Fourth Grade

Fourth grade is a year of raucous laughter as the 10-year-old’s attention turns outward, seeing themselves as one unique part of the whole.  This begins with looking at precisely where they are and expanding outward, as they study local history and geography of the Rogue Valley and Oregon, including the Native peoples of this region. The science of fourth grade focuses on the animal world as they study zoology, looking at how we are similar to, interact with, and depend on the animal kingdom. They will also learn the water cycle, salmon life cycle, and local habitats and ecology. Norse Mythology is the focus of the language arts blocks, hearing the creation stories of this culture and embodying the various characters of these legends. They will learn parts of speech, paragraph structure, editing, and figures of speech. The concept of fractions is the focus in math, which is brought concretely by dividing real things into parts and exploring the various ways those parts can be expressed numerically. They will work on solidifying their times tables, factoring, long division, estimation and rounding, and calculating area and perimeter. In the arts, they will begin learning music notation, folk dancing, cross stitch and embroidery in handwork, and the introduction of woodworking.