The Whole Year: 4th Grade

4th grade, the whole year, on one shelf. Fourth grade is fractions, long division, the five-paragraph essay, and the year a kid finds the series they will read for two years straight. The workbooks on this shelf are the floor; Percy Jackson and the Narnia box are the year. About three hundred dollars for the workbooks and the books, and you own every page.

How to use it: Math thirty minutes and no more than one math book open at a time; the Kumon boosters are for the piece that is missing, not for every day. Language arts thirty minutes. Science and social studies on alternate days. My Side of the Mountain is the science: a boy alone on a mountain for a year, and every page is biology. The Way Things Work is the book they open on their own.

Two more things: the custom full grade is where we build this same year around your actual child instead of a grade level, and the $49 map is the first step of that. Not sure this is the right shelf? Five questions will tell you.