5th 6 Weeks of 3rd Grade

Hannah has finished up her 30th week of 3rd grade, leaving us with 6 weeks left. I’m trying to plan out a Texas History unit to fill in our gaps this summer before we start 4th grade.

I really enjoy our morning devotions and singing. Joel loves to sing with us. Hannah also has her own daily reading from The Discoverer’s Bible. She read through Judges and Ruth this unit.

In history/social studies, we worked from the American Revolution into some expansionism and are almost up to the Civil War. Our main spines are Landmark History of the American People Vol 1 and Children’s Encyclopedia of American History. We had daily readings from American Indian Prayer Guide, a couple of chapters from American Adventures I, and read through a biography called The Lewis and Clark Expedition.

This unit, our readers were interesting. We had a biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, one about the winter at Valley Forge called Winter Danger, and an introduction to the first Morgan horse in Justin Morgan Had a Horse. We started a book called Calico Bush about some Maine pioneers. We also have a weekly reading from A Child’s Introduction to Poetry.

Hannah always does well with her writing and had a few different types of poems to try out this unit as well as some pretend newspaper articles. She seems to be doing a little bit better at spelling, we are working through Sequential Spelling and also doing Wordly Wise 1 for vocabulary. She has one cursive assignment a week.
Hannah surprised me this unit by asking to read her readers at her own pace. I had been having her read them out loud to me, but she wanted to read them to herself. That frees up some time for me to read with Joel, so I told her we could try it out and it has been nice so far. She finishes her assigned readings in about half the time that is laid out for her so I fill in extra books in between the assigned ones. And I, of course, want to know what she is reading so we can discuss and I have to keep up with her! This unit her assigned readings we Om-kas-toe, Meet Thomas Jefferson, and Sarah Whitcher’s Story. And she read Captain Nobody and Sticks Across the Chimney in addition.

We are a bit ‘behind’ in science, but we’ll double up in the summer and finish. We have readings from Mysteries and Marvels of Nature, Water, and Real Science 4 Kids Biology. She learned about the butterfly lifecycle and made a cute little mobile. She finished Listening to Crickets and Tops Radishes experiments which I thought were excellent.

Hannah is very excited to be “done” with Horizons 3. So we are now alternating playing math apps and working through the next level of Keyboarding Without Tears for the summer.

Wow! We had a lot of extras this unit.
– We have weekly piano lessons and Girl’s Ministry meetings, and two volleyball practices or games a week. Her team hasn’t won any games yet, but they have had some really close ones. 3rd grade sports are stressful! She says she wants to play again and go to a camp this summer to learn more. 😉
– For Girl’s Ministries, we had a service project as a resale store and a tie dye and sleepover.
– With homeschool group we have a weekly park day, have started going to a gaming center once a month and a board game place once a month. We also attended our group’s Spelling Bee and Field Day.
– We attended two Baylor baseball games and had a visit from the Diltz and Miller families for Easter.
– At home we’ve been busy with the garden and Hannah saved up enough of her own money (allowance and selling garden goods) to buy her own Ipad. She is loving it! We also hatched a chick in our incubator and bought a couple more to keep it company.