Grade 5

  This is what fifth grade looks like in our home this year:

  Our fifth grade core curriculum is Waldorf Essentials, which focuses heavily on Ancient History, Geometry and Botany.  This year requires some more independent work besides the main lessons.  For example, while Jack studied the ancient Greek history during our morning main lessons, he read stories and made main lesson pages for Greek Mythology in the afternoons.   We try to add in Waldorf elements like form drawing, handwork projects, baking and wet on wet painting as often as can. Baking most weeks and form drawing every Monday are the two we manage to get in the most.

  We added in Brave Writer Arrow selections each month, in a combination of read alouds/audio books and independent. Since the recommended age level for the Arrow product is 3-6th grade I use the same selection for my third grader too.  We used this product last year and plan to use it again next year.  It's really hard to imagine a more wonderful way to incorporate the mechanics of language into our studies. Every week we copy our passage down on Monday and discuss all the elements of it in chunks during the week. We use other Brave Writer elements in our homeschool as well.  Poetry teatime is a favorite way to finish school on a Friday afternoon and we almost always do a Friday Freewrite.  The boys love the energetic dash of "keep your pencil moving for 6 minutes and don't worry about spelling or punctuation!"

 We don't add in anything else for Math, although we do practice math each day when we are not in a math block.  Sometimes that is a few problems on the whiteboard and sometimes it is a worksheet.

  We do lots of extracurricular activities each week, such as guitar and swimming lessons, soccer and a few classes at our local YMCA homeschool program (this year the boys tried Latin, Science, Nature Journaling, Engineering, Logic and Track over the three semesters). We are fortunate to have one grandmother working with the boys on knitting and my mom teaches them basic French most weeks.  Artist Study, medieval history and science are extras that I add in when we need something else to fill our days.  Mainly these are based off of picture books and aren't real planned out beyond a basic theme.  I try to add in things the boys ask about or seem interested in.

Wow, that seems like a lot when you actually write it all down!

Finally, here are the Fifth Grade Waldorf block posts:

Block 1/September: Geography/Mapping

Block 2/October: Ancient History/LA