Our Language Arts Loop For Year 4

In our homeschool, our language arts subject (as are most of our subjects) is inspired by Charlotte Mason’s methods and principles. If you would like to read how Charlotte Mason taught subjects such as reading, recitation, narration, writing, grammar, and spelling, I highly recommend that you read straight from her Volume 1, Home Education starting on page 199-247.

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While we may not follow her methods exactly, this is just an example of how I teach this various subject in a loop schedule throughout the week. Our Language Arts Loop For Year 4 includes topics such as reading, copywork, narration, dictation/spelling, vocabulary, recitation, and grammar. Below I will break down each language arts topic and hope to give you a look into what we’ve been doing for each.

Our Language Arts Loop

Reading:

My Year 4 child is a fantastic reader and loves reading independently during her free time. Although we still have many of our history, natural history, Shakespeare, and some literature books designated as read-alouds, we will gradually start transitioning more of her school books to independent reading. I’m not in a hurry, so I expect this transition to be more complete by Year 5 or Year 6.

To continue building her reading skills, and holding a daily habit for reading high quality books, we have a 10-15 minute reading block on the timetable for her to read to herself. Currently she is reading Pollyanna, following along with an audio version from Librivox. After Pollyanna, she will choose one of the books from Ambleside Online Free Reads for Year 4 to begin next. She is also reading one of her history biographies, (A Free Woman on God’s Earth) independently.

I am including the free-reads from AO Year 4 in our homeschool timetable because I find it to be a fantastic way to introduce new-to-us books and so far, we’ve enjoyed all of the ones we’ve read. I do not require narrations for the free-reads.

Copywork:

My year 4 is continuing her cursive copywork practice using A Reason for Handwriting Cursive C Workbook 2x a week. The other 2 days in our homeschool she selects a passage or a few sentences to write in her copywork notebook from Bible, poetry, literature, or songs that we’ve done so far that week.

Narration:

Until now, my Year 4 child has always done oral narrations, recounting what she has learned from our school books. Over the past few years, I have seen her narration skills flourish, and it has become a natural part of our homeschool routine, unlike when we first started. She has begun writing her narrations once a week instead of doing them orally, and we plan to fully transition to written narrations by the end of Year 4. This decision is based on her ability to write legibly and construct full sentences with only minor assistance. Just like with oral narrations, I am confident that with time, she will be able to write effective narrations for most of her history, natural history, and literature subjects.

Dictation and Spelling:

We are continuing to use Spelling Wisdom by Simply Charlotte Mason for dictation. For 2x a week, I will dictate a passage, and she will write it down in her spelling/word book. If there are words she misspelled, she will practice writing them correctly a few times and will respell them out loud for me at the beginning of the next dictation lesson for review. So far she has been able to tell me how to spell those words correctly, but if by chance she couldn’t, I would have her take a look at the word, study it, and retry.

I have a running list of the misspelled words on a piece of paper inside the Spelling Wisdom book 1 and ask her to spell those out loud at random at the end of each dictation lesson. When she has mastered the spelling words enough times, I simply cross those off the list.

While Spelling Wisdom is our main dictation guide for this subject, we use a couple other resources just for fun that usually get pulled out in the afternoons, on Fridays or come along with us on long roadtrips:

• Anton App (free) spelling practice games
• Word Ladders
• Word Searches (I’ve found some at thrift stores, but they’re easily found at dollar stores for cheap also)
• Mad Libs
• Explode the Code

Vocabulary:

This is a fun 1x a week topic we do together in family studies during our morning block of lessons. We’re using 365 Words for Clever Kids, reading a handful of new vocabulary words a week. When we grasp the definition of our new vocabulary words, we like to take turns making sentences with the new words. At the end, my year 4 will jot down 1-2 new vocabulary words in her notebook with their definitions or with a sentence she came up with using the words.

Recitation:

Recitations are part of family studies in our morning collective. Currently, we are working on memorizing and reciting two Scripture passages, and one poem each term. Our recitations are on a loop in the week, practicing together. We spend 5-7 minutes going through them together, saying it out loud, reading it while remembering to speak clearly, in tone and pronunciation of each word.

Grammar

Fix It Grammar has proven to be an excellent choice for introducing grammar lessons to Year 4. Initially, progress was slow because she was already familiar with basic concepts like nouns and fundamental punctuation and capitalization rules. However, after three weeks of lessons, I can see that she has now reached a point where she is learning new grammar concepts.

Another resource I really like is Usborne First and Illustrated Grammar and Punctuation, however I am still unsure how to include this in our weekly lessons. I find the illustrations and examples very simple to understand, with great examples depicted. If anything, I may just pull it out and reference it when a new grammatical concept comes up in Fix It Grammar at the beginning of each lesson week.

And that is our Language Arts Loop for Year 4! Overall, copywork, narration, and reading practice are done daily, while the other topics are weekly. It’s always fun to share the resources we’re using for certain topics, and language arts is one of those subjects where I am asked often what we do, so I hope this blog article helps give a good look into that answer.