Grade 3 · Science

Grade 3 science

Grade 3 science asks how things work: how a plant makes its food, why some towers stand and others fall, what a magnet will and won't pick up. Here is what it covers, where kids usually get stuck, and one way to help.

What your child learns this year

Topics differ a little by province and state, but most grade 3 classes cover several of these:

  • Plants. Their parts, what they need, how they make food, and how they grow and change.
  • Life cycles and traits. How living things are born, grow and reproduce, and how young resemble their parents.
  • Strong and stable structures. What makes a tower or bridge stand up, and how shape helps.
  • Forces and magnets. Pushes, pulls, friction, and what magnets attract.
  • Soils and weather. What soil is made of, why it matters, and patterns in the weather.

Where kids usually get stuck

  1. 1Thinking plants eat soil. Roots take in water and a few minerals, but a plant makes its own food in its leaves, using light.
  2. 2Thinking a magnet picks up any metal. It attracts iron and steel, but not aluminum foil or a copper wire.
  3. 3Thinking a rolling ball stops because its push runs out. Friction from the floor is what slows it down. On ice it keeps going much longer.

One of Pip's tricks

Food from light, air, water

Use it when a question about how plants get their food, or where a plant's body comes from.

  1. Light from the Sun gives the energy.
  2. Roots take in water, and leaves take in carbon dioxide, a gas from the air.
  3. Leaves use the light's energy to turn the water and carbon dioxide into sugar, the plant's food, and they give off oxygen.
  4. The plant uses that sugar for energy and to build new leaves, stems and wood.

Watch it work. A small seed grows into a big tree. Did most of the new wood come from the soil, or from air and water? The tree makes its food from carbon dioxide and water, using light, and builds its wood out of that food. Soil gives only small amounts of minerals. So most of the wood came from air and water.

Why it works: leaves use light energy to join carbon dioxide and water into sugar, and that sugar is both the plant's fuel and the material it builds its body from.

Try three

Tap a choice to see if it is right, with the reason.

  1. 1.Where does a plant get its food?

  2. 2.A healthy plant is moved into a dark cupboard and still watered. After two weeks it is yellow and weak. Why?

  3. 3.Which of these will a magnet pick up?

How Sparkpip fits in

Pip, Sparkpip's tutor, works through questions like these with your child one small step at a time, using ways of thinking like the one above.

Start freeSee how it works

Your curriculum

Sparkpip is built on the grade 3 science curriculum for your province or state. The official pages:

Also: Grade 2 science · Grade 4 science · Grade 3 math · Grade 3 English