Good morning! Today, I am sharing our 2018-2019 second-grade homeschool curriculum choices with you!

My second grader's curriculum is undergoing some pretty big changes this year! (At least, in comparison to my fifth grader's curriculum in which he is basically just leveling up.) Besides his Latin memory work in Classical Conversations, he will begin to work through a fun and gentle Latin program, Song School Latin.

I am also going to add a new writing curriculum. Prior to participating in our CC Essentials program, I loved the one-two-punch of First Language Lessons plus Writing With Ease. (I will admit that I did doubt WWE a bit when my oldest was in third grade, but the program works beautifully with FLL, so we soldiered on.) However. Even though WWE has plenty of merits, it did not prepare my son adequately for the writing portion of Essentials, which is through the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). WWE cannot entirely be blamed for the lack of preparation. IEW is just such a unique program; it's entirely its own kind of animal. (I have a degree in Middle Childhood through Early Adolescent Education, and I was licensed to teach middle school Language Arts, so I feel am qualified to make this statement.) It teaches writing in a very organized (at times, formulaic) method, and I wasn't even sure I liked it at first! However, my son's writing improved by leaps and bounds (although there's still plenty of room for improvement), and I ultimately decided to give it a thumbs up. I would like to give my second-oldest a bit more preparation for the KWOs, banned words, and clinchers of IEW, so I am going to start him on an IEW program meant for little ones, Bible Heroes: Writing Lessons in Structure and Style. Ideally, I would have started this with my son in first grade, but we'll see how it goes. (We've done two years' worth of material in one year before, so I'm not afraid to go that route if necessary.) I did consider dropping WWE, since I would be adding Bible Heroes, but it really does complement FLL so nicely, and it doesn't take that much time to do. One of the things I love most about WWE is how it introduces my children to a variety of quality of literature; my boys often ask me to borrow the full volumes from the library so they can read more. I apologize for the lengthy explanation... I considered writing a separate post about WWE vs. IEW, but I thought I could cover it briefly here. Ha!

Without further ado, here are our second-grade homeschool curriculum choices for the 2018-19 school year!

2nd Grade Curriculum

• Bible: Midweek School, AWANA?
• Daily Learning Notebook (Elementary) supplemented by Kumon's My Book of Telling Time and Kumon's My Book of Money
• Math: Math-U-See Beta, Classical Conversations
• Reading: All About Reading - Level 3 I set a timer, and we do 20 minutes a day. I also have my son read library books for an additional 20 minutes a day.
• Handwriting: Zaner-Bloser Handwriting Grade 2C
• English Grammar: First Language Lessons - Level 2
• Writing: Institue for Excellence in Writing - Bible Heroes: Writing Lessons in Structure and Style, Writing with Ease - Level 2
• Spelling: All About Spelling - Level 2
• Literature: My son is into chapter books now! I read aloud from many of the books featured in Writing with Ease.
• Latin: Song School Latin, Classical Conversations
• Fine Arts: Classical Conversations (includes drawing, tin whistle, great artists, and orchestra), piano lessons, field trips to our local theaters
• History/Timeline/Social Studies: Classical Conversations, Scholastic News Grade 2, Story of the World read-alouds
• Science: Classical Conversations, experiments and discussion out of Science in the Beginning
• Geography: Classical Conversations, map tracing
• P.E.: tennis lessons and lots of outdoor play

Click below to see our past curriculum choices:
[2018/2019] Fifth Grade
[2017/2018] First and Fourth Grade
[2016/2017] Kindergarten and Third Grade