English
Little guy is just starting to WANT to write sentences. My other two kids were a little ahead of him on this but that’s ok. We aren’t in a rush. We will start Writing With Ease Level 1 in second grade. I love this curriculum and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Writing With Ease Level 1 has a story to read for each lesson and then the student copies a sentence that comes directly from the story. As the lessons go on, the student begins to make their own sentences as answers to questions about the story. The parent writes the sentence down and the student copies his own sentence. It is a very gentle introduction to writing that has worked wonderfully for my other kids.
We will also be using First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind Level 1 as an introduction to parts of speech and basic English grammar. I’ve also used this book with my big kids and even as recently as last year used it as review with my sixth grader. It’s an excellent, easy to understand book. I expect it to take second and third grade to complete the book, but that is ok, because that means by the time he begins Essentials in fourth grade, he will be ready for it!
We will wrap up 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read in the next 4 or 5 weeks. He’s got about 20 lessons to go. When he finishes that, we are going to switch over to The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. It gets a little more in-depth and will be a nice way to continue reading lessons when the first book is done. His reading has come A LONG WAY in first grade–at the end of Kindergarten, he still could not identify a single letter of the alphabet and now he is READING easy readers. Wow! But he will not be ready to just read on his own by the end of 100 Easy Lessons. His ADHD brain is going to need a little more help for awhile.
Latin
I’ve never tried to do Latin with a second grader before. It may be a gigantic flop. But maybe not. What I have learned directing Challenge is that the more exposure a student gets to Latin as a kid, the less likely they are to hate it as they get older. So we are going to dive on in with Song School Latin from Classical Academic Press. I do not expect to finish it in one year. It took Middle Child 2 years to complete one year of CAP’s Latin for Children. But he loved it and enjoyed every bit of it. I have no doubt we will love Song School Latin just as much, however slowly we take it.
History
We are going to do Story of the World Volume 4 because it best lines up with Cycle 3 history for Classical Conversations. I have the activity book, the audio book, and the coloring book. Our plan will be to do one chapter per week, listening to the story while coloring. And then we will do whichever activities sound like fun that week. I do not pre-choose activities because that leads to GUILT when we don’t get them done. The activity book also includes a reading list to learn more about the topic. When he is particularly interested in a chapter, we will get some of those books from the library.
Geography
I printed and laminated Cycle 3 maps that I found on CC Connected. They are really nice because they are color coded–if Massachusetts is filled in blue, at the bottom it says “Massachusetts” in blue. That way it’s easy to figure out what you are looking at. I also printed the black line masters from the Foundations guide. I laminated all the maps and bound them into a book. He can trace them with a dry erase marker.
We will also use Draw the USA and do a few states per day. I absolutely love that series and they are heavily used in our home.
Math
We just finished up Math U See Beta. We are working on Multiplication Facts that Stick and when we complete that, we will begin Math U See Gamma. Math U See has been the exact right math program for him and I’m not going to mess with something that is working so well. The Math Facts That Stick series really works well hand in hand with Math U See and we have enjoyed using it to really get those math facts down. I can’t recommend that series enough–even my big kids like using the games in it. They are fun to play and reinforce math skills on every turn you take.
Timeline
Little Guy will start his timeline book this year. My other kids started theirs in fifth and second grade so this seems about right. My oldest started hers later because I didn’t really know how to do one until she was in fifth grade. Oh well! I printed the accordion style timeline from Half A Hundred Acre Wood, but I printed it double sided and then used my comb binder to turn in into a book.
And then I went and got a little crazy. I opened up my CC Cycle 2 app and took screen shots of every single timeline card as it popped up on the screen. Then I sent all those screen shots to my computer, cropped them all pretty, and printed them at 16 to a page to sticker paper. Yes, it took forever. No, I can’t share those files with you. I don’t think I am doing anything wrong doing it for personal use with an app I paid for but I can’t share it with others.
Anyway, now we have the timeline cards as stickers. So for second and third grade, we will add one or two stickers per day to the timeline book at the correct spot in the book. And then in fourth through sixth grade, he can add each week’s history memory work as well, and he will be able to see the memory work in the context of the timeline song! And this is the timeline book he will use straight through Challenge. My oldest is still using hers in Challenge I and will be using it heavily in Challenge II next year, too. My hope is that it is something they always keep. We’ve added family birthdays and anniversaries as well, to make it more personal.
Science
Science was always my worst subject. I took the minimum in high school and opted to take Calculus II instead of science as a gen ed in college. I hate it that much. Sigh. I don’t even know why. It’s just not something that’s every clicked with me and I have no passion for it. So I have zero plan for science at home in second grade. And I think that’s ok. We joined CC specifically because they do science experiments there and I don’t have to do them at home! Since they do science memory work AND experiments, I feel like science gets covered more heavily at Classical Conversations community day than other subjects and I’m totally cool not doing it at home. If I get the idea that he loves it, we will try harder at home.
Bible
Little Guy loves Bible. It’s probably his favorite part of school. We have read The Jesus Storybook Bible countless times. Countless. We are now reading The Beginner’s Bible which is a little more in-depth than The Jesus Storybook Bible. We will also make use of Right Now Media for lots of videos for fun.
Fun Stuff
Little Guy loves to have a variety of “fun stuff” for school, as he calls it. Mazes and dot to dots. Sticker books. Poetry books. Math puzzles. Coloring books. We will probably do a lot of different books from Usborne for this. We will read more Shakespeare for Children. Play games. Watch movies that relate to something we are learning. Read books. Take days to do absolutely no school work and bake cookies or just snuggle in bed and watch a Disney movie for no reason other than it’s Tuesday and we feel like it.
That’s the thing. We will do plenty of school work this year but we won’t rush or keep deadlines in mind. I fully expect some of these books to take us two years to get through. But we will always take the day off the first time we have a sunny 70 degree day and just enjoy it. We will always take the day off when we need a break or math just seems too hard and we need a brain break. Some days we get through every subject. Some days we get through one or two. We can adjust depending on sleep, attention span, and interest. The flexibility we have to put a hard reading lesson away and just snuggle is the best part of homeschooling!