Homeschool Year in Review – 3rd Grade
It’s been a while since I blogged about our specific homeschooling plans. Normally I would do a wrap of the year in May or June, but a move put me a bit behind. So, here is a recap of our homeschool year … better late than never!
If you’d like to read more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post.
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Struggles and Victories
Despite everyone’s best hopes, the 2020-2021 school year was just as tumultuous as the 2019-2020 school year. We were even more thankful that we were established homeschoolers. My hats go off to the parents (and teachers!) that had to juggle the ever changing regulations and back and forth between online and in person.
While we were already used to educating at home, there were some things that drastically changed for us because of COVID-19. A lot of the extracurricular activities Claire had enjoyed at church were cancelled. And halfway through the school year, Claire’s piano teacher moved out of state. Because I was aware that we would likely be relocating soon too, I decided not to find a new piano teacher just yet. We still continued to practice at home and Claire actually grew in her love for piano. Because she wasn’t being stretched in learning new songs, she enjoyed playing just for fun that much more.
We dove into some new curriculum this year (more on that in a bit) and it was the perfect fit for Claire and I. School was more enjoyable than it had been in a while. We weren’t consistent in everything (nature study, art and some of our science), but what we were consistent in, Claire excelled. As always, our favorite times were moments when we were snuggled up on the couch with a great book … even better if there were cookies or cocoa involved!
There were definitely moments of struggle. With our country in such turmoil, it was difficult for me to not let it affect my attitude. Add in some frustration, attitude from my 8 year old, the sudden loss of two beloved pets and seasonal depression, and there were definitely moments that were hard. If you’d like to hear more about what helped us bounce back, check out this instagram post.
As previously mentioned, we moved at the beginning of June. All of the work that goes into cleaning, decluttering, packing (and painting the new place!) made it hard to continue school work. We still finished most of our readings, but we will likely start school a week early to finish up the last few.
Favorites
Claire’s Favorite Subject:Â She doesn’t have one
Tiffany’s Favorite Subject to Teach:Â Language arts or history
Claire’s Least Favorite Subject:Â Math (and it’s my least favorite subject to teach, in case you were wondering)
Claire’s Favorite Read Aloud:Â Poppy by Avi
Tiffany’s Favorite Read Aloud:Â The Secret Garden! It was my all time favorite book as a child and it was so special to share it with Claire … especially in the spring.
Claire’s Favorite Poem:Â Tired Tim by Walter de la Mare
Claire’s Favorite Person to Learn About:Â Paganini! She still requests to listen to his music almost daily and even named her hamster after him.
Claire’s Favorite Hymn:Â A Mighty Fortress is Our God (How Firm a Foundation is a close second)
Claire’s Favorite Thing About Homeschooling:Â Life of Fred … and not getting up early every morning
Tiffany’s Favorite Thing About Homeschooling:Â The flexibility to travel when we want or pack up school and do it outside or at the park
Curriculum Choices
Maybe I’m alone in this, but hearing others share about curriculum is one of my favorite things! I love to hear their thoughts, what worked, what didn’t work and if they’ll continue using that curriculum going forward. I thought I’d share a brief overview of some of the curriculum we used this year.
Ambleside Online
In second grade, we did a few Ambleside Online history readings to see if it was a good fit for us. We had really struggled to find an engaging history curriculum. We enjoyed it so much that we decided we would go all in for third grade.
Ambleside Online doesn’t merely cover history, but is a full Charlotte Mason curriculum that covers literature, history, the arts, geography and science. Math and grammar are the only things that you need to add.
We decided to do Year 2, despite the fact that Claire was in third grade. The history lined up with where we left off and the curriculum is quite advanced. We have absolutely loved our readings from Ambleside Online! Some were very difficult, but there were quite a few times that those ended up being our favorite readings (The Little Duke and Tales from Shakespeare being two examples).
There were a few things about Ambleside Online I didn’t love. I felt like their science was a bit lackluster. For Year 2, we read Burgess Animals and that was all. Claire enjoys Burgess’ writings, but we definitely missed experiments and other fun aspects of science.
We kind of went rogue in terms of picture study, composer study and hymns. The Ambleside selections were great, but there were specific people we were interested in studying. We used Happy Hymnody’s hymn schedule, which changed once a month, rather than once a term. We felt like that was enough time to learn and connect with a hymn and learned some wonderful ones! Claire’s favorite was A Mighty Fortress is Our God.
