3rd Grade: Language and Writing

The following are the books I've pulled for spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and writing. It's quite a stack, believe me. Each offers something specific that I wanted to incorporate this year. When I originally bought them (at curriculum sales), I knew by skimming through them that they had the potential to spark both my and J's interest. We'll see if I was correct!

Language:

This book gave a nice combination of spelling, vocabulary, and "life" situations using the word lists. J's spelling skills are pretty solid, so this might be a little less challenging that I would like. We'll see as the school year moves along.

This next book seems like it will do a fantastic job of giving a lot of useful practice for the chosen 100 words. J is a great speller, but that doesn't mean he always knows the definition of the words he spells. This book should prove very useful.



I found the series below last year (through another homeschooler). I can't say enough good things about it. The method used to simplify a sentence by removing the prepositional phrases is pure genius. I'm finding the gaps in my own education being filled through using these books for J. The first book teaches the new concepts. The second gives daily review of all concepts learned to date.

Writing:

With all that spelling, vocab, and grammar, the boy just needs to write! In my backlog of posts from the summer, I wanted to show some of J's summer writing. It has been a blast. It also showed me some areas of weakness and areas of interest that I can address this school year.

This next book is an intriguing way to practice punctuation. J is pretty grounded in this area, but more practice never hurts.

Lots of interesting story types, starters, and endings are given in the next book. I went through and chose enough to give him weekly prompts to increase his writing skills.

I didn't NEED to use the next book, but I wanted to. I will be using it more as a creative way to present what J writes. I could just put his writing in a notebook, but I know he will enjoy this visual/creative chance to enhance his work.

One more thing will be included in our language/writing section: Poetry. I never learned much about poetry until I went to college. I had a professor that made poetry absolutely come alive. Ever since then I knew I would cultivate that same excitement for poetry in my child. My plan is mostly to read, read, read lots of good poems. Each month I'll give him an opportunity to do his own using different "types" of poetry (eg Haiku).

I already have proof that he's for this. As I was copying off my pages describing the different types of poems, J caught sight of two of them and ran of to create a series. He's calling it his "food poetry" series. I told you he's a language kind of guy!