Second Grade Plans

The plans have been laid!

They are ambitious and exciting, and it will take us a month or two to see whether changes will need to be made. I do not hesitate to make changes--I did last year!  Most of our books are drawn from Ambleside Online's Year 1 program.  Last year most of my first grade books were based on Lindafay's curriculum at Higher Up Further In.  Ambleside and HUFI are both Charlotte Mason curricula, but I felt that HUFI was a better fit for Finn last year, as the Ambleside readings are quite challenging.

Caveat: this sounds like a lot of work.  However, the readings are staggered.  For instance, we never read Parables from Nature *and* Shakespeare in the same week.  An Island Story is read every other week.  The poem is just read at breakfast. The natural history selections are ready every other week or so. D'Aulaire books are only read for a few weeks in each 12-week term. So although the comprehensive booklist looks like a lot, it is not! And the composer study, folksongs, hymns, and picture study just fit organically into our week--listening at lunch or other times, looking at pictures every so often.  Nothing onerous and nothing requiring advance preparation on my part.

We will do all our work between 9:30am-noon, except for some afternoon 'fun' activities (piano, art, nature walks, etc). If it is not done by noon it will wait until another day!

So this year our booklist includes:

Literature
*Primarily drawn from Ambleside's Year One literature list; but I'm eliminating The Blue Fairy Book and using Grimm's Fairy Tales instead.  We'll also alternate Among the People (Dillingham) and Parables from Nature (Getty).  The latter are supposed to be extremely challenging, so I'm allowing at least two weeks for each story. I am also not using the Nesbit Shakespeare, as recommended by AO, but instead  we will use Tales from Shakespeare (Lamb). I am so fortunate to have a very old copy of this book. When I was 10 years old my grandmother gave me four books that had belonged to her late husband, my grandfather, when he was a child. Lamb's Shakespeare is one of them! Shakespeare can be confusing to read (it is supposed to be watched, after all!), so I plan to read through the book slowly and assign characters to toys so we can act the story out as we go. I also won't be reading Just So Stories--Jim Weiss will!

Natural History
*We will finish up our James Herriott treasury pretty early on, and then will read from the Burgess Book of Birds -- a very old book that I purchased used a few years ago.

History
*Exactly the plan from AO Year One. We will also listen to The Story of the World on CD, just for fun.  If we do one term of the AO selections and I'm dissatisfied, I'll make changes.

In addition to his, we'll be doing composer study, picture study, folk songs, and hymns.  These are all easy to do and do not require much work at all on my part.  Look, listen, sing, enjoy.

Our skills work will continue--short lessons in math, phonics, and handwriting. I will continue with the resources I used last year, although we will implement Handwriting without Tears a couple of days a week to assist and copywork the other days.  I have a good list of 'easy readers' that Finn will be using, including Frog and Toad stories, Little Bear, and a big stack of leveled readers (2 & 3) I bought from Amazon that are all American history-related.  We are cycling through American history in our homeschool group this year, and I thought this would be a seamless, easy way to introduce some American history stories. I will post a list of those sometime!

I purchased simple grammar and spelling resources.  I'm torn on whether this is important at this age (I think not) but am basically giving a nod to the standardized testing we are required to do each year.  I will use these resources as guides in alternating weeks.  I'll just do the lessons orally with Finn, using the dry erase board and never the student textbook! I also bought a basic map book (from Scholastic, I think) to work on map skills and we do a lot of informal geography by looking at maps and the globe.

We are following Ambleside's suggestions for Bible stories and I have my own little system for scripture memory work.  I've also got a little character book we're going to read once a week.

Charlotte Mason advocates 'handicrafts' but these are not typical useless kid-crafts.  They are useful skills to learn!  We did a little soap carving last year and will do that again, plus painting Christmas ornaments, candle-dipping, flower-pressing and making a few 'market bags' out of tee shirts.

And of course there's nature study! And read-alouds: I have a list of read-alouds that I will be reading to the children throughout the year--usually at breakfast, or after lunch, or at bedtime. I do not schedule these in with our formal 'school' readings.

Finn will also take art and--new this year, and a little daunting!!!--piano lessons.

We attend a homeschool group once a week that provides fun social interaction, timeline/memory work, science/art/music basics, and a weekly presentation! I don't do any work for this other than attending it one morning a week, and I encourage Finn to practice his presentation in advance.

Finally, I planned a KONOS 8-week unit (very, very simple) on Orderliness. If that goes well, we will probably do one unit in the winter or spring.  I mentioned my approach here.

I bought Annie a few preschool workbooks from Rod & Staff.  We'll see where that goes!

September 2, we are ready for you!