Third Grade, Geography

I believe it is important to know where countries are, but right now I prefer to learn them as off shoots of our other subjects. We keep a large map of the world on our dining room table and find many ways to use it.

• In Bible this year we are praying for the peoples of the world, so each week we find the country where the people we are praying for live.
• I'm also trying to pick up age appropriate books about these countries.
• In Nature Friend there are pictures of other countries, stories about animals, plants, or places in other countries. We find all these places on the map.
• In any book we read, if another location is mentioned, we look for it on the map. Sometimes it is a city that isn't on the map, so we pull out our world atlas and look for it.

Here is a list of books we have enjoyed about other countries/peoples:

• Water Buffalo Days by Quang Nhuong Huynh -- Vietnam
• Afghanistan
• Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams -- refugee camp
• Bhutan
• Kings and Queens by Sally Lee -- this book has a color picture of Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
• Bhutan by Leila Merrell Foster -- we looked at pictures in this book
• Bangladesh
• Yasmin's Hammer by Ann Malaspina -- story of a family that moves to Dhaka, and the desire of Yasmin to learn to read
• A Basket of Bangles by Ginger Howard -- a story of how five women begin their businesses
• Bangladesh: In the Children's Own Words by Chrysalis Education
• B is for Bangladesh
• Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins -- this is a story of how a girl manages to help her family financially in a culture where it is not culturally accepted
• Beja (Sudan)
• My Great-Grandmother's Gourd by Cristina Kessler -- a story about a well and the old ways
• Booryat (Mongolia)
• Suho and the White Horse retold by Yuzo Otsuka -- a legend of Mongolia
• My Little Round House by Bolormaa Baasansuren
• Vanishing Cultures: Mongolia by Jan Reynolds -- lots of pictures, along with a story of life in Mongolia
• Bulgaria
• Looking at Bulgaria by Bronja Prazdny
• A Gift From the Heart told by Radost Pridham -- folk tales from Bulgaria
• Colombia
• Senor Cat's Romance and Other Favorite Stories from Latin America retold by Lucia Gonzalez
• Biblioburro by Jeanette Winter
• China
• No Year of the Cat retold by Mary Dodson Wade -- picture book story about why there is not a year of the cat and why rat and cat are enemies
• China in Colors by Marla Gamze-Pendergrast
• Chad
• Rain School by James Rumford -- the children's school year starts with building their school because each year the rains wash it away
• Cuba
• Rabbit Wishes by Linda Shute -- why rabbits have long ears
• The Bossy Gallito retold by Lucia M. Gonzalez

Third Grade, Bible, Set One

• Hymns
• Can a Little Child Like Me?
• There Shall Be Showers of Blessing
• I Will Serve Thee
• All Things Bright and Beautiful
• Jesus is Coming Again
• Bible Memory
• Romans 12:9 - 13
• I cut large heart shapes out of scrapbooking paper, and white paper (a little smaller heart) and glued them together.
• By drawing lines on the white paper, K. can write the verse we are working on each week.
• I have written out each verse on 1/2" tall strips of cardstock, then I cut the strips up so each has two - four words on it. On Fridays we put these word strips in order. (Verse Strips)
• Hearing God's Voice
• Proverbs 1 - 16 -- we were supposed get up through chapter 25, but there were some days when we had discussions that were too important to just stop and do what was on the schedule, just so I could mark it off.
• We take turns reading the verses aloud, sometimes I will stop and explain a verse or ask K. what she thinks it means.
• Then we each write in our notebook
• The Big Idea (from the chapter)
• A Verse
• God wants me to be (complete sentence)
• I can do that today by (complete sentence)
• Memory Verse Review
• Each week we are pulling out the word strips from a passage we previously memorized and putting them in order.
• Catechism
• Each week we review some catechism that we previously memorized.
• We learned Catechisms #29 - 31 during this set
• Prayer
• This year we are using the book, Window on the World to pray for the peoples of the world. The book tells about the people, where the live, how they live, and tells things to thank God for and to ask God for.
• We are also keeping a prayer journal. I want K. to be able to see God answering prayer, so we have been praying for rain (this is the dryest winter in a very long time). We have had a few showers, but right now we are having a wonderful storm!
• Bible Reading
• I remembered that we had a chronological Bible, so I got that out (after searching high and low for it, then my husband found it on my closet shelf) this year. We started up at the ordination of the Priests. It seemed about the right place to start since we read Genesis in first grade and Exodus in second grade. However, K. wants to hear stories, so we may go back to her Bible and start reading in Joshua.
• The Princess and the Kiss
• We were ready for lesson 16 in the Life Lessons book. It was about being the right person -- whether you marry or not, the most important thing is to become everything God wants you to be and live a life that pleases Him.
• Read-Aloud
• We read The Hidden Jewel by Dave and Neta Jackson. This book is about Amy Carmichael and is the last of our Trailblazer Books.

