Science Secular Homeschool Curriculum Skills List | Third Grade

Science concepts create the themes for some of the units within Third Grade Complete. The activities and experiments teach the grade-level skills in a fun and engaging way.

• Use a scientific method.
• Understand that animals have instincts which help them survive.
• Learn about predators and prey.
• Draw an animal’s habitat.
• Understand the components of a food chain.
• Understand that plants and animals progress through life cycles of birth, growth and development, reproduction, and death; the details of these life cycles are different for different organisms.
• Know that distinct environments support the life of different types of plants and animals.
• Classify objects.
• Learn about types of weather.
• Learn about different types of storms.
• Use a barometer to predict weather.
• Demonstrate refracted light, and produce a rainbow.
• Grow crystals.
• Understand theories of how the world was made.
• Understand that we should care for our world.
• Explore the world through observation and experimentation.
• Learn about peanut plants and their uses.
• Learn the process of harvesting peanuts.
• Learn about peanut allergies and anaphylaxis.
• Make predictions and draw conclusions based on patterns or evidence.
• Understand the importance of healthy living.
• Recall the four food groups, and evaluate diet for good nutrition.
• Recall the five senses.
• Apply physics principles: potential and kinetic energy, inertia, force, friction.
• Differentiate between potential and kinetic energy.
• Observe and apply Newton’s Laws of Motion.
• Create a simple pendulum, and understand the forces that cause a pendulum to swing.
• Discover how water pressure affects the flow of water.
• Identify the parts of a grasshopper.
• Draw a diagram of a spider, and label its body parts.
• Understand how spiders capture and eat food.
• Construct a model of an orb web.
• Learn the four stages of a fruit fly’s life cycle.
• Recognize the characteristics and habitats of various types of animals.
• Learn about Asian animals.
• Understand that sound is made with vibrations.
• Understand that sound waves can travel through different mediums including solids, liquids, and gases.
• Understand and observe that a sound wave travels in a given direction until an object gets in the way of its motion.
• Observe differences in the pitch of sounds.
• Learn how the eardrum works.
• Recognize and create simple and compound machines.
• Understand the process of a water cycle.