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kristacecilia
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| Posted: March 30 2011 at 7:45pm | IP Logged
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I am notorious for pushing my oldest. He is bright; I have unreasonably high expectations. It's not a good combination. I know only a few home schoolers in real life and, until this forum, I had almost no guidance or example.
I have scaled back considerably in the last few years, gone through periods of unschooling, changed my entire outlook on what homeschooling is and how I want to approach it.... this board has helped so, so much.
I am still wondering if I am pushing my oldest too hard, though. I am reading through Charlotte Mason's Home Education for the first time, and that looks nothing like what I am doing- even though I would love it to!
So I would love to see what your typical second grade looks like. How many different subjects are you covering? How long are they spending on each subject? Do they spend the majority of time outside?
Thanks in advance.
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Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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stellamaris
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| Posted: March 30 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged
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Krista, it has varied with each child. For my youngest, here is a very sketchy idea of some of the things we did this 2nd grade year:
Religion: Faith and Life 2 + Balt. Cat. 2
Saint stories (he reads short ones once a week)
CHC First Penance and First Holy Communion prep
The Life of Our Lord (I read aloud 2X a week)
Math: Singapore Math Level 2B, which he does more
or less on his own. Some math games, too.
Reading: Currently--The Story Tree, Seton Press
I have him read aloud 2x a week
Streck-Vaughn comprehension series: Bones
and Stones (he enjoys workbooks)
Lots of reading in subject matter, plus books
like:
Tintin (all the volumes)
The Secret Valley
A Cricket in Times Square, and lots of others
50 Famous Tales Retold
He narrates these back as he reads them;
sometimes I will have him draw a picture or
act out the story. I don't ask him to write
out narrations yet.
Writing: Handwriting Without Tears--at this point, as
needed (i.e., when his writing is looking
sloppy and I need to call his attention to
focusing on the neatness of his work.)
Primary Language Lessons--daily
Assorted copywork--2-3x a week
Science: This year we covered Astronomy, Mechanics, and
are soon moving on to the Human Body using an
assortment of hands-on activities and books.
He is currently reading a book on light and
color as part of the astronomy unit. He reads
20 minutes twice a week on his science topic.
We're also enjoying Journey North and weekly
Nature Studies (cattails next week, we are
following Barb's wonderful plans at her
Handbook of Nature Study blog.
History: History of Greece and Israel. We do this 3x a
week. I read aloud, then he reads a section in
his own book, usually one with lots of pictures
like Growing up in Ancient Greece and
the Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient
World. He has gone from reading early
readers at the beginning of the year to being
able to read much more advanced materials now.
Latin: At this point, he's just watching the Prima
Latina DVD's with his brother and participating
in flash card drills, as well as learning a few
Latin songs and sayings.
Geography: We see this as just fun. We've used the Map
Skills books, we read Seabird and made big maps
tracing his travels, we studied countries of
Europe by reading literature aloud like Heidi,
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, Red Sails to
Capri, The Children of Noisy Village, The
Family Under the Bridge. Right now, we are
reading A Child's Geography of the World and
have also been using a salt clay map we made
to identify areas we are reading about in
history.
Art: Usually we focus on one artist for about 6-8
weeks, reading a biography and then doing an
art project. This year we used Meet the Masters,
which is an online course. One week, we read
about the artist, the next week we do an
art project related to that artist's work. We
have enjoyed this a lot, but next year I think
we will go back to the more in-depth approach.
Music: Listen to a particular composer for a period of
1-2 months. Read the Opal Wheeler biography of
that composer. We're trying to get off the
ground with an instrument, but not yet...
We did several month with All About Spelling, but aren't working on that right now. We'll pick it up again in the fall. Mostly his spelling work is done as he memorizes selections from Primary Language Lessons for dictation.
Basically, I pull together an eclectic mix of materials I have on hand, add in a few new consumables, and adjust the reading levels as the year progresses. Each subject has some sort of read-aloud by me and some individual reading. Some of the boys took a long time to really get to the more advanced levels, but others didn't. So you can't really anticipate where they will be reading by the end of the year. I try not to even think about specific books more than 2 or 3 months ahead at this age, because I find I can't get them quite "right" until we actually are almost ready to read them. Something that was too hard 6 weeks ago might be too easy now.
We spend 3-3 1/2 hours in the morning on work (this includes a 20 minute recess as well as our morning prayers), about 45 minutes of read-aloud literature at lunch, and then another 1-2 hours on topics such as geography, history, science, art, and music in the afternoon. Nature walks are on Wednesday afternoons, the other days alternate his/geo/sci and art/music (each one of those once a week). It's actually not necessary to do so much in 2nd grade, but since he is working along with his older brothers, it seems natural and easiest to just have them all work together the entire time.
