More on this fall's homeschooling (Part 2)...on poetry, a free word book, and trying to feed a fourth-grade reader

Previous Post: More on this fall's homeschooling (Part 1)

LITERATURE AND POETRY

Ponytails has only one scheduled novel so far: Watership Down. We have done most of the recommended Pre-7 literature books (Robin Hood and so on), and there's a long list of relevant historical fiction she can pick from on AO's Year 6 booklist; so that's all that's on her Required Literature list right now. But we might add more later on.

For poetry, I had thought of having her go through the Oxford Book of English Verse, an AO suggestion for this level. But I think we're going to try some Canadian poetry instead: Bliss Carman and his cousin Charles G.D. Roberts for the first term (although Robert Service should be in there too), A.J.M. Smith and Dorothy Livesay for the second, and then some poems chosen from P.K. Page, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Margaret Avison in the third. Or maybe just a mix of Canadian poems. Or we might just do Robert Frost instead that term.

Crayons will be reading Kidnapped and then Robinson Crusoe with me--Year 4 is where the literary rubber hits the road. I might also have her read some things from the Canadian Children's Treasury. (yard sale find!) For poetry, I'm thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson (Home from Sea) and Robert Burns (Selected Burns for Young Readers, a great book that includes a biography of Burns), along with holiday poems.

Together: we'll be reading as much of Bulfinch's Age of Fable as we can manage, and some Shakespeare (new for Crayons). When we get to the part of Bulfinch about the Trojan War, I might substitute Robert Graves' Siege and Fall of Troy, just for variety.

And both girls will have books to read from the AO suggested extra reading. Crayons has a problem with the Year 4 extra reading, though...she's familiar with a lot of the books, but more from movie versions that the older girls have watched over the years. When you say "read Black Beauty first, then watch the movie," you forget sometimes that the younger ones still haven't read the book, and may not want to after that. Crayons enjoys the Little House Martha books, but is not such a big Laura fan (Melissa, you should be flattered)...she's heard a lot of the Narnia stories and seen a couple of play versions, even if she hasn't read them all herself...she's not even that fond of The Borrowers. But she does like to read--a lot, and she can whip through an old Nancy Drew book in an afternoon. The problem right now is keeping her in really good books that don't sound like the "same old stuff." I'm thinking of giving her Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (nothing like the movie at all), but I'm a bit short on other ideas. She's read almost every horse book we have.

ENGLISH, LANGUAGE ARTS, GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION, WHATEVER YOU CALL IT

I have gotten the best ideas for this year's language study from Ruth Beechick's You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully. It's been around for twenty-five years and is still full of good advice. So for Crayons, we'll read lots, then do some Beechick-style follow-up assignments--not all planned ahead, some based on typical Grade Four language mechanics (I use a basic list from Teaching Children, since it's what I have handy) but some as writing assignments too.

We'll continue to do some work this fall on handwriting, using the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting material we got last year through the Review Crew. Spelling...I thought about getting All About Spelling Level 4, because I still really like it, but at this point I think we'll try more informal methods...spelling from misspellings and so on.

Ponytails will be continuing Easy Grammar Plus, and also using Write with the Best Volume 2, which includes lessons on essay writing and outlining...I might have Ponytails do an essay assignment based on the tough-questions section at the end of Whatever Happened to Justice? Write with the Best suggests reading through The Elements of Style, so we'll do that too. Towards the end of the year, we'll read part 4 of The Fallacy Detective, about making assumptions.

Once a week, we'll do a group activity from a fun book called Word Play Cafe by Michael Kline. And check this out: Mr. Kline has made his book available online for free. There's your bonus for reading to the end.