As I mentioned in my article 10th Grade Plans for 2022-2023, we had to make some changes in our homeschool following me sustaining a brain injury in a car wreck in November 2021. While my concussion symptoms did finally resolve, I developed chronic occipital neuralgia. Having a chronic headache not only meant we were no longer able to do a core family curriculum, it also meant that we had more than our fair share of rough homeschool days. This year will look unlike any other year that we’ve ever homeschooled. Here are our 5th Grade plans for 2023-2024.
5th Grade Plans for 2023-2024
To start with, our primary method of homeschooling for Little Miss will be using Power Homeschool curriculum online this year. We started Power Homeschool earlier this year, in March, because I didn’t have the capacity to battle an uncooperative child with a daily headache.
Through Power Homeschool, Little Miss will have courses in:
- 5th Grade Math
- 5th Grade Language Arts
- 5th Grade Science
- 5th Grade Social Studies
- Elementary Engineering
- Foundations of Music
- Discovering Spanish
- Social Development
This will provide the bulk of her learning. That said, we are making it a point to make sure that she also has learning opportunities that are interactive and fun.
5th Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices
5th Grade Science
Meteorology
Little Miss will take a semester-long meteorology class at our homeschool co-op. In this class she will be learning about all kinds of weather and what makes weather – wind, air pressure, rain, clouds, sunshine, snow, blizzards, tornadoes, and hurricanes. The class will use the meteorology unit study from The Good and the Beautiful.
Chemistry, Candy, and Concoctions
Little Miss will take a semester of Chemistry, Candy, and Concoctions class at our homeschool co-op. In this class, she’ll explore the basic principles of chemistry using common household items. Topics will include density, solutions, viscosity, acids and bases, phase changes, chromatography, and exothermic and endothermic reactions. Most of the experiments will make use of candy and fun experiments so she won’t even know she’s learning chemistry. She’ll keep a lab notebook during the semester and learn about the importance of thinking like a scientist, making hypotheses, recording observations, and drawing conclusions. We have done some Candy Experiments in the past, and she absolutely loved them, so she’s really looking forward to this class.
Candy Experiments contains 70 science experiments, 29 of which have never been previously published. Chapter themes include secret ingredients, blow it up, sink and float, squash it, and other fun experiments about color, density, and heat.
5th Grade Language Arts
Through the Wardrobe
Another semester class at our homeschool co-op called Through the Wardrobe will study The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Every week students will listen to 1-2 chapters of the book on audio and do crafts and activities, have a snack, and discuss the chapter(s) they listened to. At the end of the semester, they will be watching the Narnia movie after they’ve finished the book. We listened to the entire series on audio a couple of years ago, and Little Miss loved this book. I’m looking forward to hearing new tidbits that she picks up from it this time around.
5th Grade Reading Books
We’ll spend time reading aloud together during our morning meeting. We’re starting the year with The Forgotten Five series by Lisa McMann with the first book, The Forgotten Five – Map of Flames. We received this book as a reward from our library summer reading club. We plan to read the entire series, including The Forgotten Five – The Invisible Spy, and The Forgotten Five – Rebel Undercover.
We’ll have to pace ourselves because the all-new The Forgotten Five – Dangerous Allies is due out in February 2024.
Other books that we’ll read together include:
- We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly
- Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens
- Start Here: Doing Hard Things Right Where You Are
- Habitudes Book #1: The Art of Self-Leadership
- A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park
As for independent reading, a few that she has on her list include:
Undoubtedly, her list always grows as does her Hoopla library borrows list. LOL
5th Grade Social Studies
US History Escape Rooms
Little Miss enjoys history, so she will take a US History Escape Rooms class at our homeschool co-op. She is SO looking forward to this one. This class will take students on different missions around the classroom, reading comprehension passages, decoding puzzles, and answering questions and she’ll learn about US History from the Revolutionary War and and Industrial Revolution to the Founding Fathers and US Constitution!
Story of the World
Last year we used Story of World Volume 1 and Story of the World Volume 2 for Social Studies at home, and used the Story of the World Notebooking Pages from Learning Mama and The Story of the World Worksheets by Peter D that I found on TeachersPayTeachers.
Little Miss has requested to continue with Story of the World Volume 3 and Story of the World Volume 4 this year. Her wish is my command. We’ll use the Story of the World Volume 3 Notebooking Pages and the Story of the World Volume 4 Notebooking pages from Learning Mama. They are in her free resource library, and they are a fantastic resource.
We will also use The Story of the World Volume 3 Worksheets and The Story of the World Volume 4 Worksheets from Peter D. We like these worksheets because for each chapter, there is one page of comprehension questions, which include multiple choice and short answer. There are also chapter reviews for each set of six chapters which include comprehension questions, vocabulary, a review activity, and more. We only used a couple of the multi-chapter reviews last year, and I’m not decided yet if we’ll use them this year. I do love that there is an answer key included at the end of the the pdf file, so I can make sure she’s answered questions correctly.
Little Miss likes the ability to notebook whatever she wants from the lessons, but she also likes getting the answers “right” on the worksheets, which is why we use both.
5th Grade Electives
Aerial Silks
After a year of Acrobatics, in which she was quickly promoted from Acro 1 to Acro 2, Little Miss has decided she would like to try Aerial Silks. We will pause the acrobatics and she’ll be taking a class at a local dance center.
Art and Crafts
There are so many ways to include art in your homeschool. We will be using an afternoon each week, while the oldest two are at our local learning center, to have fun with art. We will do some craft projects. We will explore some art lessons online. We will watch a few art history lessons from the In the Footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh series on Wondrium.
We’re going to make our own Van Gogh Mural Project with the Vincent Van Gogh Value Pack from Art Projects for Kids. The creator, Kathy, also offers an Art Projects for Kids daily email where you can sign up to receive no-prep, step-by-step elementary art lessons delivered daily! We’ll also use her tutorial on how to draw a wheatfield when we get to lesson 12. You can get the Color Like Van Gogh printable when you join her mailing list or in her TeachersPayTeachers store. Sign me up, please! She also has some free printable art lessons for kids on her TeachersPayTeachers page. We’ll be using her .
We’ll use some Vincent Van Gogh Coloring Pages, from Lotta Magazine, that are available on TeachersPayTeachers.
We’ll also use this Van Gogh Quote Coloring Page that I found on TeachersPayTeachers because I like the quote.
I plan to create some of our own coloring pages, as well, with various quotes by Vincent Van Gogh, and will pepper them throughout the year.
While our homeschool will look vastly different this year than I’d ever imagined it would, I’m eager to see how the year shapes up. We’ve carved out time for just the two of us, with the Bigs having classes out of the house, and I want to make the most of it!