Hope this isn't so vague that it's not helpful!
Wow, this looks like a lot! It doesn't seem quite that overwhelming in real life...we move pretty slowly, actually.
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In Christ,
Caroline
Wife to  dh 30+ yrs,ds's 83,85,89,dd's 91,95,ds's 01,01,02,grammy to 4
Flowing Streams
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: March 31 2011 at 5:46am | IP Logged
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Caroline,
Thanks so much!
That actually makes me feel a lot better- it looks very similar to what I had planned and what we are doing now. So maybe my expectations are not as high as I thought.
Right now we are doing (for 'advanced' first grade):
Religion: Preparing for FHC with CHC's second grade lesson plans, St. Joseph's FHC Catechism, several read alouds (the King of the Golden City, First Communion Days, the story of Blessed Imelda, etc)
Nature Study: Finishing up our study of birds using Burgess Bird Book, moving into spring related nature study using Nature Study and Related Literature and the Handbook of Nature Study Blog (love it!) along with nature walks.
Math: Games from Family Math and websites, drill using worksheets I generate.
History: Story of the World Vol. 1, right now moving into the study of Ancient Greece.
Latin: Prima Latina, recently we switched to a watch and hear approach with the DVDs and CD as our primary source and the workbook as secondary, doing the exercises orally.
Language Arts: copywork from other subjects, beginning narration using Burgess' The Adventures of Grandfather Frog.
Art: Drawing with Children used in conjunction with the HAndbook of Nature Study blog to start our nature journals. Also, artist study for 6ish weeks on Millet.
Music: he has taught himself keyboard and we have Penny Gardner's Nine Note Recorder Method that he is working through, plus we are going over Let's Make Music, although it's really too easy for him. For Composer study we have the Music Masters CDs, and other selections by Handel, and I checked out every child's book on Handel that they have, which wasn't much.
Read alouds: right now we've just started Charlotte's Web.
So does that seem like too much for an almost 7 year old? I guess I feel like, after reading what Miss Mason says about educating the child under nine, I am expecting too much of him INDOORS. Should I scale back and make him go outside more?
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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kristacecilia
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| Posted: March 31 2011 at 6:09am | IP Logged
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For second grade this is what I am planning:
Religion: Angel Food for Boys and Girls plus Baltimore Catechism 1. I have other texts I am thinking about using as well, like The Life of Our Lord for Children and My Path to Heaven. Catholic Mosaic and the Windeatt books (my DS loves them).
Science/Nature Study: Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding plus continuing our nature study with the Handbook of Nature Study blog and Nature Study and Related Literature.
Math- unsure yet, but I am leaning towards continuing with Family Math and math websites.
History: RC History vol. 2 with the beginner level books.
Latin: Minimus student text and the audio CD
Language Arts: Copywork and narrations, maybe adding in Primary Language Lessons later.
Art: Picture study and continuing Drawing with Children, nature journals.
Music: composer study, continuing his self-learning of keyboard and recorder.
Does that seem like too much?
__________________
God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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SallyT
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Just finishing one second grade (having previously done a very unschooly second grade five years ago) and gearing up for the next, and last, second grader.
This year's second grader is an advanced reader and strong math student; of the basic skills, what he really needed to work on was writing.
In the younger grades, I tend to keep formal seatwork to as much of a minimum as I can. So here's what we did:
Reading: He began the year using CHC's Bigger Stories for Little Folks (easy for him, and he flew through it but enjoyed it) and Devotional Stories for Little Folks (also easy, also over quickly). Since the fall, I've coped with reading by giving him a new assigned book every time he finishes one. Sometimes they're literature (Cottage at Bantry Bay); sometimes they're historical (Victory on the Walls -- we've been studying the Old Testament this year). And he reads constantly anyway. He gave up Redwall for Lent, so on Sundays, that's what he does. Anyway, I just keep feeding him good books as fast as he reads them, and we talk about them. Generally he follows me from room to room talking about what he's reading, and I count that as "narration!"
Handwriting: I've never used a formal handwriting program before, and in the case of my now-7th-grade son, regretted it. So we use CHC Catholic Handwriting. Typically I assign a short lesson as a warm-up for copywork, which is the meat of our language arts.
