level 1 from IEW
I wanted to keep grammar really simple for them and it just made sense to go with Fix It for that reason. The girls can do one page a day from this and it’ll give them easy copy work, grammar, writing, and punctuation practice. Level 1 is for grades 3-5. I think it’ll be a little easy for my girls, but everyone told me to start in Level 1 even if they’re familiar with beginning grammar concepts. Either way, I think they’ll still benefit from the materials in here.
Spelling & Vocabulary: Evan Moor 5th Grade Spelling Skill Sharpeners
We’ve been using the Evan Moor spelling books for a few years now. We took a little break from them over the spring and we’re picking them up back up in the fall. I went with a little different version this time around just to mix things up. This is also daily work and includes weekly dictation work.
Handwriting & Typing: TGTB Handwriting Level 5, and Typing.com
We are continuing our handwriting practice with TGTB handwriting. Last year we used typingclub.com to practice typing and it’s great. Now that my girls know how to type, I am going to switch my girls over to typing.com just for something different and start them in a higher level. At this point they just need to keep working on their speed.
Reading, Phonics, Writing, & Literature: We will be covering a lot of these things in our science and history studies and I’ll be sharing more about those later this week. But, here is a little sneak peak! Many of you know we’ll be continuing with our study of Story of the World for our history studies. This year we will be studying the Middle Ages so my twins will be doing lots of reading and writing to go along with our studies. I am planning to use the review and narration exercises in the volume 2 activity guide more thoroughly this time around and will probably do a mix of oral and written narrations in our history notebooks.
There are a lot of good literature and stories I want to introduce the kids to from this time period. Later this week I’ll share a little bit more about what we’ll be using with Story of the World, but one person I am really excited to lightly introduce - especially to my older girls - is Shakespeare! To be honest, when it comes to Shakespeare I have no idea what I am doing so when I say it’s a light introduction…I mean it, ha! But, some of the books I’ve started collecting make me excited to try. I’ve heard great things about How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. My neighbor also let me borrow her Usbourne versions of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream that my older girls will be able to read.
We’ll also be doing monthly writing projects from the Bravewriter: Jot It Down guide and I’ll be adapting these to be more on my twins level. They’ll be able to do certain parts of these projects independently, but I’ll share more about how I am planning to use this when I go over our family style studies.
In addition to the books we’ll be reading for history and science, I also like to still have my twins read aloud to me a few times a week so I can make sure they’re taking the time to slow down and sound out more challenging words. We use a variety of different books for this, but I especially like the leveled readers from The Good and The Beautiful's Library.
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Level 5
We loved level 4 from TGTB and I am really hoping we love level 5 as much. The video content on these courses is so well done! If you want to preview any, you can view them here. I have heard this course gets really tough and takes a lot of time though. So in order to allow us a little more time to move through the course book, we decided to start it this summer. A lot of people recommended splitting up lessons and review sections over two days so we will see how it goes and I will keep you guys updated. Now that TGTB will have math up through level 8, I am hoping we can stick with them.
Science: Generation Genius
We started this subscription box a few months ago and my girls are loving it. It comes with 3 science experiments to complete over a month and some great video lessons. I love that they can do these independently and it’s something they really look forward to so we’ll be continuing with these. We’ll also be doing a year-long family style science curriculum which, like I’ve mentioned, I’ll share more about later this week as well.
Social Studies: Tuttle Twins Monthly Magazine for Kids
In addition to our history studies, I recently added the TT Monthly Magazine for my girls. The magazine goes over some history and many current events as well as some just good to know things about how the world works. We have the magazine plus subscription so we have access to past issues and printable activities. You can see examples of the magazines and activities here.
Piano Lessons: Hoffman Academy (Discount Code: LEARN for 10% off)
We have had the twins in piano on and off since they were 5 but I learned it just took a lot of my mental energy to try to practice with both of them each day plus do our other studies so I put piano on the back burner. Last fall we picked it back up with Hoffman and since it’s something that is self-paced and they can practice independently now, it’s been a great fit for us. During the school year the girls work on piano 4-5 times a week. A lot of people ask the best age to start with Hoffman. 6 is a good age if you have a child who is interested and you’re ready to start down that path. Depending on the child, they still might need you to sit in on their daily lessons (which take about 20-30 minutes). Around age 8 is generally a good age for more independent piano study.
Next on my blog I’ll be sharing our 1st grade and preschool curriculum picks. And then…our family style studies which will include more writing, science, and history. Let me know if you have any specific questions about any of this materials and I’d be happy to try to help!