How to start 3rd grade in the middle of the year?

[Anonymous]

I'm pulling my 3rd grader out of public school. Virtual learning has been okay, but I know she would do better at home. How do I start in the middle of the year? I homeschool her younger sibling, but I started at the beginning of the year. Do I start at the beginning of the curriculum? The middle? Help!

[Anonymous]

I would evaluate what she knows of the topics she covered. If she’s mastered one topic (ie. place value), skip it. If she hasn’t mastered another (ie. multiplication facts), I’d start there before introducing topics she hasn’t seen yet.

[Anonymous]

I just pulled my 4th grader out of public school at the beginning of the second quarter. This is my first time homeschooling.
This is what I have done: I pulled the grade level curriculum guides for each subject to see what was covered through 1st quarter. I did not repeat this material. Instead, I moved on to new material. With math we are using Kumon workbooks to provide practice plus he take a once per week math course and completes this work also, so I think I’m covered. If we run out of other options, I’ll have him start Khan academy to cover material for next year as well. He was already ahead in math so we are just moving forward as always. For literature and science, we are using Moving beyond the page. They provide the curriculum guides, I picked the books or topics I thought would be most important. I am not following the school guide completely but should cover more topics in more depth by the end of the year. For Social Studies, I am not following the school guide at all (in VA, 4th grade is Virginia studies). I did cover Jamestown (by reading a National Geographic book) and am doing some colonial/early US history; but intend to do more modern history (purchased a book for kids) as well, including WW2 and pair this with non-fiction and fiction reading on the same period. I did this with the Jamestown unit, he read a non-fiction and fictional book in the same period. It helped to tie things together. I also intend to cover more Native American studies, African American history and possibly study of other countries if time allows.
Because I also work full time and can’t work from home always, I’m listening to the audiobooks while I drive to and from work at the same time he is reading the books, so we can discuss them together. On the weekends, we read aloud to each other.

[Anonymous]

For MCPS the review of this semester is practically over. But you can start homeschooling at any point during the year. The next semester starts at the beginning of January and you should start documenting schoolwork then. The curriculum is your choice but she should complete her 3rd grade curriculum by the end of the year. You do not need to repeat the first semester unless you feel she’s deficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm pulling my 3rd grader out of public school. Virtual learning has been okay, but I know she would do better at home. How do I start in the middle of the year? I homeschool her younger sibling, but I started at the beginning of the year. Do I start at the beginning of the curriculum? The middle? Help!

I pulled my 4th grader out mid year last year. We did different things for different subjects.

For math, I bought the same curriculum the school was using, and picked up where they left off. It wouldn't have been my first choice but it was fine for a semester.

For science, we picked a new topic, not the one the school had been using, and started the topic from the beginning. In my experience, elementary school science is usually a series of discrete topics and content is less important that process, so we just covered fewer topics than if we'd had a whole year.

For social studies I combined my kids, and so he jumped into the middle of a study of history that his older brother (already homeschooled) was doing.

For reading and literature we just chose books that were interesting to him, and read and discussed.

For writing, because it was an area where I felt like he wasn't getting enough, we chose a curriculum and started from the beginning, and moved faster so that we covered the whole year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For MCPS the review of this semester is practically over. But you can start homeschooling at any point during the year. The next semester starts at the beginning of January and you should start documenting schoolwork then. The curriculum is your choice but she should complete her 3rd grade curriculum by the end of the year. You do not need to repeat the first semester unless you feel she’s deficient.

The review doesn’t start until Dec 1st. Not sure what you are taking about.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks all. I’m not in MCPS and am familiar with my county’s review process, so I’m not worried about that. I think I’ll start over with some subjects and asses to make a decision on others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For MCPS the review of this semester is practically over. But you can start homeschooling at any point during the year. The next semester starts at the beginning of January and you should start documenting schoolwork then. The curriculum is your choice but she should complete her 3rd grade curriculum by the end of the year. You do not need to repeat the first semester unless you feel she’s deficient.

The review doesn’t start until Dec 1st. Not sure what you are taking about.

Exactly. There is one more school day until you can submit your portfolio for the first semester.