3rd Grade Homeschool Curriculum

3rd Grade History

This year marks the beginning of a new kind of Sonlight program. For the first time, History, Geography, Read-Alouds and Readers as well as Language Arts are all linked together in Sonlight D. The characters you meet in your history book will show up in the readers, and you'll meet them again in Language Arts, and read about them out loud with Read-Alouds.

With this interconnected scheduling, you will be using books to expand what you learn: through biographies, historical fiction, Bible readings, and engaging stories. You'll be able to see the issue or the event from multiple views, perspectives and voices. In third grade, we shy away from discussing too many harsh realities of our early history, while still allowing your children to see where we as people have come from.

If you aren't ready to study American History with Sonlight D, you have lots of options. You could also study a broad overview of World History, or World History in-depth.

3rd Grade Lesson Plans

Sonlight's Instructor's Guide (IG) is your complete 3rd Grade homeschool schedule. But it doesn't just combine all of your subjects and make sure you are learning about important events, it also offers you notes, activity sheets, discussion questions, map points and more. You have everything you need from the beginning: just open to the first week and start. With Sonlight's IGs, instead of a stack of books and worksheets, you have a curriculum. Our IGs are the backbone of your History / Bible / Literature or All-Subjects Sonlight program, and equip you to teach with ease.

3rd Grade Language Arts

This year, with Sonlight's Language Arts D, you will be able to watch your children's writing style expand as they learn about higher-level techniques like similes, metaphors and hyperbole. You'll use dictation exercises based on famous quotations and Bible verses to sharpen your children's ability to recognize and imitate good writing.

This is the first year that Language Arts is linked with the History, so the books your children read to themselves, and the assignments they work through reinforce everything they are learning.

3rd Grade Spelling & Vocabulary

Sonlight includes Spelling and Vocabulary in our Language Arts Instructor's Guide. But this year, we also include separate workbooks to continue building on what your children have learned.

In Spelling You See's Americana (Included in the 3rd Grade All-Subjects Package), you will use three key activities:

• Chunking: practice with English's many irregular letter patterns
• Copywork: developing the ability to pay attention to details in print
• Dictation: working on listening so your children can learn to decode and encode in a meaningful context

Handwriting for 3rd Grade

For 3rd Grade handwriting, we include Handwriting Without Tears Cursive in our All-Subjects Package. Your children will learn to write neatly, with speed and confidence. Lowercase letters are taught first. The teaching pages feature large step-by-step illustrations and child-friendly language. This program teaches easy techniques for connections and capitals.

If you aren't interested in teaching cursive, you can choose the handwriting program of your choice and still enjoy our best discount of 20% off.

3rd Grade Science

Science D, included in Sonlight's 3rd Grade All-Subjects Package, gives your children an up-close look at the observable world and the forces behind what we can see. This year you will focus on Physics (energy, gravity, sound, electricity, and machines) and Biology (life, cells, the human body, animals, etc.). You'll also explore seas, oceans, and water, with Rachel Carson as a highlighted scientist.

This year you'll build a greenhouse and conduct botany experiments to understand what living things need. You'll learn how living things are categorized and named (taxonomy); and discover biological processes and how they work.

Sonlight's science programs have lots of hands-on activities, with the supplies you'll need already provided.

For 3rd Grade Science, you have choices just like you did with History. Whatever level you choose, science will come to life.

3rd Grade Math

3rd Grade math is the start of multiplication for single and multiple-digit numbers. Your children will use strategies based on place value and properties of operations to multiply. They will continue to work out how to solve for an unknown, how to solve abstract and real-world problems using addition, subtraction and multiplication.

While multiplication is the main focus, your children will also cover things like: measuring and computing area; skip counting as a precursor to multiplication; adding and subtracting time in hours and minutes; multiplying, adding, and subtracting U.S. currency and standard units of measure; representing, recording, and interpreting data; and estimating and solving measurement problems.

Math-U-See Gamma is included with Sonlight's 3rd Grade All-Subject Package, but you can choose any program you like.