Our 3rd Grade Curriculum Choices
I probably sound like a broken record, but I can’t believe it’s almost time to start school again! This year, I will have a third grader, which is even harder to believe! Why this child keeps growing up this quickly is beyond me, but I wish I could freeze time.
Second grade was one of our best homeschool years yet! We’ve finally settled into a groove of what feels natural, both with my teaching style and Claire’s learning style.
If you’re interested why we chose to homeschool, check out this post
(This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase a product from a link on this page. To read more about this, check out our disclosure page here. Thanks for supporting Beautiful Minutiae!)
Ambleside Online
If you’ve been following along for any length of time, you’ve probably realized that we’re big Charlotte Mason fans around here. We aren’t purists when it comes to following her educational philosophy, but we do glean most of our inspiration and goals from her method.
Last year, we pieced together our curriculum from many different sources, but used quite a bit from Simply Charlotte Mason (particularly geography and history). I decided to (mostly) switch to Ambleside Online for two reasons.
The main reason was cost. Many of the books from Ambleside Online are public domain, so you can get free versions online or purchase the books relatively inexpensively. Simply Charlotte Mason’s history alone would’ve been several hundreds of dollars for books (and next year, we would’ve needed new books).
The other reason I chose Ambleside was because there were so many amazing books I wanted to read to Claire last year, but there were so many history readings from Simply Charlotte Mason, there was just no time to read anything extra. Ambleside Online scheduled all of the books I wanted to read (and more!) and spread the readings out in a way that was not overwhelming. I’ll be detailing all the books more specifically later on, but I wanted to explain why we made the switch.
Towards the end of the school year, we gave some of the history readings a try and Claire absolutely loved them (especially Viking Tales!). Even though Claire will be in third grade, we will begin with the Year 2 readings, as they follow where we left off in history. Ambleside Online is advanced, so she’s not even remotely “behind” by doing Year 2 instead of Year 3.
Language Arts
As in previous years, we are continuing to use Brave Writer! There are many things we’ve tweaked or changed over the years, but Brave Writer has been the one constant. We absolutely love their Arrow guides. They teach the mechanics of grammar through copywork passages of amazing books.
We typically buy our own guides, rather than just do the year long subscription, because we like to choose our own books (you can find individual guides here). Here are some of the books we’re planning to read this year:
I tried to choose a good mix of classics with newer books, and more serious books with silly ones.
In past years, we have used Brave Writer’s Jot it Down for creative writing projects. This year, we will likely alternate some of those projects with Partnership Writing (which is for the next age range up). We’ll just find the projects that seem most fun to us and go with it. The projects are designed for you to complete one a month, but we’ve never done more than a few projects per year. Some projects have taken us months, other times we take a month or two off. We don’t stress about it and just enjoy the projects we complete.
Math
For math this year, we are continuing with Life of Fred and Math Mammoth.
For those of you who haven’t heard me rave about Life of Fred, it’s our absolute favorite. It follows the story of Fred, a 5 year old math professor at KITTENS University in Kansas. It’s silly, fun and teaches well. There are 10 books in the elementary series and you’re supposed to complete two books a year. This year, we completed three (Cats, Dogs and Edgewood). This year, our plan is to complete Farming and Goldfish.
However, I felt as if Life of Fred wasn’t quite enough practice for her. So we use Math Mammoth to fill in the gaps. I rarely do every single problem on the page (oftentimes there are a LOT), but it’s enough of a boost to cement things. We will alternate Life of Fred and Math Mammoth.
History
Ambleside Online’s rich and beautiful selections of history readings were one of the main reasons we decided to try it this year. Towards the end of last year, we did some readings from Ambleside Year 1, to test out how we liked the books and they were wonderful. However, Ambleside Online is very euro-centric in its history. That’s not entirely a bad thing, as much of American history is rooted in Europe, but I wanted to broaden our horizons. I decided to add Story of the World to diversify. The readings are very short and with about three a week, we can easily complete Volume 2 this year. This year we are learning about the Middle Ages. Here are some of the books we are using:
This Country of Ours
A Child’s History of the World
Trial and Triumph
The Little Duke
Story of the World, Vol. 2
Science
Science was a bit of a tough decision this year. Ambleside Online does include science in it’s curriculum, but for this year, it’s entirely literature based and about nature. Neither of those things were bad, but I had previously purchased a few Good and the Beautiful science units. I haven’t loved every science unit of theirs we’ve done (in fact, marine biology was the only one I loved, but botany was really good also), so I considered looking for something new.
I decided to just use the units we already had and I can always revisit it next year. This year we will be doing Meteorology and Human Body. We also have Kingdoms and Classifications, but I’m fairly certain we will have enough to do with just the first two units.
We will also be reading The Burgess Animal Book for Children. We love the Burgess books, so we’re looking forward to reading this one. In lieu of narration, our plan is to draw a picture after each chapter and create our own animal book, summarizing what we’ve read. I think it’ll be so fun!
Literature
Normally, I would just count literature as our Brave Writer read alouds (which definitely still count), but I’m really excited to schedule in some more classic literature with Ambleside Online! They schedule one chapter per week, so it’s very doable. Here are the books we are reading this year:
Ambleside had a few books scheduled that we’d read recently, so we did make a few substitutions. They have a list of recommended reading if your child wants to read more, so we just swapped out from that list. We may include some of the other books on that list as read alouds throughout the year.
