Our School: Third Grade Curriculum

We are enrolled in Mother of Divine Grace homeschool. MODG is a CLASSICAL curriculum.  I am enrolled in their school, but that enrollment allows me some flexibility in curriculum choices if I keep to the school standards.  I definitely organize the school day in my mind differently than they, but the essence is the same.  My additions are in italics.

The GRAMMAR stage of the Classical curriculum is about memorizing all kinds of relevant facts and whatnot that are helpful in navigating the planet and life.  In the next stage, these facts will be used for detecting logic and truth and later debating these thing to establish a pattern for life, but in these early stages, it's more about acquiring the building blocks.  

Example:  Latin.  Dorothy Sayers famous said that learning Latin is important because it cuts the effort in learning any other subject in half.  My kid has no idea what all this Latin stuff is about, but his brain absorbs it like a sponge and later it will be golden. 




Here's the Original:



Religion:
St. Joseph’s Baltimore Catechism No. 1 
Child’s Bible History (F.J. Knecht) 
blank sketchbook 


Math 
(Option 1): Recommended in Syllabus
Arithmetic 3 (www.abeka.com)
Arithmetic 3 Tests & Drills (www.abeka.com) 
(Option 2):
Saxon Math 3 Homeschool Kit (www.saxonhomeschool.com) 


Reading/Writing:
Primary Language Lessons (E. Serl) 


Spelling:
Writing Road to Reading (R. Spalding) 
Starting a Spelling Notebook: A Nuts and Bolts Guide to The Writing Road to Reading (M.
McAlister)


Poetry:
The Harp and Laurel Wreath (ed. Berquist)


History 
(Option 1):
How Our Nation Began (P. Furlong)
Leif the Lucky (D’Aulaire) 
(Option 2):
Our American Heritage (www.abeka.com) 
Our American Heritage Tests & Quizzes (www.abeka.com) 
Our American Heritage Tests & Quizzes Key (www.abeka.com) 
The Boston Tea Party by Steven Kroll 
Gold Fever (V. Kay) 
Little House on the Prairie (www.amazon.com) 


History (Options 1 and 2 – some are either/or in Option 2):
Christopher Columbus (D’Aulaire) 
Three Ships Come Sailing (G. Waring)
Pocahontas (D’Aulaire) 
If You Sailed on the Mayflower (A. McGovern) 
Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims (C.R. Bulla) 
Visiting a Village (B. Kalman) 
Life in a Colonial Town (S. Senzell Isaacs) 
If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days (B. Brenner) 
The Courage of Sarah Noble (A. Dalgliesh) 
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain (A. Dalgliesh) 
Paul Revere’s Ride (H.W. Longfellow, ill. Rand) 
George Washington (D’Aulaire) 
Meet Thomas Jefferson (M. Barrett) 
Benjamin Franklin (D’Aulaire)
George the Drummer Boy (N. Benchley) (I Can Read series)
Sam the Minuteman (N. Benchley) (I Can Read series) 
The Boston Coffee Party (I Can Read series) 
If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution (K. Moore) 
If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon (E. Levine) 
Sarah, Plain and Tall (P. MacLachlan) 
The Josephina Story Quilt (I Can Read series) 
The Drinking Gourd (I Can Read series) 
Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie (Roop) 
Abraham Lincoln (D’Aulaire) 
If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad (E. Levine) 
Robert E Lee: Young Confederate (H.A. Monsell) (Childhood of Famous Americans series)
Clara Barton (A. Stevenson) (Childhood of Famous Americans series) 
Little House in the Big Woods (L.I. Wilder – 1st in Series of 9 Books) 


Geography 
(Option 1):
Our American Heritage Map Study Skills (www.abeka.com) 
States and Capitals Flashcards
(Option 2):
atlas along with a standard map skills book
States and Capitals Flashcards 


Science:
Exploring God’s World (www.abeka.com)
Exploring God’s World Student Quiz, Test & Worksheet Book (www.abeka.com)
Exploring God’s World Quiz, Test & Worksheet Key (www.abeka.com)


Latin:
English from the Roots Up, Volume I Word Cards 


Art:
Child-Size Masterpieces: Mommy, it’s a Renoir! – Text (Aline D. Wolf) 
Child-size Masterpieces: Mommy, It’s a Renoir! – Step 4 
Child-size Masterpieces: Mommy, It’s a Renoir! – Step 5 


Music:
Let’s Learn Music #2 (pub. Hayes) 
Music Masters, set 3 (Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Strauss, Verdi, Berlioz, & Foster/Sousa)


Reading:  
30 minutes/day





How it Shakes out for my Family:


Religion:

We begin the day with a prayer and a group retelling about the saint of the day.  We follow the syllabus, though we do it all together so that the younger kids hear the questions a million times before they have to memorize them.  And the older kids, hear the younger kids doing the earlier questions, so we can double dip on the review.  


Math 
We did option 1 for half the year, but my son is really distracted by the Abeka worksheet style once things get challenging.  And all that drill on things he already knew was busywork for him.  He wasn't losing skills if he left them alone for a week or two, so we switched to Math Mammoth.  I totally forgot that Saxon was the recommended alternative since it's not got lesson plans in the syllabus.  


Reading/Writing:
We follow the syllabus.  MODG does a wonderful job of turning the mountains of busywork in this sweet, old book into doable, applicable activities.  For example, instead of all the copywork on fake letters, they have you write a real letter and send it to your relatives.  And they skip all the Aesop's retellings and copywork since we did SO MANY of those in previous years.  Some Charlotte Mason schools spend two years on this book, but since it's so streamlined by the MODG syllabus, we get it done in one.


For reading, we use the Faith and Freedom readers.  He reads and retells them to me.  Also, we read easy readers in the evening for more practice.


Spelling:
I dictate six words a day and orally test the previous 18.  


Poetry:
We follow the syllabus, except that instead of writing the whole poem after it's memorized, we trace the weekly stanza twice and then copy it into the poetry notebook and illustrate it on Friday.  


History 
We use Option 1 according to the syllabus...EXCEPT...and this is the only time you'll ever hear me say this, the history assignments are unrealistic!  It's not too much to get done in a year, just the way it's scheduled is NOT GOOD.  We have weeks of no supplemental reading and then BOOM, we're supposed to read Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims in a day!  I've had to rework the schedule a lot to spread out the reading and get it off that one day.  Also, we don't usually do the study lessons at the back of the chapter.   My son isn't a strong enough reader for that yet, so we do notebooking pages instead for each chapter and reading selection.


Geography 
We follow the syllabus, but generally end up doing the workbook orally.  We also use my Montessori United States puzzle for reviewing states and capitals.  We play games with the puzzle too, trying to tell the states with our eyes closed and feeling the edges, putting the puzzle back together without the frame, etc.  In fact, this was so effective, that the last ten pages or more of the workbook were irrelevant.  He already knew all the state locations.


Science:
We follow the syllabus, minus the tests.  


Latin:
We follow the syllabus.


Art:
We follow the syllabus.


Music:
We follow the syllabus, but use Hayes#1 since we didn't do it last year.



30 Minutes of DAILY Reading

Our school recommends 30 minutes a day of read-aloud time.  I do all three kids together.  We split our time between nature stories, tall tales, picture books, and the occasional liturgical year story.  I also dabble in Baldwin and Eggleston history books and Holling C Holling geography.  Chapter books happen on car trips.