Are you planning on homeschooling your child at the fourth grade level? Are you unsure about where to begin or what materials to use? One benefit of homeschooling is the freedom to choose materials that work for your children. No single curriculum is a perfect fit for every family or even every child. Within my own family, I have added and removed materials from my first child through my fourth child. In general, I use a variety of workbooks and other resources for my fourth grade homeschool curriculum. The following are the materials that I used with my first child and will use with my second, third, and fourth children. If you are interested in any of the materials, easily find copies on Amazon via my affiliate links.
I begin homeschooling my kiddos around age of three with homeschool preschool. After two years of preschool work, each child starts kindergarten around the age of 5. Upon completing the kindergarten work, first grade begins around age 6 a year later. Second grade homeschool then begins in another year around the age of 7 followed by third grade another year later around the age of 8. Fourth grade then begins at roughly the age of 9 followed by fifth grade around the age of 10.
Note: I substituted the TimeLinks featured in the video with The World Reference Maps & Forms Book.
For each grade level, we do approximately 180 days of work. For the first week of each month, we do 5 days of work. For the other weeks of the month, we do 4 days of work each week. If we need to take a day off here or there, we make up the missed day the week before or the week after. Each grade level requires approximately 42 weeks.
Originally published on May 14, 2020. Updated on August 13, 2023.
Reading
My children complete the first three levels of the McGraw-Hill Reading series during first, second, and third grade. I like the textbooks, but I could not find the higher grades of the series at a reasonable price. I therefore switched to the Treasures series from Macmillan/McGraw-Hill for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. The 816-page Treasures: A Reading/Language Arts Program (Grade 4) textbook includes a variety of readings along with comprehension questions and other reflective activities. Each unit includes a writing section after the reading passages, so the textbook also counts towards our writing curriculum.
I also use Read & Understand Poetry, Grades 4-5 to focus on reading and understanding poetry. The workbook contains 27 poems with activity pages. The first follow-up activity for each poem emulates the format on standardized language arts tests. Other activities cover skills such as literal comprehension, sequence, word meaning, context clues and inferences, and main idea and details.
Grammar
Because of the many errors and problems in the grammar books for fourth grade currently available, I wrote my own fourth grade grammar workbook for my children. A Form-Function Grammar: Level 4 is the fourth workbook in the elementary series that builds up to A Form-Function Description of the Grammar of the Modern English Language, a textbook and workbook that provides a descriptive grammar that strives to provide an objective description of English as used without value judgements.
The goal of Level 4 is to reinforce the word classes (parts of speech, grammatical forms) of English taught in Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. Level 4 includes nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, phrasal verbs, modal verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, correlative conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and interjections. Level 4 reinforces noun phrases, determiner phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, verb phrases, and adverb clauses. Level 4 also introduces subject-verb agreement, simple subjects, complete subjects, infinitives, split infinitives, catenative verbs, transitive verbs, direct objects, indirect objects, quasi-modal verbs, relativizers, and adjective clauses.
Level 4 is recommended for ages 8 to 9 in third grade through fourth grade.
The answers to all the activities are located at the end of the workbook.
Writing
For formal writing lessons, I use portions of the 112-page Grammar and Punctuation, Grade 3 workbook. The black-and-white workbook covers 25 grammatical and punctuation topics including apostrophes, commas, quotation marks, underlining, and italics that build on the topics learned in the third grade edition. Each section includes four pages of instruction and activities for a total of 25 instructional pages and 75 practice pages. As with the third grade workbook, I again use only the writing and punctuation portions because of errors in the grammar sections.
After finishing the first half of the workbook in third grade, my fourth graders continue the Weekly Real-World Writing, Grades 3-4. The workbook provides practice with real-world writing with activities that demonstrate thoughtful and effective writing strategies. We use the first half of the workbook in third grade and the second half in fourth grade. The real-world topics include letters, journal entries, product opinions, advertisements, directions, and interviews.
I additionally include the Writing Prompts Journal, Grades 3-4 in our fourth grade curriculum to encourage my children to write on their own. The journals includes 29 engaging prompts that cover narrative, opinion/argument, and informative writing as well as helpful tips, checklists for self-editing, and graphic organizers.
I also use the Opinion Writing printable workbook from Education.com as part of our fourth grade writing curriculum. The writing workbook teaches students to express their opinions and to support opinions with good evidence and facts.
