Our Second Grade Curriculum 2020-2021

As we begin our sixth year of homeschooling and as I research and plan our subjects, I am realizing that our curriculum list has changed so much over the last 6 years. Amelia is very hands on and visual – Gwen on the other hand loves worksheets, checklists and lots of paperwork. What we started with Amelia didn’t quite work out for Gwen so we have had to make lots of changes over the last 2 years. Today I wanted to share our choices for our 2nd grade curriculum for the 2020-2021 school year.

History

I used many different history curriculums with Amelia that just didn’t work out so we are switching it up this year for both girls. I’m staring with Our Star-Spangled Story with both girls and will probably revisit this with Gwen next year in depth a little more.

Our Star-Spangled Story Curriculum Package
By Notgrass Company

Language Arts

Learning Language Arts Through Literature Red Book Kit, Grade 2 (3rd Edition)
By Common Sense Press

Since we decided to change up Amelia’s language arts and add in some additional reading, we are going to move Gwen to the same program. This is our first year using this curriculum so I’ll follow with a review mid year.

Explode the Code, Book 3 (2nd Edition)

Explode the Code uses visits awareness, decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and spelling. We have used many of these workbooks and really love them as a supplement to our Language Arts curriculum.

Spelling

Last year we used Evan-Moor and their online subscription service for spelling and it worked well. However, I want to focus on handwriting and penmanship with Gwen this year. We have switched to Spelling You See – Level C. It’s animal themed so Gwen is already excited about this one.

Spelling You See Level C: Wild Tales Universal Set
By Math-U-See

Math

Gwen started her homeschool career with Saxon Math for kindergarten and the first part of first grade. She progressed quickly and asked if she could try Teaching Textbooks (that’s what Amelia was using at the time). So we started her in Grade 3 of Teaching Textbooks and she did great throughout the first part of the program. I want to reinforce some of the skills though and she also asked for a change so we are moving to Horizons Grade 3 this year.

Horizons Math, Grade 3, Complete Set
By Alpha Omega Publications

Writing

We started WriteShop last year but didn’t complete Level C so we are revisiting it again this year.

WriteShop Primary Book C
By Writeshop

This pack of WriteShop Junior Book C Activity Set Worksheets is designed to accompany the sold-separately Write Shop Junior Teacher’s Guide, Book C, and cannot be used independently.

We are using Evan-Moor for some extra writing practice for Gwen. I love their workbooks because they are easy to use, great for picking up when we have some extra time or need some extra practice and they have such a huge variety of topics and subjects. You can also subscribe to their Teacher Filebox. This allows you to save and print pages from all of their resources, when you need them!

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Science

We are really changing it up this year for science. We have tried many traditional textbooks but haven’t found anything simple enough to stick to yet interesting enough to keep their girls’ attention. So we decided on the Science and Nature Study Bundle from Blossom and Root. We are starting with the Year 1 set and using it as our base for science since the girls really like to ask the questions and drive the conversation in this subject. The plan is to move fairly quickly through Blossom and Root and will probably complete 2 or more years of their curriculum this year.

Blossom and Root First Grade Science and Nature Study Bundle

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Resources & Subscriptions

We have quite a few subscriptions and memberships that we use throughout the school year.

Adventure Academy – think ABC mouse for the big kids. Actually it’s from the same company 🙂 Both girls have accounts and love the interactive world. There are tons of educational games, ebooks and more that they can explore. Plus, they can create and dress their characters so it’s “cool” in their books.

Evan-Moor publishes so many amazing workbooks and activity books. We have purchased dozens of them over the years but were recently introduced to their Teacher Filebox subscription service. This gives you access to ALL their titles so you can print on demand! It’s been well worth the monthly subscription cost and probably one of our most used services.

Use TeacherFileBox FREE for 30 days!

Extras

We like to incorporate lots of unit studies and projects into our school weeks. I’ll update this over the next few weeks as I finish up our unit study calendar and pick up all the additional books and projects we will be working on.