Yesenia 3rd Grade Evidence Blog
“Behind every child who believes in themselves, is a parent who believed first. ”
Subjects
Here is a list of subjects we taught this school year. Click on the button to take you to the subject and the grey arrow to bring you back.
While you’re here, check out our 1 second video of the first semester of the school year
Mathematics
This year we started with Life of Fred mathematics series. I read each book out loud to both of the children and then the kids answered the questions at the end of the chapter. It was writing, math and reading all in one! LOF was a great way to get the kids interested in math and they really enjoyed Fred’s story. As a voracious reader, Yesenia finished all the LOF books from A-I. I only required her to answer the questions until “Cat” but she just loved the stories so much she read the rest. Not pictured here is “Goldfish” since it as at her grannie’s house.
After finishing the Fred books, we resumed our multiplication drills. We used dry erase and she did a new set every week. We switched to multiplication in 7 days method and used flashcards.
She did really well and mastered many of them. When then switched to Singapore Dimensions at the beginning of November. We went at a slower pace than the suggested time periods so we’ve taken a little longer to complete.
Singapore math is a rich curriculum and teaches mathematical thinking versus “drill and kill”. It’s an intensive way of teaching math but I feel my children are benefiting from this foundation. Honestly, when I saw it I was reminded of the GRE prep course I took years ago! I always wondered why they hadn’t taught it to me that way from the beginning so when I saw the series, I was immediately convinced. It is simple, yet effective. Since this is our first time with Singapore Dimensions it was a bit of a learning curve on how to teach it, and I’m honestly learning along with them at some points. It often took more than the recommended amount of time for their attention spans so it has been slow progress.
Yesenia had this really interesting way of keeping herself engaged with Math. She created these drawings called the “no-no’s” that reflected her different emotions. There was a sad, confused, frustrated, proud, winning, happy and smart no-no! It was really cool to see and even though her attention span wanes, she actually does well with Math. She’s learning, and that’s the important part.
Explanation of the No-No’s
We have had a bit of setback with the multiplication, now that we are cycling back to it with division she has forgotten most of her facts that she seemingly mastered. We’ve introduced skip counting and some skip counting songs but I’m very much going to have to dedicate some more time to get these facts down so she has a great foundation. That’s completely fine by me because after all one of the many reasons we choose to homeschool is so that we can focus on mastery. Great athletes always practice the basics, and so must great students!
Last but not least, we started to incorporate Dreambox. It served two purposes for me. One, to warm up their brains for math in a fun and engaging way and secondly, to make use of the “down” time while I’m teaching the other child. Yesenia had used it during FLVS and really enjoyed it. She learned better that way and I decided mid-year to incorporate it.
Language Arts
We used First Language Lessons Level 3 as our grammar curriculum. The program included dictation, letter writing, rules of grammar, poem recitation (memory work) and sentence diagraming. I learned so much from this program, things I never knew (or maybe just forgot?). Her favorite part was learning the poems. She has such a good mind for poetry she naturally took to it.
Here is a Tragic Story Poem:
The program has a workbook portion that level 1 did not
Spelling
For spelling, we started with Spectrum spelling for Grade 3. She was working through the book just fine, but I didn’t think it really taught her how to spell, just how to memorize. So I decided to use the All About Spelling program with her too. The program teaches spelling as phonics. So ideally, she would have more of an understanding of spelling than just basic memorization offers. The program suggested we started at level 1. There were times it was really a breeze for her but I’m glad we did start at level 1 because she picked up some good methods on how to spell and put some things in perspective for her.
The video has both the workbook and AAS notebook combined:
Reading
Yesenia is a reader. She reads and reads and reads and reads. It was great because I could just assign her a text to read and turn my attention to helping Fellini with his reading. However, there are times when I’ve had her read aloud and she still struggles with words here and there. Her reading comprehension is outstanding but getting her thoughts to paper needs a little more attention. In order to work with her comprehension more, we used a couple of excellent units from Teachers Pay Teachers all based on her interest in the Harry Potter series. One of the final projects she had to complete was making a poster for the book and completing an “interview” as Hermione Granger. She didn’t want to film but we managed to get an interview with her brother as Harry Potter, which was really fun. She did create a poster and completed the interview.
Here is a video of her HP activity booklet:
Here is also a link to her reading log from Epic, a digital repository of children’s books. She also completed Alice In Wonderland, HP Sorcerer’s Stone and Goblet of Fire which is not on there.
We also really enjoyed the How to Teach Your Kids Shakespeare book. The kids really enjoyed listening to the passages on the website and dissecting the meaning of the poetry or verse. Here is Yesenia reciting a Midsummer’s Night’s Dream passage.
For this verse, I made a couple of printouts for them so we could understand some the visual poetry of the scene. Like the flowers that formed the canopy that Titana was laying in. We also explored some to the meaning behind some of the more antiquated terms of Shakespeares time like weed (undergarments) and how he describes items like “enameled skin” (which is snakeskin). We also listened to the play on Hoopla Digital, as much as they enjoyed this one passage, the entire play was a bit too much to take in. We went scene by scene describing what exactly was happing but their interest did wane. Suffice to say, I’m very glad we introduced Shakespeare because it definitely demystifies his writing.
The second half of the school year we still worked on some Shakespeare but we used this book more and more. It is 101 Best Love Poems that we got from the library. It was a great way to start the beginning of the day and gave them a large range of poems to digest in short format.