Included in literature this year is Shakespeare! No one is more excited about this than Claire. She absolutely loves his plays (A Midsummer Night’s Dream in particular). This is the resource we are using this year:
The goal of Ambleside Online is to read children’s versions of Shakespeare’s plays while they are young, so that when they read Shakespeare in its original language, they are already familiar with the plot. That gives them the opportunity to truly appreciate the beauty of the language, rather than trying to decode the plot with words that are difficult or unfamiliar. By not waiting until high school, it also takes the intimidation out of reading Shakespeare. We haven’t read Lamb’s Shakespeare before, but we’ve loved these books:
Geography
Geography is the only subject that we are continuing to use Simply Charlotte Mason. We absolutely loved Visits to Europe last year. Claire memorized so many of the European countries (more than I knew!) and we loved reading about life in other countries with Hungry Planet and Material World. This year we’re continuing with Visits to North America! It’s so inexpensive and we already own the main books. They also have recommended books to enjoy throughout the curriculum, but those we typically request from the library, rather than purchase.
Ambleside Online includes geography also. The younger years read Holling C Holling books. We read Pagoo when we studied Marine Biology and absolutely loved it! Since the readings are short and only one chapter a week, I decided to try the Ambleside readings this year also. This may end up being too ambitious, but I figured the worst thing that happens is that we drop them partway through the year. The books we are reading this year (Paddle-to-the-Sea and Tree in the Trail) also reinforce North American geography, so I believe they will tie in well.
Bible
During second grade, we used a Bible reading plan from Dan Bohi Ministries (I’m unable to find it on their page now for some reason). We got about 2/3 of the way through, so we will work on completing it this year. After that, I may let Claire choose a book of the Bible to study. I have also considered purchasing How Great is Our God, a kids devotional by Louie Giglio that is all about God and science. It’s the sequel to Indescribable, which we used in first grade and loved.
Picture Study and Composer Study
This year we will be following Ambleside Online’s schedule for both composers and artists. Not only does it schedule the artist/composer, but also suggests which of their works to study. Not only does this make it a little easier than me figuring it out on my own, it also ensures that we study artists and composers that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. However, one of the artists suggested is Rembrandt and we studied his art in second grade, so I will substitute someone else during the third term. A Humble Place provides lots of artist studies (many of them for free!), so this is a great resource for anyone who wants to implement picture study in their homeschoool.
Nature Study
For nature study, we will continue using Exploring Nature with Children. We love this curriculum! It is so wonderful for those who want to incorporate nature study, but aren’t sure where to start. Each week has a subject to study in nature (pond life, honeybees, wild flowers, autumn leaves and bird migration are a few examples). Each week gives book suggestions, picture study resources, poems and more. You can go as deep into the subject as you’d like. I loved having a jumping off point, giving me ideas of what to look for on our nature walks each week.
We started out the year strong with nature walks, but as the weather grew colder, we were less consistent. Then COVID-19 hit and we no longer took the car one day a week for piano lessons and nature walks, so we stopped altogether. However, during that time, we were also going on family hikes once or twice a week. So although there were no formal nature walks, we were definitely out observing nature fairly often. I hope to be more consistent this year, especially as we were able to purchase a new car in April! We have two cars for the first time since before Claire was born! It’s still so exciting to me.
Typing
Typing was not very consistent last year, but we really struggled with the curriculum we had chosen. We will just be using free lessons from typing.com for the time being. At some point, we may look for a different curriculum, but it’s unlikely right now. Claire enjoys the games on typing.com and it’s free, so I’m content.
Art
We have really enjoyed using the lessons from Yellow Spot Sun in the past. This year, we’re continuing with their Kingly Kingdoms course to align with studying the Middle Ages in history. It teaches symmetry, upside down drawing, perspective and abstract art using chalk pastels and acrylic paint as mediums. We’re looking forward to another year using these videos!
Music
Claire has continued to thrive with piano. We will continue lessons. We had quite a break, thanks to COVID-19, but we’re looking forward to getting back into a more normal rhythm this fall. She did have a recital in July, which was so fun to attend. She has a really hard time playing in front of people, but I was proud of her for pushing past her fear and doing it anyway. She did a wonderful job!
Well, that’s it for us this year! It sounds like a lot of reading, but it’s spread out, so it’s not as overwhelming for the whole year. Are you homescholing this year? If so, what kind of curriculum are you using? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
2 Comments
Madeline
I realize this is an older post, but I’m intrigued by the way you combine AO and Brave Writer. I’m attracted to Brave Writer and am struggling to figure out what I think about CM-style narration (my oldest is 5 so I’m thinking ahead to next year). Do/did you have your daughter do narrations or did you focus on Big Juicy Conversations, or both? From what I’ve read and from my teaching style when I was a full-time teacher (before homeschooling) I lean more towards Big Juicy Conversations, but I recognize that I really struggle to remember things I’ve read and my understanding is that narration could give my kids a tool to avoid that struggle. I’d love any insight you could give!
admin
Sorry for the delayed response! We do utilize narrations, but only for AO readings. With BW, we tend to have conversations and also use the guides to study the mechanics of literature through copywork and dictation. I find that narrations are really helpful for my daughter’s retention and connection to a material, but I’m not as concerned about her retention with BW. I should also add that when we started AO, she did one narration per day and we have worked our way up to narrating all subjects, so it wasn’t overwhelming at first.