Arc 3 holds our hand right on into the holidays and the mid-year. The process should be comfortable for you by now. Hopefully your confidence is growing as you keep moving forward. As Rocky once said, "That's how winning is done!"
As always, each week comes in a Lower Division and an Upper Division edition. Both are in the purchase. Children at different stages can work the same week at their own level.
WEEK ONE
Reading the Water in Lower Division and The Sea Road in Upper.
People crossed the largest ocean on Earth without a compass or a chart. Students work out speed, time and distance on a canoe passage, then see how a steering error of a couple of degrees puts you hundreds of kilometers from where you meant to be. In science they look at what a swell actually is and how wind moves a hull. In social studies they read two very different accounts of the same voyages, one of which explains the settlement of the Pacific as an accident.
WEEK TWO
How Far Off Are We? in Lower Division and The Problem of Where in Upper. Sailors could always work out how far north they were. How far east took three hundred years to solve. Students add up a small daily error over three weeks at sea and see what it costs. In science they look at how an octant measures a star, and why building a clock that kept time on a rolling ship was the hard part. In social studies they compare two ships' logs from the same day that put the vessels hundreds of kilometers apart.
WEEK THREE
The Same Beach, Two Stories, same title in both divisions. Two people stood on the same beach on the same morning in 1769 and wrote down different things. Students learn to measure a disagreement rather than a distance, and to give an answer as a range instead of a single number that claims more than they know. In science they work on what makes something a record and how you test one. In social studies they read a ship's journal against a Māori oral account, find where the two agree, which is more than most people expect, and find where they cannot both be true.
WEEK FOUR
Enough for the Voyage in Lower Division and What the Ship Can Carry in Upper. How do you pack for a journey when you don't know how long it will be? Students work out what one person eats and drinks in a day, scale it to a whole crew for months, and then find out how much of it actually reached the sailors. In science they look at why food spoils and what salting does about it. In social studies they follow a voyage that ran out of healthy men, and two records that disagree about how much beef was aboard.
WEEK FIVE
The Island That Was Never There in Lower Division and Why It Stayed on the Chart in Upper. An island appeared on the charts in 1876 and was not removed until 2012. Students read positions off a chart, and work out how much of a search area a set of survey lines actually covers. In science they look at why shallow water looks different from deep, how sound measures depth, and what a pumice raft is. In social studies they follow one report from a ship's deck onto a chart and then onto every chart after it, and find that taking something off a map is harder than putting it on.
WEEK SIX
Where the Map Still Ends in Lower Division and The Frontier Under the Water in Upper. Most of the sea floor has never been properly mapped. This week gathers the whole arc into one problem: how much is left, how fast it's being done, and whether the deadline can be met. In science they look at how a satellite measures a sea floor it cannot see, and why the deep ocean matters to weather on land. In social studies they look at who pays for the mapping, who benefits, and how a decision gets made when the facts aren't all in.
Meeting your local home education requirements
Home education requirements are set where you live, and they vary widely. Some jurisdictions require notice, assessments, portfolios, or evidence of instruction in particular subjects; others require very little. It is your responsibility to know and meet the rules that apply to your family.
What TPA can do is make the academic record much easier to document.
Each Arc provides a clear paper trail:
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The units themselves, identifying the subjects, disciplines, and central questions being studied.
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Your student’s dated handwritten work, organized by day.
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Rubric-based feedback showing how the student performed at each level of challenge.
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The TPA Alignment Summary, explaining the program’s academic foundations, structure, and approach to assessment in language an outside evaluator can readily understand.