My Second Grade Checklist

A few people wanted to see the school checklist I described recently--so I am posting bits and pieces of it here.  I get a little anxious at posting things like this for several reasons: 1) a checklist is not real life, it's just a guide; 2) I follow nothing slavishly; 3) your way is probably the best way for you.....

The most important question to ask before developing a system is--what's the point?  For me, the point is primarily teaching math and reading (and not much more, not at this age!), and secondarily introducing our children to beauty through good stories, music, pictures, and ideas.  A longer-term point for me is helping my children become the people God made them to be.  To that end I try to teach to the child I have, not the child I once was.  That means if something doesn't work for us, I change it. 

My checklist is one that I created after looking carefully at the Year One Ambleside Online checklist.  I created my own table in a Word document, changed some things to suit my needs, shrunk it to one page, and color-coded it so that I will know which days of the week I'd like to do which things. No lesson-planning!

The full page has a 12-week schedule; here's a sampling of the first few weeks.  The readings do roughly follow the original at Ambleside but I did some rearranging, adding and subtracting of books in order to meet our own needs.  For Ambleside's full, original term-by-term checklist you'll need to skip over to it on their site. This is just my own version.

The top section contains the readings.  We read from some books weekly, some every other week, and some only once or twice a term. 

The second section contains the daily-ish skills work.  This is the heart of our homeschooling in terms of my priorities. Math, reading, handwriting, piano. If I only check these off on any given week, I'm a happy camper because these are the foundation of our schooling.  

Finally I grouped together 'weekly subjects'--topics we will cover once or twice a week.  "Art" and "Piano" are actual lessons taught by someone else.  The other things are basically activities or readings that we will fit into our lives pretty organically (music, pictures, nature, handicrafts).  The "konos" section is just for a few preschool activities I've chosen for Annie, who is 3.  Health, Responsibility and Geography are just readings we do casually and discuss. All of this is easy, not formal, not schoolish, and--most importantly--not stressful for me. 

School fits into the morning hours for us--after morning chores (which are essential!). I do not do school in the afternoons--there are walks to take, swings to swing, meals to cook, games to play.   The exceptions to this are handicrafts, nature study and some Konos with my preschooler--just fun stuff. We do schoolwork four days a week; one day a week we have our homeschool group and I only schedule in nature study for that day.  

The most important thing is just to make a checklist that works *for you*!