Our 3rd Grade Year Curriculum Preview

What’s our third grade year going to consist of? Lot’s of new concepts and a few new books to help.

I figured it would be easier to break down our upcoming year by subject and highlight the concepts, curriculum, and books we plan to use for each:

Language Arts will consist of learning and fine tuning synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and idioms. Within those concepts will come the understanding of suffixes, prefixes, and reading skills coupled with identifying, interpreting, and analyzing passages. We will work on process skills such as summarizing, predicting, visualizing, questioning, and clarifying. This leads into comprehension of identifying and writing about story elements such as: characters, setting, plot, main idea, and supporting details of a story. Learning about sequential order, fact and opinion, cause and effect, author’s purpose, inferences, and comparing and contrast elements will stem from this concept as well. Tall tales, folk tales, and fairy tales will be introduced on another level. We will build on the foundation of grammar by expounding on noun forms (singular, plural, regular, and irregular), verbs, adjectives, sentence types (declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory), sentence structure (subject, predicate), subject verb agreement, and proper punctuation.

Of course weekly spelling words are a must. Spelling words help with teaching rules of spelling and variant spelling patterns.Writing skills will be increased through prewriting strategies, learning the elements of a paragraph, research techniques, and understanding the writing process. We will have lots of writing practice by writing fictional short stories, poems, letters, and research reports by using the steps of the writing process. Vocabulary is emphasized through reading, grammar, spelling, and writing exercises. Speaking and listening skills will be increased by effective listening exercises, appropriate question asking, learning how to paraphrase to confirm comprehension, as well as how to respond to comments and questions form the speaker.

Much of our curriculum for this subject will come from Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool. They provide a wealth of detailed information coupled with lots of websites and worksheets to help drive these points home. I will be incorporating long chapter books (to accommodate my son’s reading level) such as King Arthur, The Bloomswell Diaries, and A Tale of Two Cities. I grab our 36 weeks worth of spelling words from http://www.k12reader.com.

Reading will go hand-in-hand with Language Arts since we will spend a lot of time reading poetry, tall tales, myths, short stories, long chapter books, fables, etc. Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool has an amazing layout for curriculum plans although we will be reading slightly different books. Some of these include Norse Myths and Robin Hood as well as some mentioned above under language arts.

Math will consist of number theory and systems, multiplication, division, fractions and decimals – as well as: money, patterns, algebra, properties of shapes, coordinate geometry, transformations and symmetry, time, metric system, perimeter, display and interpret data, probability, and problem solving. Meaning of operation, diving two-digit numbers, understanding unit price, understanding spatial relationships, using charts and graphs, and studying pattern relationships is just a dab of what we’ll be doing this year.

Again, for this subject we will utilize lots of plans from Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool. In conjunction with that, we will also use several Usborne books – Time Tables Activity Books, This is Not a Math Book, and several of the Illustrated Math Dictionaries.

This year in Science, we will dive into scientific investigation, nature of matter, energy, force, and motion – as well as take a look at effects on the shape of the earth, ecology, life/environment interact, light and sound, astronomy, inquiry science, life, science, physical science, and earth/space science. These concepts open the door to collecting and analyzing data, comparing and contrasting observations, determining the physical properties of matter, factors of surface changes, origins of small rocks, and learning about the importance of the earth’s water. We will also look at living organisms and how they interact with their environment, simple machines, eco awareness, and the history of the Earth.

Curriculum will come from Usborne’s Living World Encyclopedia, Science Encyclopedia, Illustrated Dictionary of Science, and several of the Science Activities books.

This year in Social Studies, we are going to narrow our focus down to studying specific groups of people, such as the Vikings, Alaskan Inuits, and Indians. We will take a look at the world in spatial terms, regions (rural, suburban, and urban), economics, and chronology. We will touch base with the exploration of the Americas, North American colonization, as well as citizenship and government. I believe it can be very influential to study characteristics, culture, and influences of other groups of people. Geographical patterns, location, latitude and longitude, adaptation of environment, and locating specific landforms will be taught. I also believe it is important for my son [and future children once they reach this age] to begin learning the fundamentals of earning and spending money, employee/employer relationships, and understanding the importance of imports/exports, and production of goods.

Books for this subject will come from Usborne- Geography Encyclopedia, Time Traveler, Picture Atlas.

History will look a lot different this year, not that we have done much with history until now anyways. We have been skeptical on what to teach our children about history because it has been changed so much over the years. There are lots of key things that have been left out even since before our elementary years and there is definitely much more being subtracted as the years tack on. With that being said we are taking a complete Biblical approach to teaching history. I have not researched to see if this has been done before (which I’m sure it has), but we are confident in taking the Scripture at face value and going from there. We do not believe there is anything that goes back further than the Bible – Yahweh’s spoken Word.

This year I will also begin teaching a foreign language – Hebrew. I have taken the beginner’s class through Passion for Truths Mark Jacob’s Hebrew Classes, and have recently started the intermediate classes. Basically, we will be learning this language together, but what better way to learn?! This will be a class where I completely make everything from scratch (worksheets, study material, etc.). I have come upon a few websites that provide flash cards so we may take advantage of that. Usborne also has a book that we will be using – First Thousand Word in Hebrew.

When it comes to special subjects such as: physical education, music, art, etc., I am planning to incorporate each of those on a six-week basis. We are going to start with art, then move into music, then physical education. P.E. is something that he (and the other children) will get almost on a daily basis so I’m not too worried about setting aside a distinct time for those as much as the other two subjects.

Usborne offers amazing books for this in which we will be using: Introduction to Art, Classical Music, and The Art Activity Book.

These are the main subjects I am focusing on for our 3rd grade year. To download a copy of my Third Grade Year Overview in PDF form, please visit our blog Homeschooling with the Huddleston's!

I’d love to know what you will be doing for your third grade year!