We decided to study countries by continent and Z chose Africa to learn about first. We made an African lapbook, then he read books about Africa, watched videos from Travel with Kids series using Amazon Prime and did a Geo-Puzzle of Africa and then we did Europe the same way.
We have found some awesome new books lately! It seems that more publishers are realizing that homeschooling is growing substantially and they're accommodating by coming out with some great materials.
Smithsonian has these Super Simple books and I got all 3. They are laid out very well and of course super simple. I find that these can work in any grade, though they are advertised as for grades 6-12. Adults will even find these valuable!
Z really loves these Ultimate pop-up books, he has looked through them countless times since getting them a few months ago:
Here are the plans for Z's 3rd grade year. We are adding in a lot this year - Latin, cursive, piano lessons, archery, architecture, woodworking and chess.
Bible - Bible Study Guide for All Ages
After finishing up Earth Science, we are moving on to Astronomy. I'm using 2 encyclopedias as my main spine and then fleshing them out with numerous books, videos, games and other fun extras! The spines are Usborne's First Encyclopedia of Space and DK's First Space Encyclopedia (my favorite one). I also have Christian Kid's Explore Earth & Space but it didn't have enough for Z.
I created an outline using the 2 spines (USB and DK) and divided the subject material into categories. Some of these are short and some are packed full of material, like space exploration and the solar system.
Astronomy Outline of Categories
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I decided to add in a new writing program because Z needs something more, so I chose Writing & Rhetoric, Book 1: Fable: *Update - Writing & Rhetoric turned out to be difficult for Z to grasp what they were asking. It really seems to be too much in my opinion and there are easier ways to do the instruction than what is in this book. We decided to go back to Writing With Ease 2 and just have freewriting days for Z to indulge his creative writing talent.
He also is very interested in what words mean, so I decided to order a simple vocabulary program to see how it likes it. I chose the older version of Wordly Wise, starting with book A:
My son is a big fan of David Adler's books! My daughter is also, as she had read almost all the Cam Jansen series when she was younger. Z loves reading Adler's books and I checked out as many as I could find at the library and then we own some as well. I highly recommend them!
This list consists of Z's independent assigned reading time during school-time. These are higher grade reading-level books intended to be a challenge and introduce new words. He reads out aloud to me during this time and usually for 20 minutes.
For the stories by Osborne (Mary Pope Osborne), we own her book, "Favorite Medieval Tales" and it is excellent! Medieval tales are gory and some of the pictures represent that but I believe the tales of heroism and bravery are much needed, especially for boys that want to be noble men.
K seems to always get 99 percentile in math every year and this year was no different! (Thank you Art Reed and Saxon!) She improved her scores in spelling and other reading/English sections too by a big amount, making her overall composite score 97 percentile and 9 stanine!
I'm living proof that you mother, can do it! Don't let anyone make you feel you are inferior or don't have what it takes. Put GOD FIRST and He will do the rest. We made knowing God and the Bible the most important and everything else fell into place. Seek Him first and don't chase success without Him!
We took a break from history read-alouds because we stopped doing SOTW and have instead been doing Abeka's American history and states and civics studies. However, I decided to go ahead and add back in the ancient history read-alouds now because they're such good books and I don't want to miss out on them just because they don't match our current history study. We're also reading American history books mixed in as we go.
Earth Science Topics
