Montessori Homeschool: 3rd Grade Learning Basket Activities

In this post, I’m going to share some of the 3rd grade learning basket activities my daughter will be using to start our homeschool year. These Montessori-inspired, hands-on resources provide her with a balance of structure and choice, while keeping everything organized in one portable basket.

A Montessori homeschool learning basket is simply a portable caddy that keeps a child’s chosen work organized and accessible. I like to use learning baskets to encourage self-directed learning, give my children freedom of choice, and encourage planning and responsibility – all while keeping school materials easy to grab wherever we are. They started as our version of a very informal Montessori work plan, and have since become a mainstay in our homeschool.

Want to learn more about how our learning baskets work in a Montessori homeschool? Click [here] to get all the details.

Here’s a closer look at what’s inside our 3rd grade learning basket this year, starting with the essentials we keep on hand every day.

Our Learning Basket Essentials

• Composition Notebook: A composition notebook is used for copywork, narrations, sentence strategies, and more. I made this one because I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for in regards to a space for sketches plus room for writing, but any composition journal would work.
• Personal Spelling Book: A personalized reference where my daughter jots down tricky words she comes across, so she can go back and check them whenever she needs to. It’s less intimidating than a big dictionary, and she can customize it as she choose. 🙂
• Science Journal: We use blank Kraft journals for science notebooking activities, plus sketches and observations from experiments. Nothing fancy, but they get the job done for us!
• Miniature Dry Erase board: These dry erase boards are great to use for spelling games and math problems.
• Colored pencils: I like these Prismacolor pencils because the storage tin is very handy and the colors are easily blendable.

Our 3rd Grade Math Learning Basket Activities

Adsumudi: We use Adsumudi to practice flexible math thinking. My daughter tries to come up with as many different ways she can to reach the target number displayed on the card. Adsumudi is one of our favorite math warm-up activities.

Tang Math games (Kakooma & Numtanga): These are short, quick games that work on math fact fluency.

Super Genius Multiplication: This “Spot-It” style game is one of our favorites for multiplication fact review. My daughter can either play it on her own with a timer to see how many matches she can make, or she’ll challenge one of us for a quick round.

Developing Fraction Sense: I love this hands-on approach to exploring fractions. The manipulative blocks are a favorite. My daughter uses them to work through the exercises, but she also loves building little objects with them just for fun.

Infinity Street: This Montessori-inspired activity is a great, hands-on way for children to explore place value. She practices identifying, rounding, ordering, and calculating sums and differences for different populations around the world. You can learn more about Infinity Street [here], and you can also see how we’ve adapted it to fit our continent studies [here].

Multiplication War: We play a simple version of ‘Multiplication War’ using math dice. Each of us rolls two dice, multiplies the numbers rolled, and the higher product wins the round. It’s such a simple game, but my daughter loves it.

Mathological Liar: I like this game for word problem practice. Kids read short problems, solve them, and then try to figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s bluffing.

Math Art + Drawing Games for Kids: This book is filled with hands-on projects inspiring kids to explore patterns, symmetry, and geometry through art. It’s a great fit for my creative, art-loving child.

Math Game Sheets (Hundred Board activities, Math Games from Around the World): These are easy print-and-play games that cover skills like skip-counting, coordinates, strategic thinking, and more.

Our 3rd Grade Language Arts Learning Basket Activities

Tinderblox: This little dexterity game has turned into a favorite break activity. It doesn’t look like language arts at first, but it’s great for focus, patience, and fine motor control.

Happy Confident Me: Life Skills Journal: I love this journal for social and emotional learning. It gives my daughter a chance to spend a few minutes reflecting on different things, practicing gratitude, and building confidence through simple prompts.

Editor-in-Chief, Beginning 1: These short editing passages are such a great way for kids to practice grammar independently. My daughter loves “hunting down” the mistakes, and she can flip to the back to check her answers on her own.

Reader (McGuffey’s, Free & Treadwell’s Reading Literature, etc.): We keep a reader in each of my girls’ learning baskets for daily oral reading and narrations. Right now she’s working through McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, and I love how it balances poetry, prose, and short stories in one book.

Creative Projects

Fashion Design for Kids: My daughter wanted to learn more about fashion design, so I added this workbook to her learning basket. So far, she loves sketching outfits and playing around with colors and patterns and it’s given her quite the confidence boost.

Make Your Own Loom Animals: She’s been talking about making her own toys, so when I saw this little craft kit I couldn’t resist. With the small loom, she can weave amigurumi-style animals, and I love that it’s both a fine motor activity and a practical skill.

Gross Motor Fun

Shuffle Up: This gymnastics card game is perfect for when she has extra energy. There are several types of games included: some she can play on her own and others we can do together as a team.

What Our 3rd Grade Learning Basket Looks Like

Here’s a look at our 3rd grade basket all put together. It’s filled with a mix of math games, language activities, creative projects, and a few go-to essentials. Everything is organized in one simple place so my daughter can easily choose what she wants to work on.

And of course, aside from the essentials, it may look completely different next week or next month, depending on what she decides to include. 😉

Learning baskets have been such an essential part of our Montessori-inspired homeschool, especially once my children grew past the primary stage. They give my daughters the freedom to choose from their learning materials for the week or month ahead, while keeping everything organized in one simple place. They’re free to change up the materials in their baskets with other activities from their Montessori shelves as desired.

If you’re looking for more inspiration and encouragement for your homeschool journey, I’d love to share ideas and resources with you each week.