3rd Grade History & Geography || Timberdoodle Kit Review
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Learning history and geography through stories and hands-on puzzles has been a game-changer in our family. Here’s how the 3rd grade curriculum kit stacks up.
Our Timberdoodle custom 3rd grade curriculum kit features Story of the World volume 3: Early Modern Times, Skill Sharpeners grade 3, and the 3D PuzzleBall Globe. They are available with the curriculum kit, and also individually.
A special thanks to Timberdoodle Co. for sponsoring this blog series by providing a complimentary curriculum kit for our honest review. All opinions are our own!
PuzzleBall Globe
Last year we had the GeoPuzzles, which are wonderfully detailed, but entail a lot of pieces and concentration. Compared to those, my daughter was ecstatic about the Puzzleball globe.
She completed the puzzleball for the first time is just over an hour of leisurely work with some distractions.
There are 3 ways to put together the puzzle. First, you use the numbers on the back of each piece to put it together from 1 to 180. Once that becomes too easy, the student can move on to looking at the box or instruction sheet to put together the globe by pictures. The final level is putting it together without looking at any picture, and just piecing it together.
I helped her to sort the pieces to make them easier and quicker to find. First, we made three piles: 1-50, 51-100, and 101-180. Then within each pile, we made a row of 1-10, 20s, 30s, 40s, etc. She was able to put together the globe by following the numbers with ease.
The Puzzleball globe is fun for kids and engages them by sharpening fine motor skills, visual discrimination, problem solving, math skills, as well as geography knowledge. The Timberdoodle handbook suggests completing the puzzle once a month to help build the student’s skills.
Skill Sharpeners Geography 3
Skill Sharpeners Geography is a series by Evan-Moore that we have used for years. Full color, with reading, writing, and hands-on activities, each workbook is packed with age-appropriate topics and practical application.
Some topics you will cover in grade 3 include: extreme weather and emergency preparations, U.S. regions, mountains, rivers, deserts, volcanos, foreign language, ancient sites around the world, natural environments, expeditions, and so much more.
Each section of the workbook includes a reading page, visual literacy illustration, vocabulary practice, hands-on activity, and application page. This ensures that students are reading, writing, and putting into practice all that they are learning.
Each exercise can look a little different and includes question and answers, fill in the blanks, crosswords, word searches, and more. My daughter really enjoys the hands-on activities where we have mapped a tornado, drawn a town transportation map, built a mini volcano, and uncovered “artifacts”.
Story of the World Vol. 3: Early Modern Times
Story of the World volume 3 covers Early Modern Times, filling 42 chapters of stories from the Roman Empire to the Gold Rush. The writing style isn’t that of a boring textbook, but rather it’s a beautifully woven story and the characters are described in details that make them come to life. Whether reading the book or listening to the audiobook, children of all ages (and parents) will learn and retain these stories of old.
The textbook includes some illustrations, maps, and timelines which are helpful to refer to while listening to the stories.
Parents or older children can read the textbook, but you can also get the MP3 audio files (they used to have CDs, but have since moved to MP3s). I take advantage of the audio files and put the week’s chapter onto my daughter’s Yoto speaker so she can independently listen to the lesson without me. It’s easy to make a playlist, grab a MYO (make your own) card, and upload the desired track to the card. The next week I delete the last lesson from the card and upload the new one. It takes just a couple minutes of prep for me, and I get a break while she listens to the lesson!
History doesn’t appeal to everyone (I personally find it hard to retain historical facts), but I feel strongly that the power of storytelling can help not only expose our younger children to history, but also help them retain it better.
For eager learners, Timberdoodle kits often offer the option for more add-ons like historical craft kits and graphic novels, but we like to keep it pretty simple with the basic history book, geography workbook and one hands-on activity/puzzle.
Each week we listen to 1-2 history chapters, do 3-4 pages of geography, and once a month put together the puzzleball. This workload is perfect for us right now and my daughter enjoys it (most of the time).
Check out the Timberdoodle 3rd grade curriculum kit here.
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