Second grade is such a fun time to be homeschooling! Children are generally starting to read or increase their fluency, they can understand and do more on their own, and their attention span is (usually) getting longer. This year my middle daughter is in second grade and she is definitely a different learner than my oldest! I decided to change some things up as far as the curriculum we had been using, so I’m excited to share what has worked for us this year!
2nd Grade Homeschool Curriculum
First of all, let me just say that, at this age, my oldest daughter loved homeschool worksheets. She could sit and do pages of worksheets and just loved them….my middle daughter, not so much.
In our homeschool, we are a mix of unschooling, Charlotte Mason, and traditional curriculum. I really focus on a strong reading and math foundation for our girls and the rest of the subjects we tend to meander down casually. I’ll be sharing what we use for:
Math
Reading
Language Arts
Science
History
Gym Class (so fun!)
Art
2nd Grade Math Curriculum
We have used Horizons and The Good and the Beautiful in the past, so I showed both to my daughter and she chose Horizons. I love their full-color, simple worksheets that kids can work through at their own pace. I also love that they make it so easy to skip through skills that my daughter had already mastered. This keeps them from getting bored. We would practice a new skill together and then I would go through the next few lessons and circle what I wanted her to work on and how many of each skill she should do.
My middle daughter loves to try things on her own, so I loved that Horizons let her do her math independently without her needing to read a ton since she is still working on her fluency in reading.
If you are looking for a solid, easy to implement math curriculum I HIGHLY recommend looking at Horizons.
Reading
After phonics and initial sight words, we don’t generally use a formal reading curriculum because we just read so much that I prefer to choose books that my child is interested in instead of a reader that a curriculum says they should read. If you are still working on phonics, beginning and ending blends, or vowel teams, then I cannot recommend The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading enough. It is so good!
We read A LOT in our family. I buy lots of used books, we go to the library all the time, and I also sell Usborne Books & More, so we have a constant stream of new books coming into our home. I think frequently introducing new books into your home is one of the best ways to spark and interest in reading and keep your kids loving reading!
My daughter is probably considered reading at slightly below a 2nd grade level, but that’s the beauty of homeschooling, isn’t it? She wasn’t interested in reading until about a year ago and she has really made a lot of progress this year. So, keep that in mind with my 2nd grade book suggestions below – your child may be above or below her level. It’s all good.
Here are some of the books my daughter has enjoyed reading during second grade. These are books she has read on her own or read to me as part of our reading swapping. (Reading swapping is where we each take turns reading aloud. I’ll read a few pages from a higher level chapter book and she’ll read a page or two from her book. We do it a few times. I think the swapping part gives her brain just enough of a break, so she can keep going for a little longer than just reading all once.
Dragon Masters (She got this series for Christmas and LOVES it!)
Billie B. Brown and the Little Lie (fun early chapter books. The author wrote them specifically for kids with dyslexia, but they are great for newly independent readers.)
Billie B. Brown and the Night Fright
School of Monsters (super easy, but a fun break some days)
The Good and the Beautiful Level 2 Reader
Ted and Friends (really focuses on short vowel phonics)
Hooked on Phonics chapter books (scroll to the bottom of this link)
A Kiss for Little Bear
Fizz and the Police Dog Tryouts (fun early chapter books)
Fizz and the Dog Academy Rescue
Fizz and the Show Dog Jewel Thief
Fizz and the Handbag Dognapper
Language Arts for 2nd Grade
We admittedly take a very relaxed approach to language arts in elementary school. This year my daughter finished up The Good and the Beautiful langauge arts level 1 and then we took a break. She loves to write on her own and is doing very well with spelling without a formal curriculum, so I decided not to add in another subject for her. We do read a lot of these books about parts of speech, play language arts games, and we completed some parts of speech printables from Teachers Pay Teachers. A few times I also copied a page from the book she was currently reading and had her highlight different parts of speech in different colors.
Next year I am considering starting Michael Clay Thompson’s Island series because I have heard great things about it and it seems to fit very well into our relaxed approach to elementary language arts.
