second grade curriculum

Thought I would share with you about how our second grade curriculum is lining up.
If you missed last year's list, you can find it here.
And if you are curious how I have planned to fit it all in, here's our fall schedule.
red and yellow are my comments throughout, or toward the end of the year.
My favorite and most important piece is still The Well Trained Mind. 

Reading: We will continue to use The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading along with lots and lots of readers, and we will begin chapter books.  LOVE LOVE LOVE this. I CANNOT say enough good things. My son was an extremely reluctant reader...He is now a full fledged reader and is gaining confidence...what a blessing!

Spelling: Continue and finish Spelling Workout: Level A, Student Edition Then move on toSpelling Workout, Level B (Student Edition)  These are great for spelling practice. The kids are able to be mostly independent with them.

Grammar: We will continue to use and work toward finishing First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind (Vol. Levels 1 & 2) (First Language Lessons)  The kids adore this book. They get so excited when we talk about nouns and pronouns and narrate stories, I have been highly impressed. The author has now written levels 3 and 4.  I am expecting to use the whole series. We still love love love this series.  The kids never so much as roll their eyes. There is tons of repetition yet enough variety to keep us guessing. Fabulous! We will definitely be continuing in the series.

Writing:
Halfway through the hear I have added, A Reason for Handwriting Manuscript B    for Adyson, and A Reason for Handwriting: Transition for Caiden. I like that the weekly lessons incorporate a verse for the week, with pretty bordered paper to copy the verse on.

We will be focusing on copywork.  I bought a couple of composition books for each of the kids and will paste things in to be copied.  I imagine there will be a lot of variety.  Some of the work will come from the Bible.  This is easily searched and printed from Bible gateway .  Other work will come from our language lessons, lists from history and science, great sentences from books we are reading, and whatever else we come across that looks fun to write. Toward the end of the year we will move into dictation as as well as copywork. I have been very pleased by these books. The kids have been receptive. My daughters handwriting is improving and she loves mailing her verses to family and friends.

Math: We will continue to use Miquon Math Lab Materials: Orange Book Level 1 then move onto the next one in the set.   I have been very pleased with this set.  They do require the additional purchase of CUISENAIRE RODS   Which can be used to teach pretty much all the skills from basic addition and subtraction to fractions and algebra.  Along with the books and rods, I also got a video series Mathtacular! while they were on sale at Sonlight.  They are a little cheesy, but the math skills are presented in a very kid friendly way.
I have also added timed tests  as warm up activities.

I really really like the Miquon series. I love that my kids are not only mastering basic addition and subtraction, but are also becoming comfortable with multiplication, fractions, equations, and division. A very happy mama indeed. 
 I have also ordered as a complement to the Miquon math and to provide a bit more practice without my having to scrounge online (although there really is enough free stuff online to do math for free, but who wants to be printing pages out all the time?). I orderedSingapore Math Practice, Level 1A, Grade 2 as well as Math: 70 Must-Know Word Problems (Singapore Math) except I ordered level 1, apparently amazon doesn't have it stocked. I actually ordered from Rainbow resource.  These were perfect for building confidence and getting the kids "warmed up" each day before doing their Miquon pages. I am very pleased with them and will order more next year.

Bible:  I found a bible study workbook that looks promising. Already at lesson three my son is choosing to re-read the pages for silent reading!  Yippee! This has been great.  The kids are able to do most of their lessons independently and have been learning lots of bible verses.  The will not complete the whole thing by the end of the year. They do a lesson almost everyday, this could easily be a two year workbook.

History: We will spend the time finishing up on last year's Story of the World book; without all the extras, just git 'er done!  Then move onto Story of the World, volume 2 I found a portfolio from Rainbow resource that matches these studies. So this year, instead of buying the activity guide, I have ordered the portfolio jr. and am hoping that will help us be more consistent with maps and narration since I won't have to keep on making copies. Spring comment: I DISLIKE the portfolio jr.  We ended up with two notebooks each from a different printing, which meant the first chapter in each notebook was different. ergh. The maps in each section do not match the purchased maps. Titles and labels and scales are different. ergh. The notebook are printed in categories, ie. Celts, Medieval Europe, versus chronologically as our text. ergh.  LOTS of frustration and hair pulling on my part. By spring time, I have decided to shelve the notebook and go back to reading the text and lots of library books. I will be on the hunt for better for next year. ergh. out of all my purchases so far, this is my most disappointing.  Update #2: I went ahead and purchased the Activity Guide to Story of the World. essentially we are at least a 1/2 year behind...we were a bit behind anyway. The kids really enjoy the Story of the World, and we often "linger"  I am not too worried about it. They are getting some really great information and I'm really not sure I EVER got world history, so I figure no matter what rate we cover it, it is an excellent thing to be doing!  I am sooo happy with the Activity guide. Everything matches and is reproducible...I loved the first one, and the second one is every bit as good if not better. 

Science: God's Design for Heaven and Earth Set--All 3 Student Books and Teacher Supplement I am excited about this set.  I ordered it just a couple of weeks ago from cbd for a much better price.  We have gotten through 2 of the books just before our last 5 weeks. There is no way we will quite finish this set before the end, especially with the last book being weather. We have totally enjoyed the series. The hands on activities are simple and easy to follow. I will definitely be ordering the next series for third grade science. It will encompass chemisty and ecosystems, and I can hardly wait!  What I love most about this set is that it will be used by us again on the next go 'round. We have spend time this year on the "beginner" section of each chapter, next time around, they will be able to read it individually with questions, a few worksheets, quizzes and tests. I love that I will get two years out of it, at two levels!

Caiden begins lessons this year. One of the new books we have gotten to help with this is Dozen a Day .  I have all my books from learning.  So he will be using the Bastien series.

I have not done all my purchasing on Amazon, but it sure is easy to use the links and graphics through blogger to share the images and titles with you.  I have bought several of our pieces through CBD.com. they have fabulous prices and are very very competitive.