Wanted: Curriculum! (Does this exist?) Is there a curriculum that is similar to FIAR for the 4th grade set? Something that will take a good piece of literature and turn it into a hands-on unit study... for books like the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, etc etc for 4th grade aged boys? I know FIAR itself has several levels, and I'll go see about those to see if they go up enough age-wise and what types of books those higher levels include, but... I thought you all would know! I think we're going to take the summer off except for math and vocabulary studies (we're a little behind in those), and doing reading units for whatever books he's interested in reading. TIA!
I have Beyond FIAR. The first volume uses The Boxcar Children, Thomas A. Edison, Homer Price, and Besty Ross. Each volume is set up to cover one semester, so that could be about a month per book? My dd 9 is a struggling reader, so I cannot go above grade level for her. You may be able to find something that will use the more advanced books for your ds.
You can probably find reading guides or ebooks for individual books. I have them for the Little House books from Calvert. I've seen others for Lang Arts using The Witch of Blackbird Pond... I think it was from Total Plus. Did you check out CurrClick?
They don't have units for any of the books you mentioned, but some of the level C units at Homechool share look like they would be great for a boy that age. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/LevelCUnits.php
I have not used this, but have eyed it: http://www.cadroncreek.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc? It is for the Chronicles of Narnia. My only fear for my house of Narnia purists is that it may NOT be in the original publication order of the original books. Of course since these are unit studies we could probably re-order the study guide.
Thanks! I did (after some looking) find some info about the FIAR. A book a month seems a little sparse, for us anyway. Probably closer to 2 books per month would work better.... And I did look at homeschoolshare and will probably use some of those, and at homeschool helper. Ugh. It just takes so much time to search out each individual one.... LOL I'll check out that link, Cheryl! Thanks! We're reading them in chronological order rather than by date of publication, so that doesn't bother me.
I was afraid that I told you wrong about the Beyond FIAR, so I got out my book. Here is what it says: "With this type of curriculum, it is not possible to simply read one chapter every day and do the assigned lesson activities. Some chapters are brief and you may very well finish the chapter and all related activities in one day. Other chapters, however, may be either lengthy, or filled with an unusually rich field of learning possibilites. These chapters may take nearly a week to explore thoroughly. Your overall goal is to complete the volume in one semester; approximately 90-100 school days. On average, you'll find yourself covering a chapter every two days or so, but part of the joy of unit study is allowing students to follow their interests." BFIAR may not be for you. I just wanted to make sure I got it right!
It does not bother me a bit either, but my dh and kids are rigid on the fact that publication date is the way to go. My dd got a set of the books for Christmas when she was maybe 8 and she noticed quite to her shock they were in the wrong order. I explained why they were this way and that the author even approved of the change, but she would have none of it and rearranged the books. Don't even get them started on the Prince Caspian movie - yikes!
Thanks Pam! LOL Cheryl, my ds can be like that, too... but he has no clue about publication dates or anything. Does your dd know that the publication date is NOT the order in which the books were written? LOL There are at least 2 instances of books that were switched. I don't remember which ones, but, for example, book 4 was written before book 3 but book 3 just finished the publication process sooner... and that happened twice! :lol: SO, I decided that it doesn't really matter. We're studying history in chronological order, and I think my own ds understands the timeline of the story better that way, too.
This site http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/ has studies on books like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Hatchet, Call of the Wild, etc. These are books that my son enjoyed around 4th grade.
