In this post, I’m sharing my final thoughts on our second grade homeschool curriculum choices that I did with my 5/6 year old this academic year. We follow a traditional American school calendar – September through May – so we’re just now finishing up. I wrote a blog post for my midyear review and spoiler… some of my opinions have changed!
Second Grade Homeschool Curriculum Overview
With a new baby in January, I tried my best to stick to our routine (for my mental health and the kids thriving with routine), but some changes were made for sure. The subjects my daughter had this year were:
- Theology
- Maths
- French
- English
- Music
- History
- Science
Theology
This was the second year of relying on my daughter’s AWANA club book to be our Bible study and verse memory for the year. Considering how busy things got with a new sibling, this really worked for us. Easy, simple and yet weekly accountability.
Maths
I was using both Singapore and Abeka arithmetic this year, but at one point, the Abeka arithmetic was so far ahead of the Singapore textbook that we couldn’t really take a day off like I had been doing: Abeka lesson on Mon, Wed, Fri and Singapore on Tues and Thurs. Abeka’s Arithmetic 3, which we are doing because my daughter already finished their first two arithmetic textbooks, already has her doing long division and even some basic algebra!? The second grade Singapore book is only just introducing multiplication and division.
I still like working through the Singapore workbooks because I think all of that extra practice for addition and subtraction – especially with emphasis on mental maths – is great. And we’re going to finish it. But I’m going to have to figure out a different system, possibly where we split our daily maths time block between the two. That way we aren’t taking days off between these more advanced skills and still getting all that extra practice in. Maths is one of our summer subjects, so I’ll have to have a new strategy. I still recommend having two curricula to work with though. If we hadn’t had such a major disruption to our schedule at the beginning of second semester, I know I would have been able to incorporate them both a bit more smoothly.
French
French is what has changed the most during second semester. I’ve still had to teach phonics on my own since it’s not taught directly in the Memoria Press First Start French I textbook. And I’m constantly reinforcing the vocabulary outside of “French class” by speaking to the kids in French. First semester, being the first semester of formal, textbook French study for my daughter, was going so slowly that I thought for sure the textbook would last us two years. Because if we had stayed at the rate we started, that definitely would have been the case. However, second semester, French has been really clicking. She’s remembering the vocabulary words, the concept of gendered nouns and verb conjugation is starting to make sense and now we’re able to get through the translation exercises quite quickly.
I honestly believe that short but consistent daily French lessons are what has made this work for our homeschool. Keeping the lessons short means that my daughter doesn’t get overwhelmed with the material and the consistency means we’re able to make progress every day. So I do believe I would recommend this curriculum now, just with the knowledge that it’s going to be slow going at first and require supplementation.
English
Abeka’s English curriculum is still outstanding, but I don’t use their kits. Instead I focus on grammar, spelling and writing which Abeka does very well. Second grade English grammar has been quite exciting. We’ve officially covered most of the parts of speech and have had a lot of practice identifying subjects and verbs. This has worked really well with reinforcing her French study, especially when it comes to conjugating verbs. Starting formal French lessons the same year as second grade English has worked out so well, I will definitely follow the same schedule for my son.
English Spelling
Spelling ramped up a bit second semester, so we’ve had to put more effort into learning her spelling words, but it hasn’t added too much time. And cursive writing has started to go more smoothly once I decided to focus on one penmanship issue at a time. For example, the height differences of tall and short letters. So I am super picky about that one issue until it’s fixed and then I focus on something else. I should have done that sooner, but hey, I’m human.
English Reading
Read alouds (both hers and mine) are one thing that have really suffered since baby girl was born in January. My daughter needs more time to read at her level – something challenging, but not too hard. And it’s been difficult to carve out the time for this. She has actually started reading a lot to her almost 3-year-old brother and even to her baby sister, which is great. But this is something I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t care for literature courses, so I didn’t buy the Abeka readers. I stand by this decision, because making time to read aloud was going to be a challenge with a newborn no matter what. Abeka’s grammar, spelling and cursive writing material are still winners though.
Music
Unfortunately, after my daughter’s spring recital in March, we found out her lovely Suzuki-certified teacher is retiring. I didn’t have long to feel gutted that we’re losing a teacher she has known since she was 2, because I was stressed about finding a new violin teacher. Fortunately, her teacher did connect us to somebody new and so far he is doing a really good job with her. However, he is not a Suzuki-trained teacher, so we will most likely be veering off the Suzuki path soon. That being said, my son is scheduled to start his own Suzuki cello lessons come autumn, so I will still have Suzuki specific content here on the blog.
Science & History
With a new baby, trying to get science and history both done at the same pace as first semester proved to be impossible. These are our after-lunch subjects and nowadays, it’s just too much. We tried the audio version of The Mystery of History Vol II textbook so my daughter could listen during her lunch break. But I wasn’t a fan. I soon realised that I do a lot of summarising and putting things in my own words for my 6-year-old to understand. I also frequently stop and make sure she’s understanding what’s going on. Thankfully, it’s possible to buy only a quarter of a semester of audio tracks so I didn’t have to spend $$$ for an entire textbook that I didn’t end up liking (the audio version of). So now, I just try to read either history or science to the kids while they are eating.
Funny enough, one of the reasons I like our main science curriculum this year (Science in the Ancient World) is also the reason it has proven so difficult to stay on track. Every lesson has a science demonstration, activity or experiment to demonstrate the ideas being taught. Most are very integral to the lesson, to the point that it’s hard to keep moving in the textbook if you don’t do the activities. What I decided to do was to spend most lunch hours reading history and read science maybe once or twice a week. We’re on track to finish history early (since cutting the projects) and then we’ll have a few weeks where we can really focus on science.
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