3rd Quarter Wrap-Up 2020: Mouse 4th Grade
It has been an exciting quarter in American History with Mouse. We began learning about George Washington and have investigated through the rise of the American Revolution and its conclusion. We also learned about the shaping and creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We briefly studied the War of 1812 and we ended the quarter learning about the Louisiana Purchase. As we begin our 4th quarter, we will start exploring the west with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Mouse has enhanced these studies b listening to several read alouds during our time together. I finished “Toliver’s Secret” with her and then read “The Cabin Faced West” from her readers, to help her catch up some from reading the American Girl books. We also read “Carry on Mr. Bowditch, and then finished the quarter reading “Justin Morgan had a Horse” and started “The Journeyman”.
Oh, the bane of our existence has been math this quarter. We spent the months of July and August working on More Double-Digit Multiplication in MUS’s Gamma. It was very hard to nail down where the break down was happening, because she wasn’t making the same mistakes all the time. I finally decided to move on with her, despite getting multiple problems wrong each day. I did this because her confidence was deteriorating, and math began to be a struggle and a source of strain on her brain. Instead we moved on to the next lesson in September and I have been giving her a problem or two a day to practice her multiple digit multiplication and this has been going well. The new concepts are not tripping her up and the review is helping her a lot. We will finish with the last lesson for this book at the beginning of this next quarter and will move onto Delta in October.
Mouse’s readers also line up well with what we are studying in History. She has read “Omkastoe”, “Sarah Witcher’s Story”, “Naya Nuki”, “Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman”, American Girl “Felicity”, and she finished up the quarter reading “Eli Whitney”. She was able to finish some readers a head of schedule this quarter, which puts her ahead for our fourth quarter, which should allow her to fit in some more American Girl stories nicely.
She keeps moving right along with spelling and has completed Steps 8-16 this quarter in All About Spelling Level 4 She has learned about spelling the months of the year, ways to spell e and used several other spelling strategies this quarter.
For grammar she has practice with conjunctions, clause starters, the use of you and you’re as well as comparative adjectives and plenty of review in IEW’s Fix It “The Nose Tree”. In our writing program with IEW she has been working on summarizing references this quarter. It’s been the more difficult unit so far but proving to be very useful.
Next quarter our goals are to begin the first part of MUS’s Delta and get as far as we can before we end for the year. We will also see how far she gets with Spelling and continue level 4 in the New Year. We are on track to finish up the rest of her curriculum in mid to late November, which is where I expected us to be in the first place.
