The Ultimate Guide To Homeschooling Fourth Grade

Time is flying by I can not believe we are talking about fourth grade already?!?! It seems like just yesterday I was homeschooling a preschooler and teaching her alphabet letters and numbers. But none the less, here we are!

Please keep in mind that this is the plan and we all know nothing ever goes according to plan. That being said, I always do a mid-year and end-of-the-year update video on my YouTube channel. Make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss it.

Table of contents

Everything You Need To Homeschool Your Fourth Grader

I have compiled everything we used throughout Emily’s fourth grade year to give you a comprehensive look at homeschooling fourth grade. As always, please remember that this is what works for us. Your child may need some tweaks and adjustments and that’s ok!

This is simply a place to start and get you excited for your child’s fourth grade homeschool year!

Fourth Grade Homeschool Curriculum and Resource Picks

These educational resources reflect our continued shift to play based and interest led learning. But, please keep in mind that we will be dabbling in these resources and not necessarily completing all of them in their entirety. We choose to use multiple resources to teach language arts and math goals. While following our daughters interests for the other subjects.

Language and Math For Homeschooling Fourth Grade

The base of our math will be Teaching Textbooks and we will also be incorporating tons of living math books and tons of fun math games.

The base of our language arts will be creative writing this year. We will be doing this through mail time, journaling, and exploring poetry together each week. We will also be incoporating tons of living langauge arts books and tons of fun language based games.

Emily wants to continue to learn cursive this year so we will be using the Handwriting Without Tears books that focus on cursive writing.

Additional resources I am planning to use for math and language arts include educational apps such as the Xtra Math app for math fact fluency and Cursive Writing app for handwriting practice.

Fourth Grade Geography, History, and Science

For history we will be doing at least one Who Was Unit Study a month. I love that we can choose these based on what we are currently learning or I can just let Emily pick someone she is interest it. It makes history fun for us all!

For geography we will be using a combination of Traveling the Parks and Traveling the States. We are planning to visit some new to us National Parks this school year and I love that we can tie our studies into our experiences as a family.

For science we will be using unit studies I create based on Emily’s interests. Such as Survival, Space, Moon, Human Body, and Ocean. Unit studies are so amazing for interest-led learning and I love that we can all dive into them together as family.

Our One Thing for the Fourth Grade Year

Each school year I choose one thing to focus on. I find that by prioritizing one thing for a year it becomes a habit by the end of the year. We have focused on things like reading aloud, gameschooling, and poetry teatime in the past.

This year we will be focusing on field trips by request. Because we were stuck home so much last school year we are all determined to get out and actually experience as much as possible. We want to go and do and enjoy the freedom that homeschooling offers us.

While we don’t follow it exactly I also really love having What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know on hand for references.

Our Fourth Grade Homeschool Routine

My plan for the upcoming school year is for us to maintain the same general routine to our day that we spent so long last year perfecting. We are still using these adorable magnets from LoveyList that I easily display on the fridge for a visual reminder of what each day will hold Emily.

The routine we loosely follow is:

If you would like to see what that looks likes like in action be sure to check our Our Homeschool Routine: A Day in the Life.

Subscriptions and Memberships To Help You Homeschool Fourth Grade

We love adding subscriptions to our homeschool. They always feel like a special prize or gift when they arrive each month! Because of that we receive quite a few different ones that help enrich our homeschool each month.

Subscriptions and memberships we will be utilizing include Writings from the Wild, Letters from Afar, Heritage Letters, Universal Yums, MEL Chemistry, MEL Physics, KiwiCo Tinker Crate, Around the World Stories, SQUILT, No Sweat Nature Study, Chalk Pastel, Yellow Spot Sun, and Masterpiece Society.

Read Alouds And Independent Books For Fourth Grade

Our homeschool is largely comprised of books and games. Reading aloud plays a very crucial role in our homeschool. Most of our days begin and end with me reading aloud to Emily.

These are the books we enjoyed throughout her third grade year.

I will be specifically sharing the chapter books we enjoyed throughout the year. But, we also read a lot of picture books in addition to chapter books. The majority of the picture books we read each year can be found on Read Aloud Revival’s a year of picture books list.

Read Alouds

A very large portion of what we read was book series. We tend to get invested when the story keeps going and we were more excited to race through a book knowing there was another one waiting.

It seems like there is a mourning period (at least for us) when a book ends. So maybe we just like series because there is less mourning that way.

            

 

AND A LOT OF WHO WAS BOOKS!

Independent Reads

Emily loves to read. her favorite spot in the whole house is her little book nook corner. She loves when her cat Nala comes and curls up with her for story time.

                        

 

Keeping Track Of What We Read

If you are looking for a way to easily keep track of the books you read in your homeschool, I highly suggest the GoodReads app.

GoodReads let you have as many “shelves” as you’d like. I have one for every homeschool year so far. You can scan the books and add them to your shelves with ease.

Games For Fourth Grade Learning

To say we play a lot of games in our homeschool would be an understatement.

We are what you would call gameschoolers for sure. I make it a point to incorporate games into our days as much as possible. One way I do that is to use them in place of busy work.

