I’ve been working on planning Princepesa’s third grade work. Some things are easy because we’ll just do-the-next-thing, but there are a few subjects that I’ve been wrestling with. I’ve been working on this for a while because third grade seems to be where things really step up a notch, and also sets the direction for the next several years.
I’ve also been thinking about where she needs to be by the end of second grade in order to move into third grade work. In my mind this mostly involves doing more of her own writing. Right now she dictates all of her narrations and I do the writing, and I also do the writing for grammar. My goal is to have her writing her answers to grammar assignments and most of her own narrations by the end of this school year.
History – this is an easy one. We’ve done Story of the World 1, are doing 2 now, and will do 3 next year. We’ll do SOTW 4 for her fourth grade year, and then go to Tapestry of Grace for our remaining cycles through history.
Grammar – another easy one. Rod & Staff grammar has been perfect for us and we’ll stick with it for the long haul.
Bible – we’ve enjoyed the Explorer’s Bible study and will do the NT survey next year. It’s hard to find a systematic, expository Bible study for this age and this fits the bill perfectly.
Math - Horizons Math has finally helped us to find our groove and I’m hoping to finish level 2 by the end of this year so we will be able to start level 3 on time next year. I try to find the balance between moving her through the work and moving at a pace that allows her to master the material, so we’ll see if we achieve that. Right now I plan to stay with Horizons through level 6 for her.
Latin - we just started a combination of Prima Latina and Minimus in the last couple of weeks. Song School Latin was fun, and when I let her set the pace, she buzzed through it. She’s doing fine on PL for now, but I’m not sure if progressing to Latina Christiana I in third grade will be too difficult or if she’ll be able to do it. We’ll play this by ear and see where we end up.
Spelling - she’s a natural speller, so I just have her doing Spelling Workout. The thing is it feels so much like busy work – she rarely misspells a word and all I have to do it point it out and she gets it and moves on. I think a lot of that is because she reads so much, but I was always an intuitively good speller and I think she just is too. So I debate between just dropping spelling and addressing it as it comes up in her narrations and writing, going to vocabulary study, trying a different spelling curriculum like Spelling Wisdom, or just sticking with SWO. Oy. I have books D and E already, so we’ll go through those and then I will be forced to make a decision.
So - there ends the easy choices.
Writing - we’ve done WWE 1 and are doing 2 now. It’s not something that we jump up and down about, but we don’t hate it either, and I think she’s making progress. I can tell that she is better at holding longer dictations in her mind as she writes them, and is getting better at summarizing rather than repeating the story back word for word.
We’re in Classical Conversations and I could put her in Essentials next year. I do think she could do the work, but have been wrestling with whether IEW is what we want to use for writing. After a lot of research, and several long discussions with my husband, I think we’re going the progymnasmata route, rather than the IEW route. We’ll use Writings Tales 1 and 2, then go to Classical Writing – Homer for 5th grade.
Science - We’ve never done science well or systematically. I think that’s mostly my fault, but still – I need to do better. We do read plenty of library books and they do science memory work and experiments through Classical Conversations. My debate here is between just doing a reading/nature study/science kit approach to science for a couple more years or finding a formal science curriculum that works for us. I wish there was a SOTW for science, but alas, I am not the one to create one.
I’ve looked at so many options – Noeo, Easy Classical schedules, and God’s Design for Science series. At one point I was sure we were going to do Singapore’s My Pals Are Here. Bottom line? I really need to find a science that allows us to read from a book, read some extra library books, do a notebook page or two, and move on. Complicated experiments just won’t happen. Another oy and a head slap.
How complicated can I make this?
We have stalled on this for a long time. Frankly, I am anti-game system. In a serious way. I grew without a television even, and it irks me to no end to see kids connected to a phone/DS/videogame wherever they go. I wanna holler “put that down and talk to someone!”(A side note: read 
You know how at the end of his little science DVD’s he always puts a silly song – they rewrite pop hits with words for the current topic? A bit Al Yankovich, but not so annoying.


