1st 6 Weeks of 5th Grade

Hannah is in a year of Eastern Hemisphere studies. I’ve never studied any of these countries so it is fun for both of us. The difficult and time needed for both of us had a bit of a jump this year and we are still figuring out a good schedule.

Hannah has to read the whole New Testament for her Girl’s Ministry Stars program so we are about halfway through that. We do a chapter a day during devotions. She also has an additional reading for school and we are working through something like a bible notebooking workbook called Remembering God’s Awesome Acts. The assignments are varied, we have done some translation activities and timeline and diagramming activities. And we have memorization, we are working on Psalm 91 right now which is 16 verses so aren’t quite done yet.

In history/social studies, we started with a long unit on China. Our spine is called Journey to the Eastern Hemisphere and is encyclopedia-like. We also had a great little box called Ancient China Treasure Chest that included a calligraphy set, a Chinese chess board, a map, a fan, and some other fun little Chinese items. She also worked on a China ebook with a friend and these are the pages that she put together, China.epub.
We will be suing 100 Gateway Cities throughout the year as a guide on cultures of cities and prayer points.
A new activity that has been added in for 5th grade is to do a report on a current event each week. I purchased a WorldKids subscription which comes with a magazine every two months and a daily news short as well as a nice little app that Hannah can browse. It is supposed to be censored for elementary level and so far I am happy with it. She reads most of the articles and chooses one to report on each week.
We still have mapping when we start a new book or talk about a country and timeline activities once a week.

Read Alouds included A Case For A Creator, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Master Puppeteer. We also have a few selections each week from our poetry book for this year, All the Small Poems.

Reading / LA follows the same basic trend as before. We have spelling in Sequential Spelling 2, vocabulary in Wordly Wise 3000, Book 5, and have added in a grammar book. We have a weekly Creative assignment and Dictation as well as a Cursive assignment.

Hannah has been reading her readers to herself which leaves me to read them when she is done to catch up. She read Li Lun, Lad of Courage, Mission to Cathay, The House of Sixty Fathers, and The Kite Fighters. All of these have been wonderful immersive stories of children in China and Korea and adventures/mishaps they went through.

We are almost caught up in science! We are only about a week behind. This year’s subjects are Health and Human Anatomy. Our main spine is Usborne Complete Book of the Human Body. As we’ve worked on body systems we’ve also been reading from Bloood and Guts and Food and Nutrition for Every Kid.

For math we are continuing with Horizons 4. We’ve moved into more fractions lately.

Extras are lots of fun. We have daily piano practice, weekly park day, and weekly Girl’s Ministry club. Hannah has started filling in at church on the keyboard so it is lots of fun to watch her. In free time, we do Chess / Duolingo / Prodigy educational apps. The girls had a National Sleepover event in September and the next week we had our District Campout with archery and laser tag and bb guns and lots of giggling. Gram and PawPaw came for a visit and the kids went to the pumpkin patch, then we carved some pumpkins. The kids participated in a math bee and then we had a trip to MN for a funeral and hangout time with Grandpa and Grandma and extended family.