Homeschool 2nd Grade Curriculum {What Worked}

Our school year is winding down, so I wanted to share in one post what worked this year. Rather than a rosy-eyed, hopeful post of what I’m *planning* for an upcoming school year, this post shares what we actually DID, what worked for the 2nd grader in my home.

This is my 2nd time through 2nd grade, and I hope to have one more round with our Caboose Baby (currently an adorable 14 month old).

Speaking of that Caboose Baby, schooling this second grader has been a little different. A little louder. A little more fluid and flexible. Not part of our curriculum but taught nonetheless have been putting others’ needs first (she NEEDS a diaper, now), reading with fluency for a wiggly audience (melting my heart in the process reading those board books to little sis!), and a thousand other beautiful pieces of witnessing a tiny human grow from a 6 pound helpless (precious) lump to a toddler. The 2nd grader is already his sister’s personal body guard, our resident Safety Officer. He has an uncanny way of seeing potential dangers, which abound with toddlers I’m remembering. He’s such a treasure, this middle Big Brother.

All of that aside, I’m sharing our curriculum picks today. Because I’ve been blogging for a long time now (since this current 2nd grader was less than a year old), I have longer posts about almost all of our curriculum choices. I’ll link those below if you’re interested in any particular one so that you can read all of my (verbose) thoughts on those.

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One-on-One Subjects

Math: Right Start Math. My current 2nd grader has a math brain, if that’s a thing? He’s at least a full grade level “ahead” (whatever that even means), and this curriculum keeps up with him while giving me the tools I need to challenge him and assure that he has an incredible, solid foundation. Thanks to this curriculum his mental math skills are strong along with his understanding of how to manipulate numbers to solve problems. Hands-on manipulatives and games are at the heart of this curriculum, and it’s proven itself over the 5 years I’ve been teaching from it, with two very different math learners. Read my post about the method, a typical lesson, and research behind it here.

Literacy:

All About Reading. I’ve used this curriculum from the prereading program through our current level with this student, and all the way through with his older brother. It’s solid. It’s thorough. We don’t use every component of it (sorry, flash cards) and move very slowly through the lengthy readers. At times in his reading journey we have set it aside for Dash Into Reading (read my post explaining how we used that). Here is my full post with sample lessons and layout of the AAR program. (They have a one year return policy, too!)

All About Spelling. We keep spelling short and simple. 10 minutes a day. Each “step” in the curriculum is flexible in length, meaning that it is not intended to be completed in one sitting. We have literally never done a step in a day. I love that it is scripted and thorough, and easy to teach. You can read my full review here.

First Language Lessons. Another short and simple subject for us. This is a scripted teacher textbook of very short lessons (typically 5 minutes) that go over the basic building blocks of language and narration (picture and story narration), along with optional dictation as the child progresses in the program. I’ve used this program through 4th grade and it is a very solid foundation.

Independent Subjects while I work with brother:

Handwriting: Dash into Handwriting books

Free reading: Dash Into Reading readers. Love these beautiful, decodable readers made by a homeschooling mom. Read more here. 

Typing: Keyboarding without Tears. We’ve used this for years from beginning mouse/keyboard skills.

Family Style Subjects: all learning together

History: The Story of the World. We read the chapters at home, and the kids take turns narrating the text (at my 2nd grader’s level this means that I scribe for him his oral narrations, because in my mind this is about the ideas, not composition/writing skills. An excellent resource on narration is the book Know and Tell). We then dive into the topics a bit more with our co-op.

Science: The Good and the Beautiful. This year we tackled Motion/Simple Machines and Energy. I’m teaching science at co-op, because I find I need accountability or those experiments just never get done!

Nature Study: Exploring Nature with Children. We followed this with a co-op as well. We’ve used this curriculum with the co-op for several years in the past. This year kids practiced their planning and presentation skills by teaching the topics on a rotating schedule. I love how adaptable this curriculum is (and so affordable!). Full review here.

Geography & Memory Work: This was through our co-op as well. We completed a map region every 4-6 weeks (loosely corresponding with our history cycle, so we learned the modern countries of Scandinavia, Western Europe, Central & South America as we were learning about those regions historically), two poems per semester, history timeline, and a long scripture passage (we memorized Psalm 139 over the course of the school year). You can read how we study geography here.

Beauty & Spiritual Formation: Much of this was accomplished through our family Sabbath rhythm, which you can read about here.

Read Alouds: We always had an audiobook going for the car and a chapter book family read aloud. I share those read alouds quarterly on the blog. You can find this school year’s favorites here.

Blog posts are kind of a tricky medium for capturing a school year… but there’s a general outline of our Homeschool Second Grade! Please reach out with any questions. 🙂 Find me via the comments below or on my socials: instagram / facebook.