Instead of learning about something Emily is uninterested in out of a boring textbook we can do something like play a fun hands-on game while we learn more about one of her favorite things: cats. Plus while we play we’d be connecting too.

Because I know we’re not alone, and many of you would love to add games to your days as well, I have put together a list of our most played games during our first grade year.

Top 15 Games for Fourth Grade

Play On Words Card Game –  Put your thinking cap on and enjoy this hands-on and engaging all-ages card game. This highly-versatile game meets players right where they’re at with spelling, resourcefulness in word making, and vocabulary. The no-rush format also allows for lots of creativity and conversation during game play.

Mad Libs The Game – Players use the Word Cards, along with the Sentence Card in play, to make the most appropriately inappropriate sentences possible All players vote and the silliest sentence wins the round. The first player to win three rounds wins the game With Mad Libs: The Game, the fun is ADJECTIVE and ADJECTIVE, and everyone will quickly be VERBing their NOUNs off.

Word on the Street – Shift into the fast lane to fun with Word on the Street, the hilarious tug of words road race! Players take turns flipping category cards and racing the clock to come up with an answer.

   

 

Adsumudi Math Game – Sharpen Mental Math Skills: Provides a fun alternative to math workbooks to help kids practice math facts.

Math Rush 2 – Think fast in Math Rush, a cooperative math game where up to five players must properly sequence math equations before the timer runs out. Crunch the numbers in a hurry and rack up more points; make an error and miss your goal.

SMATH – SMATH is the game that makes math fun! Players take turns using the tiles in their racks to build their own crossword style equations. For beginners, start off with addition and subtraction. For the math whiz, step it up to multiplication and division! Each tile has a point value that is earned once it’s played. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

   

 

Genius Games Periodic – In this scientifically accurate and cerebrally strategic board game, players race around the periodic table by choosing to spend or gain energy to activate one or more periodic trends. By navigating trends like atomic number and atomic radii, players can research elements and score points. 

Virulence: an Infectious Card Game – Virulence is a blind bidding game where players take on the roles of viruses, competing to infect a host cell. Players use their bidding hands to win (replicate) viral components cards in order to either score points, or to build the strength of their virus (their bidding hand) increasing their odds of winning critical bids later in the game.

Covalence: A Molecule Building Game – Covalence is a cooperative game – one player has knowledge of the secret molecules and must silently gives clue cards to all other players, who then attempt to accurately construct their secret molecules using their element tiles. Build all your secret molecules before the guess tokens run out and everyone wins!

   

 

CHRONOLOGY – Think you know which came first – the invention of mayonnaise or decaffeinated coffee? Lincoln’s Gettysburg address or John Deere’s first plow? Test your knowledge with Chronology by Buffalo Games – the game of all time! In Chronology, each player builds his or her own timeline of cards. On your turn, someone will read you a historical event from a card. You decide where that event falls in your timeline. If you are right, you keep the card and your timeline grows. 

Sweep the World Card Game – Introduce your kids to the beautiful countries of our world and let them discover every continent in the most playful way. With each card that lands in their hand, they will have the chance to absorb all these great educational facts without even trying. 

Gamewright in a Pickle – Can a giraffe fit in a phone booth? Does a sofa fit in a shopping cart? It all depends on how you size it up in this game of creative thinking and outrageous scenarios. Try to win a set of cards by fitting smaller things into bigger things – There’s some juice in a pickle, in a supermarket, in a parking lot. Play the fourth word card to claim the set, unless one of your opponents can trump with a larger word. 

   

 

Poetry for Neanderthals – Poetry for Neanderthals is a family-friendly party game similar to Taboo where players earn points by getting their teammates to guess words and phrases. The catch is that the “Neanderthal Poets” are only allowed to use single syllable words. If they use any words with more than one syllable, the other team gets to bop them with a 2-foot inflatable club.

Dragonrealm – Dare to venture beyond Dragon wood! Collect sets of adventurer cards in order to roll dice, which you will use to explore the mystical lands of dragonrealm. Sneak into the switches cabin, search the ogres’ tree house, or Storm The Isle of Dragons! Place the majority of adventurers on a location to claim its treasure. But beware of meddling goblins, who pop up to snatch the spoils! Gather the most gold and become ruler of the Realm!

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza – Keep these 5 crazy words in mind. As soon as there is a match between a card and a spoken word, race against each other to slap your hand on the central pile of cards. The last one to do so must take them all.

   

 

Yes, You Can Homeschool Fourth Grade!

The reality is that I questioned myself all the time during our fourth grade year. Most homeschooling moms do!

But, I want you to know that homeschooling fourth grade is not only an educational option, it’s a wonderful approach to your child’s education.

Watch this fourth grade homeschool playlist to see a indepth look at how our fourth grade homeschool year went.

One Comment

  1. Jennifer Bonutti says:

    Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge. It is really awesome to hear about your year. I have a son who is starting 6th grade in the fall. I cannot believe it! Your blog posts and YouTube videos help SO much. I have weaved games from all subject areas into our homeschool day. From your blogs and videos I have learned to go at my son’s pace and to listen to what he likes to learn about to tailor the curriculum I buy or create. You really do so much for us fellow homeschooling moms and dads. Thank you for sharing all of your amazing knowledge!

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