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Australian Homeschool CurriculumHomeschool Curriculum Guide Year Five

Year Four - Grade Four

Ages 9-10

This is a suggested outline of how to organise your curriculum for Year Four. Curriculum choice varies depending on the individual child and specific family's homeschooling needs. So feel free to change it as it suits you.

This guideline has been written with consideration of the Australian National Curriculum (ANC) and the methods of Charlotte Mason.

If you are new to homeschooling find out more here and see our how to homeschool booklists for more ideas.

Year Four Scope & Sequence

Homeschooling Downunder Year Four Resources

Garden Verse Copywork Intermediate language Lessons Grammar handbook    
Our Sunburnt Country Australian History Notebook Nature Talks To New Zealanders    

Curriculum Suggestions By Subjects

Bible

Continue with scripture reading and choose some books from out Christian Children's Books list.

English

LANGUAGE & LITERACY

Teaching English can be done without a workbook BUT many of us do not have the confidence to do that.

Intermediate Language Lessons-Part 1, Emma Serl is a three year program for Year 4 to Year 6 that teaches variety of English skills.

Combine with this resource with daily copywork and a reading program to complete your language arts program.

Continue cursive copywork. Use our copywork resources or passages chosen from their other reading material such as the Australian poetry book.

A good grammar and punctuation reference is useful at this stage. I recommend The Briefest English and Punctuation Guide Ever!

These cursive resources can be completed over Year 4 and Year 5

Spelling can be taught during weekly dictation. If you use Intermediate Language Lessons-Part 1, Emma Serl this is part of the resource.

If you would like more dictation exercises you can use our resource Downunder Dictation.

Another good dictation resource is Spelling Wisdom (make sure you get the British spelling version. For Year 4 use Book 1).

LITERATURE

Our copywork resources include excerpts from good quality literature.

Poetry

60 Classic Australian Poems, Christopher Cheng (Editor)

Science & Nature Reading

Nature Talks to New Zealanders by Crosby Morrison. This book has some great bird stories. It is suitable for Australian and New Zealand readers.

Read Aloud Suggestions List

Look through our Living Booklists for some ideas

Math

Science and Nature Study

The Australian National Curriculum teaches the science disciplines biology, chemistry, earth and space (geology & astronomy) and physical science (physics). Within each school year a portion of the each science strand is chosen for study. Science teaching is broken down into science understanding, science skills and human endeavour. The curriculum states that these topics are interrelated and that scheduling of topics can be taught at the teacher’s discretion.

For science we have enjoyed the Apologia Exploring Creation series by Jeannie Fullbright. These books are best done as read alouds in the early primary and in late primary school they can be done independently. The notebooks are not necessary. Choose one book per year to complete from Year Three to Year Six.

The topics that I recommend are:

For other science strands I recommend the books of John Hudson Tiner. Read one as a read aloud each year.

Exploring the World of Physics: From Simple Machines to Nuclear Energy
Exploring the World of Chemistry: From Ancient Metals to High-Speed Computersby John Hudson Tiner
Johannes Kepler, Sower Series .Many titles are in this series. Written with a christian world view.

Note: Since geology covers the theory of evolution we suggest that you choose a resource that you have considered for yourself. We like books from Creation Ministries

NATURE STUDY

History and Geography

Australian History begins from Year 4. Some Australian history has been covered in previous years but this year we will see a more comprehensive approach. Australian geography is covered within the history of Australia. Nature study also gives some observation skills as the physical geography of local areas is recorded. Please use your Australian Map to locate places and events that occurred within history.

The Australian National Curriculum covers the history of Australia in three sections:

Our Sunburnt Country by Arthur Baillie is the history of Australia from first contacts to modern times.

It can be read in total this year or split into three sections to follow the Australian National Curriculum (ANC) guidelines.

Reading Schedule for Our Sunburnt Country

Australian History Notebook

Notebooking is a good way to record history and be be worked on over the next three years. This notebook comes with notebooking pages specifically set out for Our Sunburnt Country. Children of this age may not be confident in written narrations or chapter summaries so you may need to write some of their narrations down or ask them to illustrate some pictures.

*Out of print books. Try the library !

Picture Study

For this period of history the pictures of convict painter Joseph Lycett offer images of early Australian history. Use these pictures to study the what the British saw when they first came to Australia. The story of Lycett is also interesting. .

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