It’s hard to believe my daughter will be in third grade this year! This is our fourth year homeschooling, and she is my second child. So, I have homeschooled third grade once before, with my eldest–but still, I can’t believe she’s there now!

Third Grade Homeschool Curriculum

When I plan curriculum each year, I think about it year-round. As the school year progresses, I am constantly making mental notes and physical notes, tracking what’s working well and what’s not. I think of new ideas, try them out, and sometimes they flop. Sometimes, they’re a hit! As we go about our days, I think about each of my kids as individual learners, and tweak methods and lessons and expectations.

A lot of our more successful homeschooling endeavors have involved repetition, which I blogged about recently. I love seeing the look of recognition on my kids’ faces when we cover an artist, creative writing technique or even historical event that they remember from last year.

With that said, below is a list of what I’ll be using for third grade homeschool curriculum this year–some things repeated, some things new!

Third Grade Language Arts Curriculum

Five In A Row & Treehouse Schoolhouse Book Studies: I have written about both of these curriculums at length, I love them so much! One thing I love about my daughter is that she still loves picture books. Read-aloud is a huge part of our homeschool, hence the two different book studies! I also have my daughter read independently each day. I love booklists from Read Aloud Revival. (Grab 10% off your Treehouse Schoolhouse cart by shopping with this link, or the code at the end of this post!)

For formal, nonfiction writing, my daughter will start Fix It Grammar as well as IEW this year. She will do the video lessons together with my son (5th grade), but complete her own binder.

For creative writing, I will repeat a lot of the creative writing projects we created last year! We will simply pick new subjects. I really loved the variety of genres we covered; if you are interested in how I innovated these projects individually, you can read more about our creative writing experiment, here. Some of my favorite projects we did last year were the Grandparent Interview + Essay, the Restaurant Review + Essay, and Summer Memory Sensory Essay.

For spelling, I don’t use a formal curriculum. My kids vary quite a bit on spelling ability. For my daughter, I usually take words she is commonly misspelling, and create simple spelling lists for her each week. She typically has two write the word five times, use it in a sentence, look it up in the dictionary and record the definition, and a variety of other repetitive tasks that help commit the word to memory. Boring, yes. Effective, also yes! 🙂

Something new I am adding in this year, is copywork! I grabbed these Scripture copywork books from The Daily Grace Co. this year, because both of my older two need to work on handwriting neatness! Copywork also helps with spelling, so it’s a win-win.

Third Grade Math Curriculum

Math will get a bit more complicated this year, as we dive into things like fractions and decimals! We use Singapore Math, which I have really enjoyed. The lessons are clear, colorful, and provide lots of examples and ways to look at a problem. I like to use this homeschool hack and divide the textbook up into sections, with post-it notes. I write dates on each note, so that we have a visual idea of how much we need to get done each week, to stay on track!

In general, I will also continue to incorporate math in as many practical ways as possible. My husband and I do a lot with entrepreneurship, allowance and financial literacy with our kids, so even simple tasks like tithing, saving, and spending money each month is teaching “math,” in a real life form.

I also have Emmaline do a basic math facts workbook each day, like this one. My kids maintain these in the summertime too, so that we don’t have to backtrack in fall.

Third Grade Science Curriculum

For Science this year, we are doing Apologia’s Zoology curriculum. I purchased the textbook, as well as the notebooking journal.

The Apologia textbooks are pretty dense. They pack a lot of punch, and are so informative! Sometimes the information is over my kids’ heads. We read the text in its entirety, and I have them practice patience and stamina, even if they don’t understand every concept. (I think Zoology will be a bit easier this year; last year was Anatomy, and while fascinating, some of the intricate cellular systems and details were ones I was even struggling to comprehend!)

There are gorgeous photos, interesting questions and great experiments within. For the notebooking journal, I am having Graham (5th grade) and Emmaline share, so they will trade off who does what. Along with that, we will plan to visit both of our state’s zoos, as well as a special park where you can feed deer and other animals!

Third Grade History Curriculum

For history, we will continue with our trusty Story of the World Curriculum! This is year four of homeschooling, year three of Story of the World for us. I absolutely love it. The stories are short, but pack a lot of meaning.

I use the Story of the World activity book (the maps are my favorite, while Emmaline & Beau love the coloring pages) and I purchase these comprehension questions from Teachers Pay Teachers each year. Only $6!

I have always told my kids–while you are in elementary school, and learning world history, don’t worry about memorizing dates or names. That is not the point right now. The point right now is to notice patterns, because history is all about patterns! We think about things like:

• What do people groups usually fight about? (Power, money, land, religion, or a combination of these!)
• What commonalities do you see, when people mistreat each other?
• What character traits do you like or dislike in _________________?
• What other patterns do you notice repeat throughout time?
• What concepts seem to be timeless across the human race?

I created these timelines for us, and print off these free timeline events on sticker paper, on my own printer! They have been incredible. This year we will use the Modern History set.

This timeline is something I will be repeating every year in homeschool. I love coming back to it, and having the kids see the work they did the previous year. I am hoping to get through all four Story of the World cycles 2-3 times by the time my kids graduate, so it will be fun to see how their learning (and handwriting!) progresses over time!

Third Grade Spanish Curriculum

For Emmaline this third grade year, I will be trying something new for Spanish! I am fluent, as is my husband, and in previous years we have tried variations of immersion, songs, activities, games, etc. This year to reduce stress, I decided to invest in Llamitas Curriculum Level 1 for her, and see if having a tactile workbook with activities helps us stay accountable a bit more.

I still have myriad Spanish picture books, games, and songs to use with the younger two–and I know Emmaline will be an enthusiastic participant in these Spanish tidbits too, especially if it involves her little sister. 🙂

Other Third Grade Homeschool Curriculum

Other things that we do each year for homeschool curriculum, include:

Typing.com: this is simple website, slightly gamified, that has taught my kids to type! I pay $5 month, and they do typing practice 3-4 days per week. My son Graham (5th grade) can type well without looking at the keys. My daughter (smaller hands, newer to typing) is still working up to that, but I love that they can practice this without ads and refine their typing skills.

Bible/Theology: Emmaline and her big brother Graham and I will do The Bible Recap this year, beginning in the New Testament. I have done it in the past, and Graham is doing it on his own, so I think it will be fun to do with the three of us! I also love to do Tiny Theologians cards with all of my kids, typically doing our morning meeting.

Music: for music this year, we started using the Simply Piano app! I have been blown away. Truly. I am not one to ever, ever in the history of the world, prefer technology over a person (like a real-life piano teacher). However, this may be my exception. It has impressed me so much, I am planning a separate blogpost about it!

Art/Art History: My daughter is a proficient artist, and will be drawing, painting, pasteling, paper-quilling and sewing all year! For Art History, I love using Ambleside Online, which you can read about in these posts.

I hope this curriculum writeup was helpful for you! Sometimes it’s nice to see what others are doing, to get the juices flowing and help you envision your own ideal homeschool plan. I have a post here about my son Beau’s kindergarten curriculum lineup this year, and will be writing up Graham’s 5th grade version soon, too.

With love,

Cait

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