Copywork: I use one of those Mead Primary Journals, with space for illustration at the top. My first-grader has illustrated almost every page of her copywork; the second-grade boy, not so much, and most illustrations are of swordfighting, regardless of the content of the copywork. I mostly lean on The Harp and the Laurel Wreath for copywork, copying the lines for the day on the lefthand page for the student to copy on the right. This way we cover Bible verses, passages out of books we've read, and *poems.* Lots and lots of poems. Right now he's doing Tennyson's "The Eagle," a line a day.
I will say that my overall basic-education goal for this year was for this child's handwriting to improve, and it has, massively. And he's beginning to do more writing independently, but I don't push that until much later.
Math: MCP + the IXL math website, which is not free, but the extra practice is worth the cost. He's actually in the 3rd grade level, but we move slowly.
Language: We've done Greek this year, because our parish priest has been teaching a NT Greek class to a group of adults and older homeschoolers, and younger siblings wanted to take Greek as well, so I wound up teaching a class of 5-10-yos. We use the Hey, Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek program from GreeknStuff.com. It's workbooky, but easy and fun and also great additional handwriting practice that doesn't seem like handwriting practice.
Science: we mostly unschool and/or use a literature-based approach. Lots of informal nature study. We've read various wild-animal books, listened to the Burgess Bird Book on CD (downloaded free from Librivox, then burned onto CDs to listen to in the car on our way to piano lessons), and are currently reading our way through a couple of little Dover books: A World in a Drop of Water and Life in a Bucket of Soil.
History: Old Testament and its cultures. We've been reading our way through the Old Testament (via a children's story Bible) and spent most of the fall on Ancient Egypt, via read-alouds (notably Elizabeth Payne's Landmark Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt), and some YouTube video series I ran across. We did some writing, copywork, and illustrations for our timeline scrapbook, but mostly we just enjoyed reading aloud together.
I also have tons of Usborne history and science books, which I leave out in a rack for kids to peruse.
Religion: Well, our history obviously overlaps with religion, since we're reading the Bible. My current 2nd grader made his First Communion last year -- he's an old Grade 2 because I delayed doing kindergarten work with him, but he was keen to make his FHC last year, and since I'm the FHC catechist in our parish, and the priest gave his ok, my son made his FHC in Grade 1. We're blessed with a good parish CCD program, which uses Faith and Life, and for which the DRE has made a concerted effort to ensure that everyone teaching classes will be offering instruction in absolute accordance with Church teaching. So this year my 2nd grader is in the Grade 3 CCD class, where his older sister is one of his teachers.
So our "religion" has wound up being less formal than it might otherwise have been: observing the liturgical year, going to Mass at least twice during the week as well as on Sunday (our parish has a Latin Mass on Thursdays, followed by the aforementioned Greek class), Liturgy of the Hours after daily Mass with Night Prayer (and during Lent, prayers during the day) at home, a weekly parish Holy Hour.
And of course the CHC materials we use have a catechetical component. So I guess you'd say we take an "integrated" approach!
"Enrichment": for lack of a better word.
Piano lessons given by a fellow homeschooling mother
Cub Scouts at our parish
Gardening
Chores (aka "life management")
We have LOVED those Marigold Hunt books, by the way. We read Life of Our Lord and The First Christians last year, as well as Saint Patrick's Summer for First Communion. I tried SPS with my FHC class, but it doesn't work so well in a large-group setting with kids who aren't used to that level of read-aloud, but it was a wonderful read-aloud at home, and I plan to repeat it with my rising 2nd grader, who will be doing First Communion on schedule.
And I should say that we do tons of read-aloud, generally in the afternoons after lunch, with tea, as well as at bedtime. I can't even remember all we've read this year, but it includes the whole Little House series, which both my 1st-grade girl and 2nd-grade boy loved; now we're reading George MacDonald's fairy tales.
For my 1st and second-graders, school, as in formal sitdown work, takes generally 1-2 hours. I keep lessons mostly very short, though I do give the 2nd grader long periods of independent reading while I work with the 1st grader. We finish our sitdown work before lunch; I give them some playtime; then we do some reading for history, science, or pure enjoyment in the early afternoon. I try to give them as much free time as I can, while acknowledging that they need structure and routine, and that we do need to lay down a foundation of basic skills and knowledge.
OK, I have a 1st grader waiting to do math with me before we make a Greek dish for our after-Mass class today! But I have to say that I really love this age and stage in learning. Middle- and high school have their own adventures and challenges, but this stage is just plain fun -- I think!
Enjoy your learning.
Sally
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Barbara C.
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My oldest is in the second semester of second grade. I plan for about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes of formal work. (My style is a mix of classical and unschooling.)
Math: Singapore Math 2A & 2B
Drills and supplemental practice as needed.
