The Whole Year: 5th Grade

5th grade, the whole year, on one shelf. Fifth grade is the last year before middle school and the best year to find out what your child can do alone. This shelf is the floor for every subject, the books a ten-year-old finishes without being asked, and the science that comes in through Hatchet and the Mars rovers instead of a chapter test. About three hundred dollars for the workbooks and the books, and you own every page.

How to use it: Math thirty minutes, language arts thirty, science and social studies on alternate days, four days a week. The fifth day is a project or a long read. Hatchet is the first book; a kid who reads it will read Brian's Winter and Julie of the Wolves on their own, and at the end of that they know more field biology than most adults. The Number Devil is the math book they will not know is a math book.

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.