Planning for Second Grade

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent many a night pouring over homeschool curriculum catalogs, websites, and downloadable samples, feeding my planning obsession and my love of booklists and actually trying to nail down what we’ll be doing in the fall (or the summer if we choose to continue with certain subjects) as we start M’s 2nd grade year.  I think I’m finally done or as done as I’ll ever be since I’m learning fast that homeschooling is about constant tweaking (at least for us).

Here’s what I’ve got planned:

Math – continuing with Singapore Primary Math using the textbook, workbook and home instructor’s guides, supplementing with games, and extra work on topics M enjoys like Geometry from Mammoth Math or other sources

Science – R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey’s Chemistry Level 1 – published by Pandia Press (creators of History Odyssey), R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey is serious science with fun experiments and plenty of hands on enjoyment.  With the girls love of animals we will no doubt add in plenty of habitat study, nature walks, and ocean science.

Language Arts – Harcourt’s Flash Kids’ Complete Curriculum workbook and All About Spelling, supplemented by M reading to me, activities I find online or create, and more Madlibs which M loves.

History Odyssey – Ancients Level 1 which uses Story of the World Vol 1 and Usborne’s Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History as spines. We’ll be done with our prehistory study in about a month so ancient history is the next logical thing.  I had the fortune to find a Sonlight Core I (Ancient History) Instructor’s Guide very cheaply at a sale.  I like many things about it but they don’t include enough hands on activities for us.  HO has far more hands on projects which M enjoys and C can help with.  I’m sure I will pull things from Sonlight as well as the Story of the World activity book and other catalogs and booklists.  I’ve already planned to substitute some of the experiments in Ancient Science for the History Pockets work in HO since I can tell that History Pockets wouldn’t appeal to M.

Read Alouds – We’ll continue to follow M’s interests, revisit old friends and discover new ones at the library, but I like the comprehension question and activities in the Sonlight Core 1 guide so I think we will work our way through those read alouds this year.

Foreign Language – continuing with Minimus Latin which M loves.  She’s expressed an interest in French but I think we will wait a bit since our schedule is quite full already!

Logic – continuing with Mind Benders and Mathematical Analogies from The Critical Thinking Company

Art – We may use Artistic Pursuits Book 1.  It  includes a study of ancient art which would fit in well with our history, but I’m not sure if M will want to do an art curriculum or just continue to do lots of art on her own.

Music – continuing with our casual study of composers and instruments using Story of the Orchestra and simply listening and dancing

C is asking more and more often for her own homeschool work.  She’s very interested in learning letters and numbers and math concepts like patterns and counting.  So I’ve ordered Winter Promise’s I’m Ready to Learn curriculum for her.  We will move through it slowly, possibly making it into a two year curriculum.

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