Spelling: Sequential Spelling 1
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise 3000 book 2
History: Medieval Period
Independent reading- Story of the World v. 2
- library books
Usborne Encyclopedia of World History
(discuss 4-6 pages per week)
Logic: Mindbenders A1 & A2
Brain Quest Grade 2: Introduces concepts that I'm not prepared to dig into too much yet.
Religion: She made her FHE in first grade, so this year Religion has been integrated into history.
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JuliaT
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| Posted: April 02 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged
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Second grade for my youngest looks totally different than it did for my oldest. 
We just do the bare essentials here with lots and lots of read alouds. My dd has some learning challenges so this has played a part in our scheduling.
This is what we are doing this year:
Math: BJU
Reading: Bartons Reading and Spelling, ETC
Copywork: I use this for handwriting
Poetry memorization
History: Ancient History with read alouds
Science: Real Science Odyssey
Bible: Bible reading
That's it. Pretty simple. She does well with simple.
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MNMommy
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Second grade here is still focused on skill building and reading for enjoyment.
I am reading aloud unless otherwise noted. We are using Mater Amabilis as our framework.
Religion: F&L 2, liturgical year stuff, saint stories, Parish RE
Math: RightStart C, Singapore CWP 2
Reading: Sonlight Level 2 Readers
Writing: WWE 1 & English for the Thoughtful Child I (both orally)
Grammar??: Tag along with The Sentence Family
Handwriting: Copywork (daily from AO list or WWE)
Science: BFSU & Nature Study
All Other via Family Read Alouds: MA literature, post Civil War American history, and Ancient Greece history
My dc get tons of outside time. At this age, I readily sacrifice school time (after reading, math & writing) for outside time.
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kristacecilia
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Thanks so much for all the input. It is making me feel a lot better about what we are choosing. So I know when he cries and makes grumpy faces about what he has been asked to do, I know I am not asking more of him than other people ask of their same-aged children.
I am going to make sure that outside time is moved up on the priority list, though, especially as we are moving into nicer weather.
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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SallyT
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Grumpiness and resistance do seem to be a hallmark of this age at times. And some kids are wired with an "initial no" response, too: my current 2nd grader is like that. With every new read-aloud book, especially if it's a real departure from what we had previously been reading, we have to go through an initial stage of I-hate-this-book-it-stinks. By the end of the first chapter he's saying, "Read on!" But we have to plow through the I-hate-it to get to that point.
And some days, the same-old same-old gets to us, but I generally resist the temptation to throw everything out the window. (some days we do, but usually because the same-old same-old is getting to me as well as them). With the pretty weather, I try to get us through our formal work as efficiently as possible and as early as possible, so that they have the day to play, but in the absolute basics -- math and writing, especially -- I don't let us get off track, though certainly the pressure to chuck it all is there.
I've seen, with my graduating senior, that some chucking-it comes out all right in the wash, and some doesn't, so much, even at this early stage, so I'm much more of a stickler than I was when my older kids were young (and I'm mostly responding to things my oldest didn't learn *in school,* like basic math facts for example. My youngers are victims of my overcorrection on this score). So they moan some, but I think that's just human nature, not a signal that I'm overdoing.
Sally
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Elena
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God sent your 2nd grader the gift of a younger sibling!  Combine some things with the younger sibling and you can be sure that you're keeping it fun and lighter on your 2nd grader!
I would suggest some science experiments and art and somc nature journalling together this spring. That will help you to scale the intensity back while concentrating on grade level stuff like reading and math and writing.
And as a side note - I think my oldest son really started resented school and possibly me when I pushed him too hard. One of the arts of homeschooling is finding that balance of being firm but flexible! and of course that changes from year to year and from kid to kid - that's God's way of keeping us from getting bored!! 
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kristacecilia
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Thank you, Sally and Elena, for your replies! It is so nice to get info from people on the other side. I tend to get so caught up in the here and now and forget to look at the big picture.
He is very bright, and I tend to feel like i need to be harder on him or push him more through his grumpiness and resistance.... part of me feels like if he is resisting, I should back off, but the other part of me feels like that is just a bad habit and he will continue to resist to do things he doesn't care to because he will know it works. The latter actually seems to be happening- the minute he hears me say something he doesn't want to do- go outside, listen to a read aloud, do a chore- he starts pouting and whining. So I feel like maybe I do need to be harder on him. I feel like he is capable of a lot more academically than he is doing now.
But I don't want to build resentment, either.
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God bless,
Krista
Wife to a great guy, mom to two boys ('04, '06) and three girls ('08, '10, '12!)
I blog at http://kristacecilia.wordpress.com/
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: What does your second grade look like?