Yesenia is designated the official poem scout of the Nature Scouts homeschool group. She often comes up with poetry off the top of her head! Here is a couple of videos of her poetry:
Yesenia also participated in an event called “Poetry in Pajamas”. It was an event for young kids to come out, in pajamas, and present their poetry! Yesenia, of course, got up there and did her thing. She has requested that we do our own version of Poetry in Pajamas and I’m in!
History
We listened to The Story of The World Vol 1 audiobook as our primary lesson material.
For each lesson, we did either a small activity, color sheet or short Q&A.
We also listened to some other great books that fell in line with the Ancient Times Vol 1.
- Julius Ceasar and The Story of Rome
- Egyptian Treasures: Mummies and Myths
- Anansi the Spider
We watched this fun video on the history of China
We made some fun crafts too! We made an Egyptian crown for the white king and the red king. A shield for a Roman soldier, a puppet show for Anansi, we also drew in cuniform and Chinese calligraphy! The culmination of the school year we put together this really fun lap book!
Geography
Geography this year started out with the basics. The continents, the oceans, the cardinal directions. Then we switched to a week by week study of the US States. We kept it very simple. Watch a video (Homeschool Pop US States), draw the state then drill the states and capitals. I don’t expect the kids to remember the capitals since that doesn’t normally happen till about 5th grade, but I think a good introduction is great will the lay the foundation for when we do.
She made this really awesome drawing of the US States by hand without tracing. We used a book called Draw the USA by Kristin J. Draeger
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Spanish
We used Rosetta Stone for just about 20 min 3x a week. Mid-year we added Homeschool Spanish Academy. I don’t think we will continue after the credits we purchased are used, as I don’t like the teaching style. There isn’t a whole lot of teaching, it’s introducing the words then quizzing them. My kids don’t work like that. They can’t retain information that quickly and it only caused frustration. We will continue with it until our credits run out but Rosetta Stone works for my daughter. Fellini has a harder time with it.
This year we also were privileged enough to participate in Spanish Tea Time! It was a neat way to get the kids interested in learning Spanish and actually using it. Here are some pictures.
Science
Science-wow there is just so much. We started the year going to NASA Kennedy space center. We were fortunate enough to catch the Parker Solar Probe blast into outer space before it headed to the Sun.
We continued with the space theme and learned about the planets with videos from and the book Exploring Our Solar System by Sally Ride. We made models of the planets, learned about the different forces of nature such as gravity, electromagnetism, and friction.
Last year May, I personally went to NASA Johnson and participated in the NASA SUITS project as a student. So the kids had a really cool personal look at what kind of work goes into the technology of our mission to outer space. They even participated as user testers during our end of year show for the Augmented Reality device the team created!
Weekly, we had a Surf Skate Science class, that taught science along with surfing! It was a cool way to get their minds and bodies involved.
The second half of the school year, we switched to different topics of study for the kids. Yesenia focused on Chemistry per the recommendation of Well Trained Mind. We started off with a chemistry book Adventure with Atoms and Molecules but switched to Harry Potter themed Chemistry classes with Outschool.
We also explored Birding with the South Florida Audobon society. Here are some pictures of the kids in class.
The different types of feathers
As part of the Nature Scouts homeschool group, we did a monthly Ocean Adventure where we found all different types of flora, fauna.
In this group, we also had a monthly gardening class using the Fairchild curriculum to learn about the plant world.
Drawing Flowers
We participated in the Junior Ranger program where we visited national and state parks learned about the history, plants, and animals of the park and earned our Junior Ranger badges while doing it!
Also on the list, we participated in a Butterfly study with FIU. Our job to was to catch and tag all the butterflies we could find to help scientist study the migratory patterns/population of the butterflies on campus. This was also with Nature Scouts.
Zebra Long wing
At FIU we had the opportunity to visit a real deal chemistry lab with real scientists! We got to look inside microscopes to view different types of bacteria and learn all about the lab.
Looking at Apgar
At the Nature Center in the Keys, the kids learned all about sea creatures and got to touch a few!
Needless to say, the kids have a very enriching science fueled school year!
Music
This year we used Hoffman Academy for piano lessons. We also listened to Stories of Great Composers for Children by Thomas Tapper podcast. She actually has taken to the piano really well and I’m excited to see if she’ll stick with it next year.
Physical Education
PE is pretty simple. We have a park day every Thursday and once a month beach day with Nature Scouts. We did Yoga every Wednesday up until March then switched to Parkour once a week. We also had a weekly Surf Skate Science class in the first semester. They had swim classes twice a week, then Fellini switched to Soccer classes twice a week with a game on Saturdays.
We went Kayaking at Oleta State Park and bike rides to the nearby park! We try to keep them active and moving their bodies.
Sometimes they did Cosmic Kids Yoga on Youtube and Go Noodle to get some exercise when we have a home day.
Art
We incorporated art into other activities mostly, although we did have some days solely dedicated to it. We used our nature journals to draw what we found during the day. We also used art in science making slime and in History making hats, pyramids and dioramas.
We had a great time learning about Jackson Pollock, Leonardo DaVinci, and Joan Miro. Jackson Pollock was definitely Yesenia’s favorite.
Her favorite Artist Jackson Pollock
We also visited the Perez Art Museum and found some great hands-on activities and of course, the Miami Children’s Museum where we created little pieces of art.
Yesenia also particpated in a drawing class offered by MDPLS. It was taught by a working comic book artist and taught the kids how to draw The Incredibles! Yesenia loves to draw so we also found a cool YouTube channel called Draw So Cute. She loves it and does a great job with her cute drawings.
