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4th Grade Curriculum
The overarching goal for this fourth grade year is for children to understand the context and progression of history. Through your reading, you will be able to walk alongside families whose lives intersect with major historical events, and meet characters who grapple with the difficulties around them and overcome them in the end. Biographies, historical fiction, and absorbing readers add depth to your chronological study.
This year marks the beginning of a new kind of Sonlight program. With History / Bible / Literature D, your History and Literature subjects are all linked together. The characters you meet in your History book will show up again in your Readers, Language Arts, and Read-Alouds.
This literature based approach to our 4th grade curriculum learning is a cornerstone of Sonlight’s philosophy of learning, providing an integrated approach to both subjects. By taking a literature based approach to history, students gain a more holistic understanding of the material, especially through the lens of story.
Using literature to teach history fosters critical thinking skills, as learners analyze complex themes, character motivations, and narrative structures. Additionally, literature exposes your child to diverse perspectives and cultural contexts, promoting connection and a more global understanding of the material.
Finally, a literature based approach also enhances language skills, as students engage with varied vocabulary and stylistic elements, improving their reading comprehension and writing abilities.
You have a wonderful choice to make going into your fourth grade homeschool year: do you want to study World History or American History? With World History, you can choose to dive in deep and spread your study over two years or take a broader look with a one-year overview. Or, you can begin your journey into Early American History. Whatever your choice, your year will be filled with books and biographies that are chock full of adventure, suspense, and anecdotes that will make you laugh out loud. It's going to be a great year.
Choose your 4th Grade Curriculum
Sonlight offers multiple curriculum packages, each completely customizable to meet your family's needs. Start by choosing one of the three options below, and customize online as desired. Need help choosing? Chat with an advisor.
*Percent off Retail Price. Preschool and Pre-K are unavailable as All-Subjects Packages as they have unique subjects specific to those age spans. A Sonlight History / Bible / Literature program includes a year's worth of history, geography, Bible, Readers, Read-Alouds, and an Instructor's Guide. An All-Subjects Package includes a History / Bible / Literature program, language arts, spelling (K-6), handwriting (K-3), math, science, and a Sonlight binder. Click here for the complete Scope and Sequence.
4th Grade Curriculum Packages
Put together a customized 4th grade curriculum program or select the recommended everything-you-need package. Compare your choices and pick the path you want. Either way, a wonderful adventure in learning awaits you and your family. Both History / Bible / Literature Programs and All-Subjects Packages include a complete 4th grade curriculum with lesson plans, schedules, and notes in the included Instructor's Guide.
Start by selecting the 4th grade curriculum program that covers the history focus you'd like to use this year. Because you'll teach with real books, each Sonlight program works with a range of ages and allows you to teach multiple children together. View the full curriculum scope & sequence for additional information. Need help choosing? Chat with a homeschool Advisor.
4th Grade History / Bible / Literature Programs
Your complete 4th grade curriculum program from Sonlight has history at its center. With your choice, you'll either look at World or American History and the events and people who have played pivotal roles in forming the world around us.
The people your children should know to be culturally literate come alive in the books you read. It's more than just who that person was, but why are they significant? How did their thinking and actions change the world so they are part of history? It is fascinating.
Whether you study World History or American History, you are in for a great exploration of the world and the characters in it.
Start with the History / Bible / Literature program of your choice and add additional subjects. History / Bible / Literature programs can be used with multiple children. All History / Bible / Literature programs include a 15% discount off of retail.
4th Grade All-Subjects Package
All-Subjects Packages offer the convenience of an all-in-one boxed curriculum but provide the flexibility of customization for your specific needs or multiple children. And you get all that for a 20% discount!
Additional Subjects for a 4th Grade Curriculum
A Sonlight All-Subjects Package comes with everything that you need for a complete school year. However, if you choose to purchase a History / Bible / Literature program only, you may want to add additional subjects to complete your year.
Science
From powerful storms to energy waves, Sonlight Science D nurtures children’s natural curiosity and provides daily opportunities to explore the world around them. Students will use real scientific skills and practices as they explore living creatures, power, wavelength, frequency and more. Science D includes a comprehensive introduction to engineering and other STEM topics that will prepare students for a lifetime of scientific curiosity, learning and application.
Choose the matching 4th Grade Science level (Science D) or browse other available Science programs and see what you could discover.
Math
This year, the focus is on division for single and multiple-digit numbers. Division is presented as the inverse of multiplication and single-digit division facts are learned and the concepts of division and place value are applied when solving long division problems. In addition, your fourth grader will use strategies based on place value and properties of operations to divide and begin to understand division as solving for an unknown. They will work towards being able to divide any whole numbers, and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
With the help of lots of review, your children will continue to build their skills and abilities working with both abstract and real-world problems.
Math-U-See Delta is included in Sonlight's 4th Grade All-Subjects Package, but you can customize as desired.
Language Arts
This year, you will be able to watch your children's writing style expand as they learn about higher-level techniques like similes, metaphors and hyperbole. You'll use dictation exercises based on famous quotations and Bible verses to sharpen your children's ability to recognize and imitate good writing.
By 4th Grade, the Language Arts and History are interwoven, so, you'll be reading and writing about the events you are learning about.
Handwriting
By Fourth Grade we no longer include a handwriting program in our All-Subjects Package. But, if you would like your children to have more practice, you are able to customize your year and add the handwriting program of your choice. Check out all of Sonlight's Handwriting options here.
Spelling & Vocabulary
Vocabulary words are from the reading you share with your students and will be found in the Read-Aloud Study Guides in your History / Bible / Literature Instructor's Guide. This year we move away from our phonetic spelling program to a separate spelling program. We recommend Spelling You See to continue building on what your children have already learned.
In Spelling You See's Americana (Included in the 4th Grade All-Subjects Package), you will use three key activities:
- chunking: practice with English's many irregular letter patterns
- Copywork: developing the ability to pay attention to details in print
- Dictation: working on listening so your children can learn to decode and encode in a meaningful context
We do offer additional spelling resources as desired.
Hands-On & Electives
Help reinforce and document your students’ History studies and provide evidence of learning. A hands-on approach to learning significantly enhances your child’s educational experience. Students are more likely to engage with learning that allows them to interact directly with materials and concepts. Research shows that this can lead to a better retention of the learning. This experiential approach also supports various learning styles, making it accessible to a diverse group of learners.
This lap book provides multisensory learning to both increase your students’ understanding of history and offer evidence of learning ... plus it makes learning fun!
We provide all of the instructions and materials so your child can independently build their own history book. Our lap books are specifically designed to complement Sonlight’s history programs and they are scheduled as optional activities for our History / Bible / Literature levels D, E, G, and H.
Explore even more electives and enrichment activities here.
Other Products
Consumables
Teaching more than one student and need extra activity sheets? We've got you covered. Shop all consumables here.
Required Resources For Your 4th Grade Curriculum
Required Resources are essential for first-time Sonlighters. These are necessary products for your school year and are included in Sonlight All-Subjects Packages, History / Bible / Literature Programs, and Science packages by default. Visit SmoothCourse™ to remove Required Resources from your curriculum package.
Shop all Required Resources here.