My oldest daughter is a bit ahead in her learning. She will be working through third grade curriculum books this school year! I am really excited to jump into all of our new curriculum as summer activities start to slow down. Here is a look through of the curriculum that she will be working through this year! We are keeping most of our curriculum the same for what has previously worked for her and adding in a few new fun ones.
Below I will be sharing her core curriculum for language arts, math, reading, and Bible. This is all completed in the morning. Then in the afternoons, we move to our Family Studies that will have our science, social studies, geography and more Bible.
So let’s dive right in….
Language Arts/Reading
This year we are dabbling in a variety of curriculum for language arts and reading.
First up, we will be using The Good and Beautiful Level 3 Course.
We have always used The Good and Beautiful courses and my daughter has done very well with them and excelled with her reading and language arts skills. Just recently when completing the end of the level 2 course she gets to where she doesn’t always want to complete the lessons. So this is why I’ve started investigating some other courses to try and see if she preferred anything else more. We will gradually work through this course along with the others and if I feel like another combination suits her, may not continue on with this book. But for now, it is in our line up to start. We are going to be reading the books that come with the course this year as well. These books are great to read back and forth between parent and student. There are sections to each so my daughter really enjoys me reading with her.
I also grabbed Fix it Grammar Level 1 to fill in our grammar gaps if we stop using The Good and the Beautiful curriculum. We are going to go ahead and start this because it looks very straight forward and quick short lessons. Each week I will teach a lesson and then following those up, the student is given a sentence to “fix”. My daughter really prefers these types of lessons and spending more hands on in our Family Studies. We are excited to try this course out. You will need to purchase the student and teacher books.
This year, another big change we are making is that we are going to be trying the Brave Writer Dart. We are going to be starting with Sarah, Plain and Tall. There is a whole bundle that you can purchase or you can purchase them as singles. We are going to start with the singles to see how we like the program. Each dart is a month long (or 4 weeks). The dart guide is a companion to a chapter book to help teach grammar and writing concepts. To me, this really seemed like a book study that had the extra concepts of writing and grammar tied into one and I really love this idea because my daughter is a very avid reader. The student does not need to read the book on their own. They can be read aloud and together. We are both really excited for this curriculum and to make our way through some more books for her.
Bible
In the past, when my girls were younger, we have just stuck to reading Bible stories aloud and talking about them. Now that my daughter is becoming a better reader, I am going to try to incorporate some independent Bible time for her.
I recently bought her an Adventure Bible where the text is a little easier to read. She will be reading her bible alongside the Meeting with Jesus course book. Each day, the student will read a short passage from scripture and then answer a simple question after. The book also has a place for weekly prayers and memory verses. This looks like something she will be able to complete independently fairly quickly, depending how long the reading passage is.
Handwriting
We will be using the Level 2 and Level 3 handwriting books from The Good and Beautiful. We have used these books from the beginning. My girls love them and complete them independently. They love them so much, they typically get through two books at this rate so I try and keep the next level on hand.
The books walk through proper letter formation and usually have a fun activity on the page as well to help with fine motor skills. If she gets to book 3, she will be starting cursive writing. This book has a rainbow dot system where they follow the dots in a specific order to properly make the cursive letter.
Spelling
This year she will be working through the 180 Days of Spelling and Word Study for Third Grade. In the past we have used the Evan Moore Spelling Books and really loved those as well, but thought we would switch it up a bit this year.
Both of these books can be completed independently with quick word work practice and spelling lists each week.
Math
We will be continuing with The Good and Beautiful Math this year. My daughter is working through level 3. Again, I love how these books are presented. They are very colorful, these lessons are short and not overwhelming. I usually have my daughter complete the independent practice on her own and then we sit together and go over the new lesson and skills being taught that day. The lessons do build on each other but the new concepts won’t be in the independent practice until the following day. So I can then see if she caught on to the new skills being taught.
I also love with this curriculum that you can purchase their math manipulative box. So this comes with the curriculum if you purchase the bundle, or you can purchase the manipulative box separate and print the workbook for free.
Along side the workbook, we will be using the Musical Multiplication from The Good and Beautiful as well. These are fun songs to help learn multiplication facts that I think my daughter is really going to enjoy.
Typing
This year we are going to try a typing course and see how she does. I grabbed the course book from The Good and Beautiful to try out. If she becomes too frustrated with it, we may wait to start again a little later. She is just a very quick learner and always eager to try new skills so I thought she would really enjoy this and we have really loved everything from The Good and Beautiful!
The topics covered in this book are:
- Proper posture and hand position
- Home row placement
- All of the letters
- The space bar, the shift key
- The semicolon, the period
- Typing words and short sentences
I hope she enjoys these lessons.
That’s a wrap…
I think that is everything we will be using for third grade. I’m sure this seems a bit overwhelming at first, but a lot of this can be completed independently and doesn’t take very long. She won’t be doing everything everyday either so that helps too. I’m working on completing some independent checklists so that my girls know what to complete each day on their own. These will be helpful for when they get up, starting what they are able to. Then we typically have breakfast and work on the core lessons together so they can have more playtime and outside time. Hope you have a great school year! ❤️