1st 6 Weeks of 2nd Grade

It has taken us a bit of time to get back into school routine this year. Partly because we had a wedding to go to the second week of school and partly due to all the other fun stuff that has been going on. But Benjamin has been doing a pretty good job on his assignments and we’ve been making steady progress. Second half of world history is going well so far. 🙂

In Bible this year we read directly from the bible instead of using a children’s bible. Going through the life of Christ currently. He also has a weekly memory verse and he has been tagging along with Hannah memorizing the book of the bible.

In history/social studies, we have two main spines – Child’s History of the World and Usborne Book of World History. We use Window on the World and Geography Songs to learn about other countries and cultures. We did a short unit on vikings and read Time Traveller: Vikings and Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky. We’re also in the middle of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Read Alouds have been fun. We finished Red Sails to Capri and Sticks Across the Chimney. We also have weekly selections of poems and stories from Aesop for Children and Cornstalks: A Bushel of Poems.

In Reading and Language Ben has been doing great. He has one cursive assignment a week. A weekly spelling list and weekly assignments in Phonics C and Wordly Wise B for vocabulary. He also has been working on paragraphs and has a weekly creative writing prompt.
He has decided to read his books at a faster pace than they are assigned so I fill in with supplemental ones until the schedule catches back up to him. He has probably read twice as many as I am only listing his school books here. His readers this unit were Clara and the Bookwagon, The Long Way to a New Land, The Long Way Westward, Prairie School, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie, Riding the Pony Express, and The Secret Valley.

Science has been focused on animals and then body functions. We have Usborne Book of Knowledge, Discover and Do Level 2, and Usborne Science Activities, Vol 3 as our spines for this year. Not many experiments yet.

For math, Benjamin has already finished Horizons 2 because he wanted to start it when he finished level 1 last spring. Right now I’m having him work our flash master and do drills of add, subtract, and multiply until he has a better grasp of them before I order Level 3 for him.

We have lots of extras to keep us busy. When math drills become too boring, we trade off with typing. We have weekly piano lessons, Royal Rangers, and park days. This unit we went to the fair, attended a Compassion Event, a play called Schoolhouse Rock, and a cousins wedding. Ben has been dragged to all of Hannah’s practices and volleyball games but the tide is about to turn as we signed him up to try basketball this winter.