Science: A Closer Look (Grade 3)
Science: A Closer Look (Grade 3), published by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, is a third-grade science textbook that introduces students to life, earth, and physical science concepts through accessible, inquiry-based lessons. The curriculum covers living things and their characteristics, ecosystems and survival adaptations, changes in ecosystems, Earth's landforms and resources, and foundational concepts of forces and motion. Designed to build scientific literacy in early learners, the textbook encourages observation and critical thinking across all major branches of elementary science.
Chapters & Lessons
Chapter 1: A Look at Living Things
4 lessonsGrade 3 students explore the characteristics that distinguish living things from nonliving things in this lesson from Chapter 1 of Science: A Closer Look. Students learn key vocabulary and concepts including organisms, responding to the environment, reproduction, and cells, as well as the basic needs all living things share, such as food, water, space, and air. The lesson also guides students through a hands-on observation activity to identify and compare living and nonliving things found in nature.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, students explore how animals use structures such as lungs, gills, legs, wings, and fins to move, find food, and stay safe in their environments. Through hands-on observation of a snail, learners compare and contrast animal structures across different species and investigate how animals respond to their environments. The lesson builds foundational life science vocabulary and scientific inquiry skills aligned with Chapter 1: A Look at Living Things.
Grade 3 students learn how to classify animals using the key concepts of vertebrates and invertebrates from Chapter 1 of Science: A Closer Look. The lesson covers how structures such as a backbone, legs, and an exoskeleton are used to sort animals into groups, and introduces major animal categories including birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and mammals. Students practice observing and recording animal characteristics in charts to apply scientific classification skills.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, students explore animal life cycles and learn how different animals grow and change over time. Key vocabulary includes metamorphosis, egg, larva, and pupa, with a focus on how amphibians and insects transform through distinct stages compared to reptiles, fish, and birds that hatch resembling their parents. Students observe real caterpillar changes, sequence the butterfly life cycle, and compare it to the sea turtle life cycle to understand that not all animals develop the same way.
Chapter 2: Survival in Ecosystems
3 lessonsIn this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, students learn how energy flows through ecosystems by exploring the roles of producers, consumers, and decomposers in food chains and food webs. Students investigate the concepts of ecosystems and habitats, discovering how living and nonliving things interact and depend on each other for survival. A hands-on owl pellet activity gives students real evidence of feeding relationships, reinforcing how organisms are connected within an ecosystem.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 2, students explore how Earth's ecosystems differ by examining key characteristics such as climate, soil composition, and the types of plants and animals each supports. Students learn to identify and compare specific ecosystems including deserts, forests, oceans, and wetlands, and investigate why certain animals like brine shrimp can only survive in salt water rather than fresh water. The lesson builds foundational science skills in observation, data interpretation, and comparing and contrasting land and water ecosystems.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 2, students learn what adaptations are and how specific examples — including camouflage, blubber, mimicry, hibernation, and migration — help plants and animals survive in different environments. A hands-on inquiry activity uses vegetable fat and ice water to help students understand how blubber keeps cold-climate animals like walruses warm. Students practice forming hypotheses, recording data, and drawing conclusions from real-world evidence.
Chapter 3: Changes in Ecosystems
3 lessonsIn this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 3, students explore how living things change their environments as they meet their needs for resources such as food, water, air, and shelter. Students learn key concepts including decomposers, competition, and pollution, and examine how both natural organisms and people can cause helpful or harmful environmental changes. Hands-on inquiry with worms helps students observe and record how animals physically alter the soil and materials around them.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 3, students explore how natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and wildfires, as well as diseases, cause sudden changes in ecosystems. Students learn key vocabulary including population, community, and endangered, and investigate how living things respond to environmental changes by migrating, adapting, or facing population decline. The lesson uses a hands-on plant experiment to reinforce cause-and-effect thinking about how too much or too little water impacts living things.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 3, students learn what fossils are, how they form in rock layers, and what they reveal about ancient plants and animals. Students explore the concept of extinction, examining real examples like saber-toothed cats and the St. Helena Olive tree to understand how environmental changes and human activity can cause species to disappear. A hands-on modeling activity reinforces how scientists use rock layers to determine the age and order of fossils.
Chapter 4: Earth
2 lessonsIn this Grade 3 science lesson from Science: A Closer Look, students explore Earth's surface features, learning key vocabulary such as ocean, continent, landform, crust, mantle, and core. Students discover that nearly three-fourths of Earth is covered by water and identify major land and water features including mountains, valleys, canyons, plains, plateaus, peninsulas, and islands. The lesson also introduces the seven continents and the features found on the ocean floor.
Grade 3 students learn how weathering and erosion slowly change Earth's surface in this lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 4. Students explore how running water, wind, freezing and thawing, and living things break rocks into smaller pieces through weathering, and how erosion, glaciers, and deposition move and deposit those materials. A hands-on inquiry activity using rocks shaken in water helps students observe these processes firsthand.