Spelling
Rather than using word lists for spelling, I continued with word study using Structured Word Inquiry in fourth grade. For my main resource, I use the InSight Words (Volume 1, Volume 2, Supplement, and Inflections) from Linguist-Educator Exchange.
I also created the Teach a Student to Spell: Level 4 workbook for spelling lessons as a follow up to Teach a Student to Read. Level 4 consists of 36 spelling lists of 12 words each. The spelling lists are based on the most common words in English and various sight word lists. The first goal of Level 4 is to teach more spellings of the most common English words and common free English bases. Each list reinforces the graphemes taught in Teach a Student to Read. Some complex words are also introduced. Related words are noted. The second goal of Level 4 is to teach more English prefixes, suffixes, and spelling rules. Words from Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 and additional words sometimes appear in Level 4 to reinforce spelling rules with prefixes and suffixes. The final six lists focus on bound bases.
Vocabulary
For continued vocabulary lessons for vocabulary expansion in fourth grade, I use 101 Lessons: Vocabulary Words in Context: Vocabulary Words in Context (Grades 3-5). The 112-page workbook includes 101 lessons that teach a total of over 500 vocabulary words. The lessons use a variety of activities to teach the words in context.
Math
For fourth grade math lessons, I selected Singapore Math Level 4 (US Edition) as our main curriculum. I start using Singapore Math in first grade and continue until sixth grade. The two textbooks in Level 4 teach mathematical concepts, and the workbooks provide additional independent practice. The US Edition has been minimally modified from the original Singapore edition to teach American money and include American English spellings. The textbooks follow a unique pattern of moving from hands-on demonstrations to picture drawings (concrete examples with pictures) and finally to the abstract (numbers and symbols) in a natural, easy-to-understand progression. The program aims to teach children to learn to think mathematically rather than just being able to solve math problems.
In addition to the Singapore Math textbooks and workbooks, I also include Marvel Math Made Easy, Fourth Grade for additional practice. We are huge Marvel fans, so the themed workbook provides a fun addition to our math curriculum. The workbook includes a variety of math problems including multiplication tables, addition, and subtraction, symmetry, fractions, and money.
Science
For science lessons, I selected the 576-page textbook Scott Foresman Science and the accompanying workbook. (You can find copies of the workbook in PDF form online if you are willing to sign up for a free trial version of the sharing sites.) Each lesson includes questions at the end, and the workbook includes further questions for study. The textbook includes nineteen chapters. The end of the workbook includes additional activities to use with each chapter.
Social Studies
After finishing the third grade social studies textbook and workbook from the publisher, we move on to the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Our Country’s Regions Grade 4 textbook and the accompanying workbook. The 441-page hardback book covers various social studies topics such as community, geography, history, and culture. The accompanying workbook is essential for reinforcing the lessons in the textbook and covers vocabulary, writing, and other activities.
In addition to the textbooks and workbooks, I also used the workbook DK Workbooks: Geography, Fourth Grade for geography practice as part of our social studies curriculum. The 60-page workbook topics include map reading, compass directions, continents, countries and states, borders, bodies of water, and more.
Additionally for fourth grade geography, we use The World Reference Maps & Forms Book from Evan-Moor. The workbook includes a total of 92 maps of the world, individual continents, Canada, United States, Mexico, and US regions along with activities for each map.
After completing the History Pockets: Life in Plymouth Colonies in third grade, we move on to History Pockets: Colonial America, Grades 4-6 and History Pockets: The American Revolution Grades 4-6. The reproducible activity books teach information about each time period complete with illustrations, arts and crafts projects, and writing activities. My children complete each section over one or two days with a culminating portfolio to show their study of time period in history.
Health/Life Skills
For health lessons, I opt to continue using the same textbook series from first grade through sixth grade. In fourth grade, I use the the 400-page Harcourt Health & Fitness: Grade 4 and the accompanying workbook. The accompanying workbook provides practice that reinforces the information from each lesson. Most of the worksheet pages cover two or three lessons per page.
In addition to the textbook and workbook, I The Body Book: Easy-to-Make Hands-on Models That Teach for additional learning about the human body, which is an essential part of health education. The easy-to-make manipulatives created with reproducible patterns and easy step-by-step instructions teach about the inner workings of the human body.
Art
For art lessons, I continued using the 13 Children Should Know series of books. For fourth grade, I used 13 Art Materials Children Should Know, 13 Art Techniques Children Should Know, 13 Art Movements Children Should Know, and 13 Sculptures Children Should Know. We also use YouTube, trips to art museums, and other resources to learn more about various artists, artworks, and art styles.
