1st 6 Weeks of 3rd Grade

We have completed 6 weeks of American History I with Benjamin. It was a bit of a jump in amount of work and in content maturity, but we are doing well with it now and starting to get a rhythm.

Ben follows our morning devotional readings with us and then has an additional reading for his school. We’re working through the main accounts in Genesis right now. He also memorized Psalm 8 during this first unit. We have a prayer guide book that leads us through some cultural understanding of different Native tribes each week and then we have prayer points.

In history/social studies, we’ve mostly focused on the Native Americans of North America and the early Spanish explorers. We’ve also had a unit on the Incas. Ben enjoys the exploring and conquering topics much more than Hannah did. 🙂 Our spines are The Beginner’s American History and Children’s Encyclopedia of American History. We also read a short book called Native American Indians that outlined the main tribes of North America. We also have mapping and timeline activities about once a week.

Read Alouds have included Secret of the Andes, Pedro’s Journal, Walk the World’s Rim, and parts of Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans. We also have a selection from A Child’s Introduction to Poetry each week.

For language, we have spelling with Sequential Spelling 1, vocabulary with Wordly Wise 3000, Book 3, a cursive assignment, creative assignment, and dictation each week. Benjamin has followed Hannah’s lead and reads his readers to himself. This is nice as it allows a time for me to read to Joel. Also, if he gets ahead, he can read his own selections until the next assigned book. This unit he read A Lion to Guard Us and Pocahontas and the Strangers as well as a few of his own picks.

Science started out with a unit on biology. We’ve been working through the animal kingdoms in Mysteries and Marvels of Nature and did the frog life cycle in Real Science for Kids, Biology Level 1. We’ve also had selections in Discover and Do Level 3 DVD and Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution.

Benjamin continues to do well in math despite rushing through it and trying to do all the work in his head (like his momma). We are still in Horizons 3 working on early fractions and ratios and simple division.

Extras are the icing of homeschooling. We still practice piano daily and are moving Ben into more chord work. Hopefully, he’ll want to keep working on it. He really likes drums, so maybe I need to have him take some lessons. In free time, he often does Chess Kid / Duolingo / Prodigy education apps. We have weekly park days and Royal Rangers. We participated in our homeschool math bee. Gram and Pawpaw took the boys to the pumpkin patch and the fair and we just got back from a MN trip to see Super Grandpa.