Chapter 5: Using Earth's Resources
3 lessonsIn this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 5, students learn to identify minerals using properties such as color, streak, luster, and hardness. They also explore how rocks are classified as igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic based on how they form. Hands-on inquiry activities, like rubbing minerals on a white tile to observe streak, reinforce key earth science vocabulary and classification skills.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 5, students learn what soil is made of, including weathered rocks, minerals, and humus, and explore the distinct layers of topsoil, subsoil, and bedrock. Students discover how humus adds nutrients and retains moisture, how living things like earthworms and plant roots interact with soil, and why preventing soil erosion matters. The lesson builds key Earth science vocabulary and observational skills through hands-on inquiry.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 5, students learn how fossils form through processes such as amber preservation, imprints, molds, and casts in sedimentary rock. They also explore how fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas come from ancient living things and are classified as nonrenewable resources. Hands-on activities help students model fossil formation and draw conclusions about Earth's past environments.
Chapter 6: Forces and Motion
3 lessonsIn this Grade 3 science lesson from Science: A Closer Look, students learn how to describe an object's position using relative location words such as over, under, and next to, as well as by measuring distance in standard and metric units. Students also explore the concept of motion, discovering that an object is in motion when its position changes, and identify different types of motion including straight line, zigzag, and back and forth. The lesson connects to real-world examples like snowboarding to help students understand how position and motion are observed and described.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 6, students learn what a force is — a push or pull — and how forces can change an object's motion by making it start, stop, speed up, slow down, or change direction. Students also explore key concepts including balanced and unbalanced forces, gravity, weight, friction, and magnetism. An inquiry activity using a ramp and toy car helps students investigate how the amount of force applied affects how far an object travels.
In this Grade 3 lesson from Science: A Closer Look, Chapter 6, students learn the scientific definitions of work, energy, kinetic energy, and potential energy, discovering that work occurs only when a force changes an object's motion. Students explore how energy is the ability to do work and how potential energy converts to kinetic energy through real-world examples like a sled going downhill.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Science: A Closer Look Grade 3 right for my third grader?
- Science: A Closer Look Grade 3 is a well-rounded, inquiry-based elementary science program published by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. Its six chapters cover life science (living things, ecosystems), earth science (Earth's features and resources), and physical science (forces and motion), which maps directly onto the content most third-grade science standards expect. The program uses close reading of informational text alongside hands-on activities, making it a solid fit whether your child learns by doing or by reading. If your school uses FOSS or Amplify Science instead, the content domains overlap significantly though the activity structure differs. This textbook is especially strong for students preparing for state science assessments that test all three domains.
- Which chapters in Science: A Closer Look Grade 3 are hardest for students?
- Chapter 3 (Changes in Ecosystems) and Chapter 6 (Forces and Motion) consistently pose the most challenge. Chapter 3 requires students to reason about chains of cause and effect—how a single change like drought or invasive species ripples through a food web—which demands systems thinking that is new at third grade. Chapter 6 introduces physics vocabulary like force, friction, gravity, and acceleration, and students often confuse these terms or misapply them. Chapter 5 (Using Earth's Resources) is content-dense, covering rock formation, soil composition, water cycles, and natural resource conservation across a large amount of factual material. Chapter 2 (Survival in Ecosystems) also challenges students who struggle to distinguish producers, consumers, and decomposers reliably.
- My child is weak on ecosystems—where should they start?
- Begin with Chapter 1 (A Look at Living Things), which establishes the vocabulary and classification framework the ecosystem chapters depend on—cells, organisms, life processes, and how living things are grouped. Once your child can reliably distinguish living from nonliving and knows the basic needs of plants and animals, Chapter 2 (Survival in Ecosystems) introduces food chains and food webs with that vocabulary already in place. Chapter 3 then extends food web thinking to changes and consequences. Taking this sequence in order—Chapters 1, 2, 3—and pausing in Chapter 2 to draw and label several food chains before moving on makes Chapter 3's cascade-of-effects reasoning much more accessible.
- What should my child study after finishing Science: A Closer Look Grade 3?
- Fourth-grade science typically deepens inquiry into earth systems, energy, and life cycles—common topics include rocks and minerals, ecosystems, electricity, and sound. The forces and motion foundation from Chapter 6 prepares students for fourth-grade energy and electricity content, while the ecosystem chapters connect to more complex food web and adaptation studies. Over the summer, nature walks, garden projects, and simple experiments with ramps and inclines are excellent ways to keep the Chapter 6 physics concepts alive. Students who enjoyed the life science chapters may be ready for books like The Wonders of Nature or guided science kits that extend food web and adaptation thinking independently.
- How can Pengi help my child with Science: A Closer Look Grade 3?
- Pengi can make science vocabulary stick by explaining concepts in ways that connect to your child's real-world experience. For the tricky ecosystem chain of effects in Chapter 3, Pengi can walk through a specific scenario—what happens if all the frogs disappear from a pond?—step by step in a conversational way. For the forces chapter, Pengi can explain friction, gravity, and magnetism with relatable examples and generate short-answer questions that prepare your child for assessments. If your child is doing a science project on any topic from the six chapters—an ecosystem diorama, a research report on Earth's resources, or a forces experiment—Pengi can help plan, draft, and fact-check at every stage.
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