Life of Fred
Life of Fred remains our favorite math curriculum. It always makes us laugh and, despite the fact math is Claire’s least favorite subject, she often begs for another chapter.
There were a few things that either weren’t covered or that I felt like Claire needed more practice with. For those things, we supplemented with Math Mammoth. It definitely wasn’t as fun, but it was inexpensive and got the job done. Perhaps my favorite thing about Math Mammoth is that it teaches math concepts in several different ways. Every child learns a bit differently, so I liked the way they switched things up.
If you’re interested in reading more of my thoughts on Life of Fred, check out this curriculum review.
The Good and the Beautiful
We have used The Good and the Beautiful for science for a few years now. While not all of the units are my favorite, some of them have been fun. I have mixed feelings about the curriculum as a whole.
We tried to use the meteorology unit, but really struggled with it. Part of this was due to all of the equipment needed to build your own weather station. While I see the value of that, it would’ve cost around $100 to make this weather station for a unit that only lasted a couple of months. I couldn’t justify the cost and we tried to make do without it. It was not as fun or easy to fill out our weather observation sheets without it. We ended up not finishing the unit. Toward the end of the school year, we were exclusively using Ambleside Online’s science, which was also a bit lackluster for us. Science continues to be the area we struggle with the most to find a good fit.
If you’re interested in reading more of of my thoughts about The Good and the Beautiful’s science units, check out this curriculum review.
Brave Writer
While we did read Ambleside Online’s literature choices, we also used Brave Writer Arrow guides. These guides have a book you read aloud, then a section of copywork from the book. This copywork is used not only to teach penmanship, but also grammar and writing techniques. This is the third year we have used Arrows and we still love them! Of all the things I have switched up in our homeschool over the years, this is the one thing that has remained the same.
Each guide is designed to take 4 weeks to complete. Sometimes the copywork passages are quite lengthy. When this was the case, we took longer to work through the guides. While we didn’t end up reading every single book we planned, we still enjoyed quite a few fun ones! Here are the books we read:
The Nerviest Girl in the World
We also typically use Brave Writer’s Jot It Down! for creative writing projects. This year we really didn’t get to many projects, but we did create an illustrated Shakespeare book that Claire enjoyed making. It contained written narration and illustrations of all the plays we read this year.
Simply Charlotte Mason
While we did use Ambleside Online’s geography, it was mostly just reading a few Holling C. Holling books. We loved the books, but I wanted a geography curriculum that included map drills. We used Simply Charlotte Mason’s geography in second grade and loved it, so we continued in third grade. This year we used Visits to North America. I think Claire enjoyed this even more than Visits to Europe, because we learned the states. It’s always exciting to learn about your own country and places you’ve actually been.
Miscellaneous Subjects
These were the main curriculums that we used, but we also used typing.com as a free resource to reinforce typing skills. Not only are there lessons, but there are also games (Claire’s favorite part). Claire also loves to type stories on the computer. While she thinks she’s just having fun, it’s actually typing practice. Shhh, don’t tell her 😉
For nature study, our plan was to continue with Exploring Nature with Children, but we didn’t spend as much time with it as I had originally hoped. It just felt like too much to try to incorporate that while also doing The Good and the Beautiful’s science and Ambleside Online’s science readings. I still think it is an amazing curriculum and may incorporate it this fall when we begin hiking again.
Art was another subject that we struggled in. Our plan was to use Yellow Spot Sun, which is a video based art curriculum, but when the days started feeling long, it was the first thing to go. Any other homeschool moms out there who have high hopes of all the things they want to get done in a school year? For us, it’s inevitable that some balls get dropped. I think it may be time to retool both our schedule and some of my own expectations. Art is something Claire has specifically requested we do regularly this year, so I’m on the hunt for something that works a bit better for our schedule.
I think that covers our school year in a nutshell! I hope you enjoyed this overview. In the very near future, I hope to write a blog post about our plans for 4th grade. I am just now beginning to plan out our year, which is much later than normal. But again, moving definitely messed with my normal timeline. However, it also gave us a much needed break, which always makes us more excited to jump back in!
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