Third grade science

Third grade is where science starts asking for numbers. Forces and energy, rocks and fossils, and the Sun, Earth and Moon working as a system. The content jump is smaller than the recording jump. This is the year a drawing stops being an acceptable answer.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

By the end of third grade, a child working at grade level can usually do these.

• Plan and conduct a descriptive investigation with a measured variable, and record the results in a table.
• Predict where an object will go next from a pattern in how it has been moving.
• Describe how a force acting on an object changes its motion, and tell a balanced force from an unbalanced one.
• Identify forms of energy and trace energy moving from one place or form to another.
• Explain how rocks form and change, and name processes that break them down.
• Explain what a fossil tells us about an organism and about the environment it lived in.
• Describe the Sun, Earth and Moon system, including rotation causing day and night and the orbit taking a year.
• Explain how an inherited trait helps an organism survive where it lives.
• Give an example of a fast change to the land and a slow one, and say which is which.
• Use a data table to answer a question that nobody asked directly.
• Names solid, liquid and gas as the three states of matter and tells how each one behaves
• Tells a living thing from a nonliving thing using a real test instead of a guess
• Shows that heating and cooling move the same water between solid, liquid and gas
• Explains that friction is a force from surfaces rubbing, and that rougher surfaces make more of it
• Describes gravity as the pull that brings every object toward the ground
• Explains that heat always moves from the warmer object to the cooler one
• Names evaporation and condensation as the two changes that start the water cycle
• Names an adaptation as a body part that helps an animal survive where it lives
• Explains that the Moon's changing shape comes from seeing its sunlit half at different angles as it orbits Earth
• Investigates how balanced and unbalanced forces change the motion of an object
• Measures a repeating pattern in an object's motion and uses that pattern to predict what it will do next
• Plans and conducts an investigation showing that the surface an object rolls on changes how its motion stops
• Shows that a magnet pulls on steel across a gap, without the two objects ever touching
• Describes how two magnets attract or repel depending on which ends are facing
• Tests and records magnetism as a physical property and sorts materials by whether a magnet pulls on them
• Explains that cooling changes water vapor in the air back into liquid water, which is condensation
• Observes and records how heat moves from a warmer material into a colder one, changing ice from solid to liquid
• Combines materials into a mixture and separates them again using a physical property only one of them has
• Shows that a dissolved solid is still present in a solution and comes back when the water evaporates
• Measures temperature to show that dark surfaces absorb more light energy and turn it into heat than light surfaces do
• Models the water cycle by showing water evaporating, condensing and falling again in a closed container
• Measures and records precipitation over time to describe the weather where he lives
• Observes and records wind direction and air temperature to compare day-to-day weather
• Investigates how soil is made of weathered rock and rotted plant and animal remains, in layers of different sized pieces
• Tests and records hardness as a physical property of rocks and connects it to how fast rock wears away
• Grows a seed to observe the start of a plant life cycle and explains that a plant makes its own food instead of eating soil
• Compares life cycles of different animals and shows that all of them include being born, growing, making more of their kind, and dying
• Collects data on family traits to show that traits are passed from parents to offspring and that they vary within a group
• Uses evidence to show that some traits are inherited while other abilities are learned from practice and experience
• Observes that when one condition in a habitat changes, some living things do better and others move or die back
• Describes the flow of energy in a food chain and predicts what happens to the others when one link is removed

Teach it here

These rooms teach it on this site. No sign-up, nothing to buy, and they work with the internet switched off. Start here. Everything below is a fallback for when you want more than the app gives you.

• lab — The engineering cycle with a number on the end: a rig, a target and two knobs, and a bench that refuses to run if you changed two things at once. Ramp and ball, rubber band car, catapult, paper bridge, parachute and water rocket, each with the real physics behind it said after he hits the target rather than before.
• solid — Solid, liquid and gas sorted by how the stuff behaves when the jar is tipped, melting and freezing as one road walked both ways, mixtures against solutions, and living versus nonliving tested three ways rather than guessed.
• know — How igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock form and what breaks rock down, fast and slow changes to the land, and fossils. It asks again what the kitchen-table lesson showed once.
• measure — Measuring accurately, which is the skill the whole year rests on. Use it before the science, not instead of it.
• graph — Building and reading a chart from collected numbers. This is the recording half of third grade science.
• units — Choosing and converting units so a data table means something.
• patterns — Spotting and continuing a pattern, which is the reasoning move behind predicting motion.
• sort — A magnet test on every item before it is filed, with a soda can, foil, a penny and brass in the pile to prove that not every metal is pulled.

What a week looks like

1. Monday. One investigation with a number in it. Roll a marble down a ramp at two heights and measure how far it travels. Table, not a drawing.
2. Tuesday. Read one USGS page on rocks or earthquakes and mark on a map where the real event happened.
3. Wednesday. Print a fossil image from the Smithsonian collection and have your child write what the animal ate and where it lived, with a reason for each guess.
4. Thursday. One force build from a Snack or from the pantry. Change one variable and record both runs.
5. Friday. Look at the week's table and answer a question you did not ask on Monday. This is the actual third grade skill.

If you want more, free

A fallback, not the plan. Every one of these costs nothing, and the license tag says what you may actually DO with it, which is a different question from whether it is free to read.

