Every school year, homeschool families should be assessing what they want their children to achieve. Of course, there are minimum skills and knowledge that your child should have at the end of each year, but that isn’t always clear. In this post, we’re going to cover homeschool goals for third grade to ensure your child is on a successful track.
I’m going to be covering Third Grade standards for your homeschooler. You know I’m all about handy tools, so here’s a printable Third Grade Standards Checklist for you.
Skills
The first set of standards are basic life skills your child should be achieving in the regular course of their education and interactions with others. Third Grade can show a lot of growth in resilience and focus.
- Cooperates with others and works well in groups
- Can deal with making mistakes and try again
- Explains ideas in detail
- Understands timelines, i.e. before, now, and next
- Tackles challenging tasks and problem solves
- Can make purchases and make change with money
- Shows and increase in patience and self control
- Able to work on tasks for at least 20 minutes at a time
Reading and Writing
The core of everything is reading and writing. By the end of Third Grade, your child should be able write considerably better, edit their own writing, and be a strong reader. FYI, I have some free reading tools that will help you reach these goals.
- Reads fluently and enjoys reading some genres, i.e. they will identify types of books they prefer to read such as science fiction, historical fiction, or non-fiction
- Reads and writes expressively in different forms (prose, poetry, persuasive, etc.)
- Uses different strategies to identify unknown words, such as context clues, pictures, or the dictionary
- Spells words correctly in final writing drafts, meaning they proofread and correct errors in their initial drafts
- Identifies critical connections between texts (shared locations, characters, themes, etc.)
- Uses a wide variety of vocabulary and sentences when speaking and writing
Science and Social Studies
Third Grade Science and Social Studies dives into much more complex subjects with nuance.
- Explains change over time involving events, people, and places
- Identifies geologic events and formation of Earth’s structures (mountains, trenches, axial tilt, etc.)
- Understands entrepreneurship in a market economy.
- Understands structure and function of local government
- Identifies the properties of rocks and soil
- Explains renewable and nonrenewable energy resources
- Identifies traits of offspring from their parents (eye or hair color, widows peak, etc.)
- Finds weight and liquid volume
- Describes ways that energy causes motion or creates change (heat, propulsion, etc.)
Math
By the end of Third Grade, your child will likely have an understanding of most math operations they will use in their day to day lives. This is when you will start to see solid growth in their knowledge as mathematical concepts start to come together.
- Adds and subtracts up to 1,000
- Divides and Multiplies up to 100
- Solves word problems that include all 4 operation (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division)
- Understands and uses fractions
- Finds area and perimeter of an object or space
- Identifies shapes and their attributes (number of sides, right angles, etc.)
- Uses and understands mathematical language (sum, product, total, etc.)
Wrapping Up
Keeping track of these homeschool goals for Third Grade is a great way to make sure that your schooling is on track. I personally like to have my Checklist printed out and hung up in our schoolroom to check on it occasionally. When the kiddos prove they’re competent with an item, I have them check the box. It’s a great reward and makes them feel proud of their hard work.
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Do you have any other goals that you track for you third grader? I’d love to hear your thoughts on social media!