Third Grade Curriculum

I pulled my daughter out of public school because I did not feel that she was getting a well-rounded education there, and I am so thankful that I did! I did hours of research on various homeschool programs, and Calvert caught my attention, and so far, we have been very pleased. My daughter has been using the Calvert curriculum for almost three months, and I (as well as other family members) have seen a drastic improvement in her reading and writing skills. I will agree with the others that Science and Social Studies are a little dry, but there are so many ways to get around that, so we find that not to be a big issue at all. My daughter is also enrolled in ATS, and it is nice to see that there is someone who takes the time to read each of her test answers, and takes the time to write a letter in response to what she is doing well, and what areas she could use more practice on. I felt that this was something that was severely lacking in public school as my daughter would rarely receive any of her homework back from her teacher. THANK YOU SO MUCH CALVERT!

This was our 2nd year of using Calvert and boy were we surprised by the jump in degree of difficulty between 2nd and 3rd grade.

We felt that Science and Social Studies were dry and difficult to enjoy. We actually supplimented with other curriculum. The Science needs to be reviewed and updated as there were several outdated topics, especially the nutrition section, the food pyramid is out dated by at least 6+years. Math had a few rough spots on the testing portions. The test did not always relate as closely to the workbook as would have made it comfortable for myself and my student.

By far my daughters favorite subjects were Famous Americans and Mythology.My greatest joy with Calvert is how well the phonics and reading work results show up by the end of 3rd grade!! My daughter now loves to read for pleasure.

We are looking forward to fourth grade and the challenges and successes it brings for both of us.

We've been using Calvert since first grade with our first child. Our 2nd child just finished kindergarten. Overall we've been very pleased with materials. The curriculums are very thorough & challenging. I feel my kids are getting even more than what the school system offers. I have noticed that starting with 2nd grade, there seems to be quite a big jump- more subjects & the tests are quite challenging.

I did enjoy the 3rd grade curriculum, but it was quite intense. The subjects offered were great, but I didn't like how the tests overlapped material within their own subjects. For instance, in history, the majority of the test would cover Writers & maybe 2 Explorers. Why not make one test just cover Writers & another Explorers? I felt the same way about Science. I would have to agree with the previous reviewer who suggested more quizzes/tests with fewer topics. With so many subjects, the tests covered A LOT of material.

I liked the material covered in the Activity pages, but it was used for Phonics, Composition AND Geography. It was the one book that I kept forgetting about. Critical thinking & Geography were great workbooks, but it was frustrating how we couldn't do the books in order. Same with the poetry book. We were constantly jumping around in them. There's comfort in covering a book in order. The end goal is more clear. In Critical Thinking, the answers keys only provided answers for the pages listed in the lesson manuel. So if I found an exercise that would benefit my child, but it was not listed in the lesson manuel, there was no answer provided.

Like I said, overall the curriculum is excellent, but it is quite intense. I am currently homeschooling 2 of my 4 children & I'm not quite sure if I can continue Calvert with all of them. I think the last thing I wanted to mention was the test envelopes. Pre-paid postage isn't too much to ask for, is it? But in any case, we need bigger envelopes, preferably 8"x11". Ours are practically bursting at the seems when we mail them in.

In short, both of my children loved the Calvert Third Grade Course. The most loved areas of study were Gods of Greece and Famous Americans.

We have done Calvert since Pre-K and really enjoyed it until 3rd grade. The program became very demanding and although we wanted a rigerous curriculum, I did not feel that my child was really absorbing certain aspects of the program. The science and social studies were dry. The way the program is laid out, sometimes the days were very short and then other days the lesson included just about every subject...so we needed to tweak that. ATS is very stressful because it tests on all the subjects on one big test...Calvert needs to revamp this and possibly have smaller quizzes every 10 lessons to hand in. There are also a lot of mistakes in the answer keys and some subjects did not even provide answers; this was really tough for us. Greek Mythology and Famous Americans were very enjoyable. The math, spelling, geography, critical thinking and phonics were all very well done. We had issues with the computer programs freezing up and a lot of broken links for recommended sites. I actually had a technical support rep argue with me that it was my computer and later he realized the issue was on his side. The educational counselors were wonderful to work with. I wish Calvert would allow more customization so you could purchase subjects separately besides math. I also found it very difficult to work with 2 grade levels at once. The advice offered for this did not work for us. We are not using Calvert this year, but "may" try again next. I will not be purchasing ATS though. I think for the price overall I expected an almost perfect curriculum. It would also be nice if a foreign language was included in the package and not additional.