It's that time of year, again. I've been (lazily) busy making lesson plans, downloading and creating worksheets and notebooking pages and weeding through the second grade projects I've been Pinning for years. As I near the end (and as our first day draws near), I thought it would be a good time to share the big plan with you.
*I have included links to everything. Some of these are Amazon Associate links, some lead directly to the product site (non-affiliate), Pinterest boards and book lists link to Listmania lists. Even though I am an Amazon Associate, I feel that it's only fair to say that many of these can be purchased for better prices through sites like Rainbow Resource or Christian Books. I actually got several of ours used through Abe Books. I have no affiliation with any of these sites, except as a customer.
LANGUAGE ARTS
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| Second Grade Language Arts |
Language arts is pretty straightforward. We are switching to Rod & Staff for grammar, since neither of us were enjoying First Language Lessons. While the majority of his writing will be cross-curricular, I believe he will benefit from the written portions in the R&S text. He will continue with All About Spelling and D'Nealian handwriting. Reading will be from books I've pre-selected. He will be doing simple book reports as an expansion of his narrations.
MATH
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| Second Grade Math |
This may seem like a ton of math programs, but none of them will be done every single day. I've created a plan for a boy who likes a math challenge and hates repetition (even in daily life).
HISTORY
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| Second Grade History |
We will be following Story of the World much more closely this year for Middle Ages than we did with Ancients in first grade. Robbie's not keen on coloring pages, so we'll skip most of those in favor of as many hands-on projects as we are able and willing to do. He will be doing more in-depth notebooking than last year, as well.
He will also begin a study of the states. We'll cover one state per week using sheets I've made as well as those available for free from Crayola. He adores his Stack the States app and it has sparked an interest in learning more. Stack the States is available on Amazon
, Google Play, and iTunes for $0.99.
, Google Play, and iTunes for $0.99. SCIENCE
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| Second Grade Science |
Our World of Science book will be the spine for Earth Science and Astronomy. It has large sections on each of these sciences. I have to be honest, I'm not very impressed with the "... for Every Kid" experiment books, now that I have them. We will probably do very few of those and mostly pull our experiments, demonstrations and projects from Pinterest. YouTube videos from the BBC, NASA, Bill Nye and more are also a big part of this year's science plan. I'm sure our Magic School Bus box set will make a few appearances, as well.
ART, MUSIC & GREEK
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| Second Grade Music, Greek and Art |
Robbie will continue his Greek language studies, but we chose to try the Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! series. He loved the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, but was not impressed when I showed him samples of Greek for Children. I'm hoping this is a good fit... after all, he helped to pick it out.
Guitar lessons will be on-demand, since his interest is waning. Music appreciation will be bi-weekly composer/band/artist studies chosen by RockerDad and myself. This will mainly consist of reading a short bio, listening to music and (when appropriate) watching live footage.
I'm really excited about art, though. I have chosen 36 lessons from the free Art Projects for Kids website. I really think he'll enjoy them.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
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| Second Grade P.E. Activities |
P.E. will be two daily recesses during school time along with daily stretching and general exercises. He will also be playing seasonal sports, doing long bike rides and physical Cub Scout activities. We will be using various drills from NAYS (National Alliance for Youth Sports) as structured outdoor sports time.
I hope you've enjoyed the peek at our plan. I love to read posts about curriculum choices, so feel free to link to yours in the comments section!
- If you'd like to see what we've used in previous years, just click below!
- 2013 - 2014 First Grade
- 2012 - 2013 Kindergarten
- 2011 - 2012 Pre-K
We use some of those. I've heard Life of Fred is really good.
ReplyDeleteMy son just started the elementary series over the summer and he adores it! He's always giggling when he's reading the chapters.. and he doesn't seem to mind doing the problems at the end of the chapters. Reading, math and giggles... works for me!
DeleteWe'll be using Story of the World Vol. 1 with my 1st grader this year. I love that they have an activity guide to go with it. I checked out the link you gave for your composer studies. I'm so glad you listed that! I've bookmarked it. I have been trying to find something to supplement the book we'll be using for music this year and I think this will work great!
ReplyDeleteKaren
Karen
I'm glad you found something useful here! We are enjoying Story of the World, but are really just starting to use the activity guide. I'm not sure how well it will work for us. There seems to be a lot of coloring sheets (and my son prefers to color his own drawings... never been a coloring book fan). We'll see how it goes!
DeleteLooks like a great plan for the year! It is always interesting to see what works for some families, but doesn't for others. Thanks for linking up to Trivium Tuesdays!
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by!
DeleteHow do you like Beast Academy I have one kiddo who is particularily good at math and I've considered adding rigor with that one. It's not a very well known curriculum.
ReplyDeleteToday was our first day using it. It made him think more than any he's used before. I don't think I can give a good opinion until we've used it for a bit, though.
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