Third Grade, Math, Set One

• Bedtime Math -- because I've been saving these for a while, we do three a day; Bedtime Math e-mails a math problem each day. There is a paragraph about a topic, then word problems that have something to do with the topic. There are three or four different levels of math problems.
• The first day we completed a project called Agriculture Counts. In this we sorted and counted the number of different animals in a bag of animal crackers, made tally marks, which we turned into a chart.
• We have done the first three lessons of Professor Pig. Each lesson has a few games to re-enforce the concept, and we have been playing them a lot. The chapters deal with:
• Magic Numbers -- numbers that add up to 10
• Magic Numbers plus one -- numbers that add up to 11
• Magic Numbers plus two -- numbers that add up to 12
• I found the book, Right In Your Own Backyard: Nature Math at the thrift store. It is part of the I Love Math series by Time-Life, published in the early 1990's. This book was a good review for starting our school year, and covered many topics, such as
• even/odd numbers
• patterns
• shapes
• addition
• subtraction
• categorizing
• estimating
• reading charts
• temperature
• measuring

Third Grade, Reading, Set One

• K. read Treasure Under the Sea (published in 1959) aloud to me and answered the comprehension questions.
• We had a lot of fun with the book, Tell and Draw Stories by Margaret J. Olsen. We completed the book, but may work on memorizing some of the stories in Set Two.

Third Grade, Grammar, Set One

We have completed chapter 1 in Painless Junior Grammar. Learning about sentences. Most of this was review, but that is a good place to start.

We read Grammar Land: Grammar In Fun for Children by M. L. Nesbitt, published in 1878. This was very fun to read and I'm quite sure we will use it as a reference in the future.

Third Grade, Writing, Set One

My main goal right now is for K. to learn cursive in a fun, unhurried manner. I have a sheet of paper that I am having her write her name on at the end of each month. At the end of January it was all printed, but at the end of February, she was able to do about half her name in cursive.

The first section in the book introduces the letters: i, t, u, w, e, l, b. I am trying to do one activity each week, but wasn't too successful during this set because I didn't have it all planned out before the Set started.

 

We have also reviewed the parts of a friendly letter (heading, greeting, body, closing, signature) and she wrote a letter to a friend.

Third Grade, Spelling, Set One

We are completing one unit in the BJU Spelling Book each week, however, I am making changes to better meet K.'s needs.

• On the first day, I give the pretest. If she spells all the words correctly, and I believe she really knows how to spell them, the only other thing we do is the work page, which reinforces the spelling generalization (such as: the 'ch' sound after a consonant is spelled ch, but after a short vowel it is spelled tch; examples: stitch and branch)
• We are working more on the Climbers, words that she uses when she writes, but misspells -- such as spaghetti, orchestra, or curious. I am trying to think up activities to do that will reinforce the spelling.
• For spaghetti, we wrote the word using yarn, then I had K. draw a plate of spaghetti and hide the letters in the drawn noodles for me to find.
• For orchestra and curious, I wrote the word and then incorporated each letter into an image and had K. find the letters.
• For sketch, I drew (sketched) a picture and hid the letters in the drawing.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set One

• We went to see The Nutcracker in December.
• We made cards for the February and March birthdays (slow months with only three birthdays each!).
• We made valentines.
• We have done five pages in piano books.
• I read various fairy tales to K.
• Beauty and the Beast Retold by Philippa Pearce (we are going to see the ballet in April)
• William Tell by Leonard Everett Fisher
• The Magpie's Nest by Retold by Joanna Foster
• Favorite Fairy Tales Told in France Retold by Virginia Haviland (we just started this one)
• We are also baking. We've made:
• Cookies
• Cranberry bread
• Pumpkin bread
• We made a Wire Button Tree.

