Friday, June 15, 2012

Year-end status: Crayons' Grade Five

We have one week of classes left to go for this school year--then exams.

The obvious highlight for us has been readalouds. It's one of Crayons/Dollygirl's favourite school activities, we've had good books, and it's probably the way that she has learned the most this year. Crayons knows that she can often get out of a less-desirable school activity by talking me into reading another chapter of something. Some books we read:

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
Father's Big Improvements
The Trail of the Conestoga
Parts of Story of the World, Volume 4: The Modern Age
Parts of Story of Canada
Part of The Book of Marvels
Part of A Passion for the Impossible (it seemed to get too long for us towards the end of the year)
Part of The Loghouse Nest
Some miscellaneous science and invention books
The second half of Madam How and Lady Why
Tennyson's poems including "Lancelot and Elaine"
Evangeline
The Adventures of Robin Hood--we're almost done this
Stories of Alexander the Great--almost done this
Great Expectations
Silas Marner
Caddie Woodlawn
Prince Caspian
Ballet Shoes
Alvin Fernald books
Underground to Canada, and other books about the Underground Railroad
Meet the Malones and Beany Malone
The Book of Think
Brothers Far from Home: The World War I Diary of Eliza Bates (Dear Canada series)
Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope (Dear Canada series)
Roller Skates
Makers of the English Bible
Canada: The New Nation, by Edith Deyell
Several sets of American Girl books
The Secret of NIMH

Shakespeare (two plays) and Plutarch (two lives) went well, and so did Great Expectations and Silas Marner. Watching online episodes of Wishbone helped round out literature.

For picture study, we did Fragonard (that seems about a thousand years ago now) and Mary Cassatt. Artistic Pursuits pretty much fizzled.

We did French for part of the year, then it got dropped. I still like the Mission Monde curriculum, but the lesson plans in Level 3 weren't working for us; that is, I was not happy with the small amount of French that Crayons seemed to be able to understand or use, and I think it was the way the course bounced around a lot (both in topics and in grammar points). I have the next level waiting to go for next year, but we will be using it slightly differently.

Crayons got halfway through Pet Store Math, finished Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade Four, and did a set of Grade Five worksheets. She is now writing the Grade Five end-of-year test (it's long and is meant to be done over a few days), and the plan is to use Grade Six for next year. I thought about making up my own program for a change, using books like How Math Works, but the Grade Six book covers most of what I'd want to include anyway, so we'll download that.

Science was not a big subject area this year--none of the books we used seemed to arouse a lot of interest, and some of them we just left aside this term. Next year we get into Archimedes, Einstein, and Rachel Carson, so I think there will be more to work with.

And Crayons' favourite new skill was learning to swim.

1 comment:

Miss T @ Prairie Eco-Thrifter said...

That is a lot of books. I am glad you put such an emphasis on reading. It is so important and many kids don't do enough these days. I am glad she is enjoying it too. That makes such a difference.

Good luck with her swimming.