🐲 Fifth Grade for 2022/2023
We did it! Fifth grade is done!
This year was tough. My daughter is a reluctant homeschooler. She wasn’t thrilled when the pandemic shut everything down and sent her schooling at home and she wasn’t thrilled waiting for reliable vaccines and until I felt like schools had returned to a somewhat normal state. But I like to think that even with all bumps we had some fun 😁
Mathematics:
We actually cycled through a few different math curriculums to find one that worked for my daughter. Turns out she needed a curriculum that spirals through topics rather than a mastery approach. We ended up with Mathematics Reasoning Level F. It had bright interesting pages, it wasn’t the same thing day-in and day-out. I wouldn’t say she loved it, but she did get through it.
English Language Arts:
Writing, Grammar, and Spelling
This year my daughter did most of her writing with outside teachers. But also did some free writing and writing paragraphs about whatever interested her with me. There were quite a few about chickens 🐣. She enjoyed her online class through Outschool - Ongoing English Class. We also really focused on spelling this year using a variety of materials. In the end we used a curriculum called Apples and Pears.
Literature and Reading
For reading I don’t make a specific list of books that need to be worked through, I just challenge them to choose what’s interesting and to reach for a mix of easy and hard titles. I did end up picking an additional 12 books for our home library across fiction and non-fiction that I thought she’d be interested in. I did have to insist on at least one book being about puberty to her dismay.
Science
Kitchen Chemistry & Fundamental of Physics
This was a fun class that I found that I don’t think will be offered again but here is the link to the section she used: Kitchen Chemistry. This was a blast and she would have loved if it lasted all year long. I really enjoyed the molecular bond cookies she made.
I believe that the teacher is turning this course into a book for homeschoolers and if she does, I highly recommend it. The second half of the year was all about Physics. This was another fun class that was very hands on although I don’t think she liked it as much as kitchen chemistry: Fundamentals of Physics. We also did a lot of fun science experiments together. She gobbled up a lot of disease videos from Science Mom’s microbiology course we did last year and watched a bunch of science videos from Generation Genius.
Social Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies
My daughter loves history and she really loved the History Mystery class I found on Outschool. The class dove into a wide variety of mysteries including Boudica (Celtic Queen), the haunted Myrtle Plantation, mysteries in Chinese mythology, the mysterious life of King John, Dighton Rock and other mysterious carvings, the Man in the Iron Mask, the Isabella Stuart Gardner theft, the Ghost War, the mysterious Aztec, fun Norse mythology and strange laws in the United States. Now some did give her a fright, but the teacher is very forthcoming about the “scarier” topics so you can skip those if needed.
She also joined the Falcon’s with her brother this year. Falcon’s Edu is an online co-op run by an absolutely fabulous teacher named Anna. She weaves together complex topics for the kids to discuss and has really created a fantastic community. There was a weekly newsletter/paper that the kids put together and ran. My daughter contributed several pieces around chickens and created some pretty fantastic comics to share.
In Falcon’s they created a Halloween play and performed it over Zoom, they practiced running the class themselves, they did some crafting every class. They shared their interests and did deep dives on topics like colonialism, geography and how it affected history, selective breeding, taxonomic trees, mass production, plate tectonics, slavery and racism, Native American boarding schools, civic duties, advertising, protests, pandemics, primary and secondary sources, and Pride month. There is no way I could cover all that they did or do it justice, but here are some of the main discussion topics they explored together:
- Can a colonized culture ever go back to the way it was?
- Does might make right?
- What does it mean to own land?
- Apologies and their role in communities and in history
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and what is culture and how does it spread?
- What does it mean to be an adult?
- How do yard sales help save the world?
- How humans around the world work with materials and use themselves as materials
- What does it mean to be indigenous?
- Whose voyages got into history books and why?
- What would happen if all oil drilling stopped today?
- What cultures would we expect to rely on bamboo?
- How many pandemics have happened in history?
- What about invasive species?
- How would US history be different without African diaspora?
- Is a ham and cheese sandwich expensive? What makes something expensive?
- Does child labor make a culture stronger, weaker, or something else?
- Why do so many cultures have similar holidays around the same time of year?
- What is a bad guy?
- What ways did the industrial revolution change society? Why did it change?
- What is a memorial?
- What makes a fruit, a fruit?
- Why is a red panda called a red panda? What other animals are named for animals? Why?
- When did Thanksgiving become a holiday?
- Did humans domesticate dogs, or the other way around?
- What is a missionary?
- Are factories reverent? Can machines be reverent?
- Why do holidays and books get outlawed?
- What does it mean “having good done to you”? (around foster care and indigenous children)
- How can we handle fear-mongering? Demonization versus humanization.
- Do person-made problems also have person-made solutions?
- What’s polite? Different culture mannerisms.
- Why are animals on our planet so different?
- How is a clam like a cricket?
- Why do we classify animals? Is classification constructive in other areas?
- Is hair political?
- The “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other banned books/topics? Why so many so quickly?
- Why do we have moments of silence?
- Who gets to decide what is appropriate?
- When inappropriate things happen in history, what should be done?
Physical Education & Health
My daughter joined a dance competition team and acrobatic dancing remains her favorite. We also talked a lot about puberty this year and making healthy food choices and what healthy relationships should look like.
Extracurriculars
She enjoyed a Harry Potter Club on Outschool and other drawing classes on Outschool. She also did a series of “Drawing with Scientists” online classes. Plus she was always outside building fairy gardens. This year we visited two different aquariums, the Corning Museum of Glass, and Niagara Falls. She also continued learning to play the guitar.
I’m a little sad that this year was our last year homeschooling but this girl knows what she wants and she’s fantastic enough to go get it. I’m sure next year will bring more dance, more requests to find pirate treasure, and a new adventure at school tackling the sixth grade.
Dispatches from the fleet
What passing ships signaled back
Unfurl the messages