What’s Your Third Grader Learning?

I do have other children.  You know, besides the 2 youngest cutesy pies that tend to steal the show. 

When I took those pictures of the one month old and the 2 year old, I also took pictures of the other 3 doing their school work.  While looking at them (and realizing that I haven’t talked about actual school work since… when?) I thought I would let you in on what we’re doing.  And I have a couple of how-I-do’s on my 3rd grader’s work, but that’s for another day.  Today I just wanted to “write to remember” what we were doing at this point in our homeschooling lives.

I’m an eclectic homeschooler.  I’m not sure I would be (though probably, knowing me) if money weren’t an issue, but with lots of hand-me-down stuff, a little online research for scope and sequence (homeschool speak for what they should be learning when), a lot of real life learning, and a few supplemental dollar store workbooks and coloring books (oh, yes, I did just say that!) we have a plan for the year.  Or at least for the moment.

TheOldest is officially in third grade.  Officially, as in that’s what I wrote on the forms that I turned in and he will be taking the state mandatory test in the spring.  However, since we don’t follow a pre-printed curriculum I did do some research on what he should be learning this year, but mostly, I continued along with where we were.

Spanish.  All I’m using is a workbook from Wal-Mart.  It’s bright, it’s colored, and it’s very basic.  He was ready to learn the actual words before now, but he wasn’t ready for all the writing that came with the book.  So, we’re working through the workbook this year.

Grammar.  I had some hand-me-down worksheets from somewhere.  I don’t have any idea if the grammar we’re doing is 1st grade, 2nd grade, or 3rd grade.  No idea.  What I do know is that he hasn’t mastered them yet, so we’re covering them.  One day at a time.  Nouns – proper and common, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, possessive pronouns, capitalization, the basics.

History.  I have a hand-me-down book (and teacher’s guide), but didn’t have the money for the workbook (which makes me sad, but has worked out just fine).  This book covers early American history.

Science.  We’re doing complete unschooling on this one right now.  More about how we’re unschooling later. 

Reading.  He has actually chosen chapter books to read now.  I really never thought this day would come.  His current reads include Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All and The Dangerous Book For Boys.  His required reading is his history book (see above) – I assign between 2 and 6 pages a day. 

Math.  Again we use hand-me-down worksheets.  Because of this, again, we don’t have any idea if they are geared more towards 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade.  And once again, we just do the next thing.  I have looked at some sequencing sites online (plus a little common sense) so I know we need to do addition, subtraction, and are now introducing multiplication.  I will note: math has always come easy to him so I only included worksheets that move pretty quickly through each new concept with only the occasional review sheets added in.  As we did more regrouping (formerly known as carrying and borrowing, by the way) I realized he’s needing more practice.  I also realized he needed much more work with flash card type simple math problems such as 2+3, 6+5, you know, memorization kind of work (to make the regrouping easier). 

Handwriting.  Hoo-wee – handwriting’s the new reading.  Oh my goodness.  I have him write each day, more and more – he now fills out all the language arts worksheets, spanish worksheets, math problems, and just recently I’ve added a requirement of 5 complete sentences a day.    And this amount is our absolute limit – oh.my the fussing that accompanies this much writing.

Writing.  I’ve been working with him on organizing his thoughts, picking titles, and staying on topic.  More on this in my upcoming “how I do” post.

Geography, Social Studies, Current Events, Health.  These all fall into the “learning never stops” category for us, much like science.  He’s very interested in these things and we keep him up to date with news and allowowing him to research his interests.

We’ll, hopefully, be looking into practice tests for the state mandatory test before too long and, yes, I will be “teaching to the test” for this phase in our lives. 

Did I miss anything? 

What are you teaching your 3rd grader?  I’d love to know!