• Class CrunchLabs Free Public domain

  A full standards-aligned science curriculum for grades 3-8 from Mark Rober's CrunchLabs foundation, built with the National Science Teaching Association. Each unit ships a teaching guide, slides, student readings and handouts, assessments and instructional video, and the hands-on challenges use ordinary household supplies. Video-led and genuinely engaging, which is the half most free science material gets wrong.

  License: Free for classroom and homeschool use, including private schools. NOT public domain: the terms grant use for teaching and sharing with students, and each unit carries its OWN Creative Commons or similar licence set out in that unit's Teacher Mission Manual. Read the licence on the unit you are using before adapting it, and note that commercial use is not permitted unless that unit's licence allows it. Copyright CrunchLabs.org Foundation, all rights reserved.

• USGS educational resources Free Public domain

  The Geological Survey's teaching material across geology, natural hazards, water, ecosystems, geography and the solar system, in the form of lesson plans, activities, maps, videos and animations. This is the agency that actually monitors earthquakes and volcanoes, so the maps and photographs are the real thing rather than illustrations of it.

  License: Public domain as a work of the United States government. Copy, print and adapt. Check the credit line under photographs, since a few come from partner agencies.

• NASA learning resources Free See terms

  NASA's Science Activation hub, with a searchable catalog of roughly a thousand learning resources and standards alignments already worked out. Solar system material sits at several reading levels, including printable models and imagery you can build a Sun, Earth and Moon lesson around. Orbits are hard to teach without good pictures, and these cost nothing.

  License: NASA content is generally not protected by copyright and may be copied and adapted. Third-party images hosted under permission are excluded. Insignia and endorsement limits apply.

• Smithsonian Open Access Free Public domain Not confirmed

  High-resolution fossil photographs and 3D scans of full skeletons from the National Museum of Natural History. For fossil-as-evidence work, printing a real specimen at a known scale beats any textbook drawing, and a child can lay several out and compare them.

  License: CC0 public domain dedication on items flagged Open Access, with no attribution required. Material outside that release stays restricted, so check the item record. Terms page did not load for me, so confirm.

• Exploratorium Science Snacks Free Creative Commons Not confirmed

  The force and motion builds are the cheapest route into this grade's physical science, and most run on tape, string, marbles and cardboard. Search their site for Science Snacks.

  License: Check the license. A Creative Commons NonCommercial and ShareAlike notice has appeared on these pages, but I could not confirm the current terms, so read the notice on the page you use before copying or adapting it.

• CK-12 Free Creative Commons Not confirmed

  Free digital textbooks with embedded simulations and practice questions, strongest in math and physical science. The elementary and middle school sections cover states of matter, forces and energy, and you can strip a book down to only the chapters you want. Name given without a link because the site blocked my check.

  License: Check the license. CK-12 publishes under its own stated terms rather than a plain off-the-shelf Creative Commons license, and those terms have changed over the years. Read the notice on the specific FlexBook before you adapt or redistribute anything from it.

And the paid programs, honestly

Nothing here is required. These are the programs families most often ask about, with the real drawback of each one named rather than skipped.

• Mystery Science Paid $199 list, $179 in August 2026, membership through June 30, 2027.

  Good at: Third grade is where this program is strongest. The units on forces, energy and rock cycles are built around a genuine question, and the activities need household materials rather than a purchased kit.

  Drawback: Data recording is the weak point. This grade wants measured numbers written down, and the activity sheets often accept a drawing or a checked box instead. You will need to add the notebook discipline yourself.

  Suits: A parent uneasy teaching physical science who will insist on a notebook alongside.

• Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Volume II (Grades 3-5), Bernard J. Nebel Paid Commonly $30 to $40 paperback, less as an ebook. Publisher price not confirmed.

  Good at: Picks up the same four threads at a level that suits a third grader, and the matter and energy sequencing is the payoff for having done Volume I. One book covers three grades, which makes it the cheapest serious option on this page.

  Drawback: Still teacher-facing, still no calendar, and the checking is informal discussion rather than anything scored. There is a real risk of drift: because nothing forces pacing, families commonly reach March having done nine lessons. If you need a due date, this book will not supply one.

  Suits: A family continuing the sequence who will impose their own schedule.

• Elemental Science, Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage Paid Around $22.50 for an ebook guide, roughly $20 to $24 each for print components, optional kit near $55, plus outside reference books. Confirm the specific title.

  Good at: Hits the space work and the earth materials work on a scheduled thirty-six-week plan, with notebooking pages an eight year old can actually fill in without a fight.

  Drawback: The required outside book list is the recurring cost and the recurring headache, and the program assumes notebooking stamina that not every eight year old has. Physical science and life science both need covering elsewhere.

  Suits: A secular family that wants the earth and space half of the year scheduled for them.

• Berean Builders, Science in the Ancient World (Jay Wile) Paid $43.00 for the textbook, confirmed on the publisher's site in August 2026.

  Good at: Runs science chronologically through history, which pairs neatly with a family already on a history cycle, and every lesson still centers on an activity. Multiple review levels let one book serve several ages at one table.

  Drawback: Young-earth creationist, and the chronological frame means topics arrive in the order history produced them rather than the order a child can absorb them. A third grader can meet a hard concept early simply because someone discovered it early.

  Suits: A young-earth Christian family running a chronological history cycle already.

Prices are approximate and change often. Check with the publisher before you buy. We describe and link to these programs; none of their material is hosted here.

The rest of third grade