Third Grade, Science, Set One

We are reading one Nature Friend magazine each week. I read most of the articles to K., but on Monday I have her look through the magazine and place sticky notes on the three articles she wants to read. Two of them she reads aloud. On Friday she reads the last one silently and then I ask her four or five questions about it.

 

Also on Friday she chooses a topic to learn more about. After the first week, I learned to be more general. For instance, we aren't going to find books about harlequin ducks at the library, but we will find books about ducks. I show her the list of general subjects and have her number her first, second, and third choices. Then we go to the library website and find the catalog numbers for them. That way when we go to the library we are ready to find the books and don't have to mess with their computers, which sometimes aren't working. K. is learning how to find books using the Dewey Decimal System.

 

The first week she wanted to read more about comets.

 

The second week she chose owls.

The third week she chose whales.

The fourth week she chose birds.

 

Each magazine has a few activities (word search, crossword, etc.) that we do as we come to them. I put a plastic transparent sheet over the page (hold it still with sticky notes) and use a water base marker to write our answers. This way we can pass the magazines on to friends and they can do the activities, too.

Over the planning week she will do a project. I had planned on her doing one of the subjects she had chosen, but she wanted to do dolphins, so I decided that her being excited about learning was more important than my plan. This project will be a poster. After reading some books about dolphins, she will write things she learned on the poster and add pictures. (This is actually an assignment in our grammar book.)

Third Grade, History, Set One

We read Child's History of the World chapter 75 to review the American Revolution.

• The Story of The Surrender at Yorktown by Zachary Kent -- we didn't read the entire book, just parts about the battle at Yorktown and the surrender. Then we found a video on YouTube so we would know what "The World Turned Upside Down" sounded like (that is what the British played at the surrender).
• There is a graphic (page 31) from A Visual History of the United States by Harold Faulkner, 1953 (pdf download) that shows how the Revolution changed American life.

We read Child's History chapter 76, which is about the French Revolution.

We are reading George Washington's World. We started at page 234, Washington Refuses Absolute Power. We have read through page 285, and are now going to take a break to read more books about the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. I want to catch up to the French Revolution in this book before reading other books about it.

• Understanding the Articles of Confederation by Sally Isaacs -- well written for children; lots of pictures and illustrations
• Shh! We're Writing the Constution by Jean Fritz -- I got the dvd of this book and we watched it
• The Constution of the United States by Christine Taylor-Butler -- I'm having K. read this book on her own.
• A More Perfect Union: The Story of our Constitution by Betsy and Giulio Maestro -- good information, presented in a child-friendly format with lots of illustrations
• We the People: The Story of Our Constitution by Lynne Cheney -- another good book for children
• You Wouldn't want to be an Aristocrat in he French Revolution! by Jim Pipe -- this was the only book in our library system that dealth with the French Revolution in a format interesting to younger children.
• The Industrial Revolution by Carla Mooney -- this book has 8 chapters with a few projects at the end of each chapter. We read the intro and chapter one, which talks about textiles and the changes to spinning and weaving. The project K. chose was making a water wheel (before using steam, factories were built by rivers to use the river's current to run the machines). My goal is to do one chapter each Set.

If you have an older child, The French Revolution by Adrian Gilbert looks like a really good book.

We have started California History. I am using a publication called "California Weekly Explorer". It is in a newspaper format with 32 four-page issues. The ones I am using are twenty-plus years old, and California Weekly Explorer no longer has them, but I believe I found them, now called My California.

We are also making a notebook of our 50 states in the order in which they joined the union. We have one page for each state. The information on it is:

• Name
• Postal abbreviation
• State capital
• Date it became a state and its ordinal number
• State nickname
• State flag (printed from www.statesymbolsusa.org)
• State bird with picture
• State flower with picture
• State tree with picture
• Interesting fact
• Important places or people

We are working on getting the first thirteen states done, and then will do each state as it joins the union.