Second Grade

Teacher's Resources:

Second grade is 4 days a week. Daily we do Religion, Spelling, Poetry, Math, state capitals, piano practice, and silent reading. Other subjects rotate across the week.

MODG 2nd Grade Syllabus --A guideline for what to do.

Real Learning --A vision of how to do it

Student Planner--Where I write my lesson plans for each week. I start to let the child do independently what she can at this age, and also she likes to see what all needs to be accomplished each day. I write these on Sunday nights, and it takes about an hour for me to do 4 kids' plans for one week.

Our second grade days usually take 2.5 hours when fit in among the other kids being schooled. This morning it took about 40 minutes of the two of us sitting together with few interruptions.

Religion

Faith and Life 2 (student text)--Follows the pink catechism closely, and she can read this aloud to me and practice looking things up in the glossary. We only read it when we start a new chapter in the pink Catechism.

Baltimore Catechism (pink)--Biblical stories, clear explanations, question and answer format with review questions at the end of each chapter. The child memorizes a chapter every week or two by repeating in the same manner of poetry. I've used this book for 2-4th so far.

Books about Saints--This year we transitioned from picture books and shorter stories about saints to longer chapter books, and we have tons of resources to draw from. We especially have enjoyed the reading list from Catholic Mosaic, the CCC videos about saints, and Glory Stories CDs from Catholic World mission before moving onto Vision books and some from Pauline Books.

Math

Math U See Beta --Addition and subtraction, money, column addition, carrying and more, using manipulative blocks when necessary. I watch the movie with the child on Monday, but don't teach it myself. IMO, the movie is clear enough. Two pages of problems a day M-W, but no more than 20-30 min at once. Th is the quiz.

Triangular Flash Cards--I just got these cards with number families on them so they aren't in the pic. We'll see. I think all of my kids need to memorize addition and multiplication facts better. I'm thinking 5 min on Friday.

Language Arts

Sequential Spelling --Learning to spell using word families. This has turned into vocab, grammar and handwriting too. Although you are just supposed to have them memorize the spelling, I teach it by explaining the rules and use colored markers on a dry erase board. Possessives and unfamiliar words like "rout" slowed us down so this took 30-40 min a day. At Lesson 40 we cycled back to the beginning and are taking about 20 min. I see improvement in spelling both in this and in other writing. I'm using this with 2nd and 4th at the same time since all of them can read at about the same level and have all finished Sound Beginnings and are all dismal spellers.

StartWrite for copywork--I'm really enjoying this program even though there are some minor glitches. I type poems, narrations, spelling lists, and many other things into this and save them into subfolders in my homeschool folder. Some children trace, others copy into a notebook. A single file can be changed into different writing styles and sizes so a spelling list can be printed in Italic cursive for my boys, "loopy" girl writing for the 2nd grader, and Italic print for the Kindergartner.

Narrations from saint books--I'm discovering that narrations are best when I ask a few leading questions. We do not write and collect them all. Maybe once a week.

Poetry--Any of the poems in the first part of Harp and Laurel Wreath are fair game. We do poetry as a family so those who are not reciting are practicing polite listening by sitting still and nicely in their seats and looking attentively at the speaker. My kids enjoy a little help with dramatic interpretation to make the recitation more fun. During Advent we switched to memorizing Christmas carols.
Geography:

Know Your States workbook--a simple workbook with basic US geography. Once a week she does 2 pages

Five minutes a day to practice memorizing states and capitals using this puzzle.

Science (1 day per week)

We read from Science with Plants or do a couple of pages from the Seasons and Living Things workbook. Also if I can find science picture books, I pull those in.

Science with Plants--an Usborne book with simple experiments. You could pump it up with other books about plants.

Seasons and Living Things--a simple workbook to teach about weather and the seasons.

Nature Journal and field guides--We did a 6 weeks nature study with friends at a local nature center which was brilliant. We studied trees, birds, frogs and celebrated a couple of feast days. I realized that I prefer field guides with photographs instead of sketches excepting Audubon's Original Watercolors for the Birds of America which is a beautiful book.

Art (one day a week)

Mommy It's a Renoir cards Steps 1- 3--recognizing the style of a specific artist, describing art, telling stories about what is in the picture, sketching pictures

Crafts--latch hook, knitting, and sewing have been popular. The syllabus does one art activity per week, so some weeks it's a craft and others are Mommy cards.

Drawing Text Book/Draw Squad--this is actually on the 4th grade syllabus, but she likes it. The Draw Squad is written by a student of the author of the Drawing Textbook. It has the same lessons with more complete direction and explanations so I'm going to buy it next year. It's in addition to the other art and takes about 20 min one day a week, but it sparks the kids to draw.

We also have enjoyed the Famous Artists movies from the library, other art picture books, and trips to the art museum.

Music:


The syllabus says recorder every day. Eeew!




She started piano last year, but I do not plan to start a child that early again. I've liked both the Bastien and the Faber and Faber books. Alan Jemison is a little challenging in a good way for her. She practices her assigned songs 3 times each or for about 1/2 hour a day. I sit down with her once a week to work through challenges. We do it a few days after the lesson.

Occasionally, a Music Masters audio biography with music is assigned. We have a growing collection, and then I have loaded certain pieces by the composers we've studied onto the Ipod in a school play list. The pieces are 4th grade also, but all the kids listen when I play it.

Good Reads:

Second grade has been a transition from picture books to chapter books. Our favorites are illustrated classics and historical books. Some of these, like the Outlaws of Ravenhurst, King of the Golden City, or The Great Brain series are good read alouds. The Great Illustrated Classics, Usborne Illustrated Classics and D'Aulairs books have been especially good.