Our Homeschool Schedule

I wanted to share our weekly schedule for M’s second grade year even though I know we will rarely if ever have a week that looks just like my planning spreadsheet. I’ve tried to make each day a balance between written work and activities that will have us moving around more. I’m also balancing work [...]

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What Comes After Magic Tree House?

Over the course of last school year, M gained the confidence to read short chapter books on her own and by early summer was devouring them at a rapid rate.  I knew about easy readers – we’d explored Elephant and Piggie, classics by Dr. Seuss, Mr. Putter and Tabby, Amanda Pig and many others as [...]

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Non-Fiction Monday: Trees

M and C and I have been catching up on books we’d checked out of the library but not gotten around to reading yet. One evening we read through A Tree Is Growing by Arthur Dorros. Both girls were excited to see features of trees they recognized and all three of us learned many new [...]

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What We’ve Been Reading This Week, August 18

M and her dad have starting reading The Red Pyramid, the first book in Rick Riordan’s new series focusing on Egyptian mythology. We’ll be studying Egypt in a few weeks so we thought this would be a fun choice. She asked me for yet another re-read of Magic By the Lake which is her favorite [...]

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Science Reading for Second Grade

As I mentioned earlier, we’ll be working through R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey’s Chemistry Level 1 course this year. The course includes suggestions for living books to go along with the curriculum and I’ve been making a list of suggestions from other sources as well.  I’ve planned the first few weeks of experiments and books but so [...]

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Non-Fiction Monday: Creatures of the Deep

When C spotted this interactive Discoverlogy title on the library shelf, she said we must get it. And she was right, both girls have been fascinated by Creatures of the Deep by John Woodward.  Each page spread covers a different topic on deep ocean science from early diving equipment to modern research to bioluminescence. The [...]

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Ancient Civilizations

We’re going to cover Ancient Civilizations this year using History Odyssey as a guide but also pulling from Sonlight Core 1 and bringing in some of our own resources. We’ll do history twice a week on average (not that we ever really have an average week) and we’ll pick and choose between the activities and [...]

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Gearing Up for 2nd Grade

Wow! I’ve certainly neglected this blog over the summer. We’ve continued to enjoy a whirlwind of summer fun – swimming, hiking, nature study, laying around in the a/c and watching movies, all punctuated by camps for M and trips for all of us. This week I am enjoying some restful time to reconnect with my [...]

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