Brain Quest Workbook: Grade 3 Paperback – July 9, 2008

We used this book over the summer to review the 3rd grade concepts in more detail (we also had the summer brain quest book but wanted more), since the pandemic disrupted the school year. Most of the concepts were review so she was able to go through fairly quickly, but it helped reinforce the concepts she hadn’t quite mastered as well. Since it’s not intended to be used as a summer book, I made a schedule for which pages to do each day to include some math, social studies, science, and ELA each day. She made it through the whole book over the summer with about 30 mins per day. A little longer sometimes if they were concepts she needed help with. I love how this book makes it a bit more fun than regular worksheets and has bright colors and fun pictures. She liked this book better than others we have used in the past.

I ordered this after seeing the fourth grade book in a local bookstore. My daughter is in 3rd grade, the store was out of that level, so I came to Amazon. I originally was interested mainly in the math section, as she has struggled in that area and, so far, it has really helped. The activities have been a good a match for her school curriculum: evens and odds, addition and subtraction with regrouping up to 3 digits, rounding, multiplication and division, fractions and decimals, measurement, time and money, and word problems. There are other one page and two page exercises thrown in (graphs and charts, lines, signs, etc.) that have been helpful, as well. We follow BrainQuest as she moves through her curriculum and it definitely helps.What has pleasantly surprised me is how great the other content areas of the book are. When she was struggling with alphabetical order and dictionary skills, the BQ Workbook had activities for her. When she had a test on common and proper nouns, the BQ Workbook had a page we could use as test review. When she needed more study on main ideas, topic sentences, and supporting details, the BQ Workbook had activities for us to use. When she was studying the human body or the US Constitution or animal habitats or maps ... this Workbook has not yet disappointed.The absolute best thing about this Workbook is that my child (age 8) *asks* to use it. She thinks it's fun. When she's "bored" either at home or in the car, she'll turn to this Workbook. I really cannot recommend this highly enough. (*Note: my pre-schooler also loves his Pre-K BQ Workbook!)

I have a seven year old daughter who is just finishing up 1st grade and she has been using these books for a year. Prior to her starting school this year I had her start working on the one for second grade. It was a little advanced but she enjoyed the challenge and it helped her prepare for Kindergarten. My wife and I truly feel that they helped her progress in a way where the teachers could challenge her more than most kids and she could stay in the top percentage of the class. The important thing though is that she never saw this as "work". She really enjoyed working on the exercises and would open the book on her own in the evenings to work on them.We purchased this Grade 3 book so that we could start her on it this summer and prepare her even more for 2nd grade next year. She has already started working on a few pages. Yes, they are a little challenging for her but we work on them together and she really enjoys learning new things and knowing that she completed something that is meant for a higher level and older kids.

Very colorful inside, with color-coded sections.Although it does have a table of contents, the sections are not broken down any further. I had to take out a notebook to write everything down so that we can refer back to these pages later, as we study each skill in our lessons.Spelling and Vocabulary section has words sorted by usage such as plurals, prefixes, homophones, etc. It also reviews a few commonly misspelled words, using context clues to determine word meaning, and putting words in alphabetical order. It then goes over the basics of how to use a dictionary, and ends with having the student look up words in a dictionary and copying the word's definition.The Language Arts section is pretty impressive. It has at least a bit of everything. It even touches cursive writing via reading cursive. It doesn't go in depth, but it's a good review.The Reading section is fairly basic as well, but again includes a bit of everything.The writing section I appreciate more because it introduces where to start in writing, such as defining what it should be about, and how to expand upon that. It reviews English concepts and how they are used to improve writing, like using descritive words and writing a topic sentence. Then it goes over outlines via reviewing paragraph structure and sentence order. I appreciate the proofreading chart of marks used, and the writing checklist. Despite how much there is, it is still only reinforcing material.Similar content is found among the rest of the subject areas, meaning they each contain at least a bit of everything, except social studies and science, which is very minitial.I love how it separates each type of math onto separate pages; it makes it easier to jump to where reinforcement is needed most, but I wouldn't rely solely on this book for trouble areas. It's simply not enough. But it is good review as you go.I love how it introduces fractions and transitions from fractions to decimals. It then uses decimals to help solve money problems. Measurement units are also introduced. The bonus multiplication chart at the end is great!It barely goes over social studies as an after thought. Science at least has a page to a few different animal types and ideas. But these two subjects are not very comprehensive, probably because every school is different on what exactly they go over.In conclusion, I love this book as a review / reinforcement activity book. I plan on issuing pages of it as homework in my homeschooling plan. My child is excited to start it just by how it looks. That is encouraging. Glad I purchased this item.