2nd Grade Homeschool Science
We have used The Good and the Beautiful science units for several years now and we all just love them! We have used them when my oldest started kindergarten (so ages 5, 3, and 1) and all three girls could enjoy the activities and information and we continue to use them now with ages 9, 7, and 5. The information is just the right amount of depth for elementary kiddos in my opinion. The illustrations are GORGEOUS, and the activities are simple, but super fun for the kids.
So far we have done Meteorology, Marine Biology, Intro to Energy (which is now discontinued, but I think they combined two units into a new energy unit), and are currently working our way through Water in Our World.
Some of the activities from the various units include “water walking”, crushing a soda can with air pressure, creating an atom molecule from playdoh, making a paperclip float, and just so many more that I couldn’t possibly list them here.
*side note: TGTB is technically a religious curriculum. A few of their mini-books mention God creating the world and how much he loves all of us. If you are uncomfortable with this take on things you could still absolutely use these units and just skip over those sentences.
History for 2nd Grade
In previous years we have used The Story of the World, but my kiddos ( and me, too) were getting anxious to get to American history, so I decided to pause our normal history work and dive into US history. I couldn’t find a curriculum that I was too excited about, and my kids are still so young, that I just decided to use picture books and activities I found online.
I’ve bought some picture books online at Thriftbooks and the rest I got from our local library. You can find a list of the books (and lots more) that we’ve used in this post. For activities we’ve used lots of Evan Moor History Pockets and 3D Maps.
The girls have really enjoyed it and it has been pretty easy for me to plan.
Gym Class for Homeschool
We’ve always done lots of outside time playing, hiking, and exploring, but I wanted games we could play as a family. The girls have wanted to work on their basketball and soccer skills, so I was thrilled when a veteran homeschool mom recommended this book!
There are games that work on dribbling skills for basketball, soccer skills, running, and so much more. And they can all be played with 3 or more people! We’ve played King of the Dribblers, Pirate King, Tunnel Tag, and others that the girls have all loved. We’ve played with friends and their kids loved them, too. Highly recommend!
2nd Grade Homeschool Art
Art is so fun at this age! Most children love being creative and working with paint, crayons, markers, chalk, clay, and anything else that can get messy, lol. For a while, we were using this book, but I decided to switch it up this year and it has been so fun!
My sister-in-law had suggested Blossom and Root for art, so we tried it! I actually got the kindergarten art and history curriculum along with the second and 4th grade art curriculums. We’ve done a few of the lessons from kindergarten as well as the second grade art lessons and they have been great! We are decidedly very relaxed about our art curriculum and I just want it to be fun and enjoyable for the girls. My oldest is a bit of a perfectionist and can get very frustrated when things are difficult or her art doesn’t turn out like she pictured it in her head, so I try to find activities that will be fun and enjoyable for everyone without being frustrating. Blossom and Root has definitely delivered on that front!
The kindergarten lessons had us look at a famous painting and then incorporate something from that into our drawing. One lesson we did a sunset in both warm colors and then again in cool colors. Another lesson had us painting water any color but blue, the way it might appear in a sunset or something. I like to open ended-ness of the projects and that everyone can do their own thing.
The second grade lessons focused on math in art. We’ve learned about different lines and will be learning about drawing with perspective in the next few lessons.
A few months ago, I found P’zazz Studio and we have just LOVED it! Kasey also does videos on the Crayola Facebook page and the directions are just AMAZING and so easy for the kids (and me) to follow. We’ve done snowman, reindeer, unicorn, and giraffe and EVERYONE has had a great time with each painting. She does offer a monthly kids club membership, but we are just doing the free videos for now. I might sign up for the club for a month or two at different times a year. We don’t do art consistently enough to complete all the projects every month.
Tips for Success in Second Grade
Second grade is such a fun age because kids are really starting to be able to do a lot of different activities. But, they are still young, so remember to keep it simply and not overload your schedule. My kids tend to get really excited about one subject, so sometimes we will do some block scheduling for a while. That’s where we just do one subject (and maybe math and some language arts) and that’s it. It lets us really focus on what they are interested in at the moment.
So, we might do a month of math, language arts, and history because they are really into American history. Then, when we’ve had our fill of history for a while, we’ll switch over to science and do lots of experiments and lessons for several weeks.
Have a Great Second Grade Homeschool Year
There you have it! That’s what we have been using for our second grade homeschool this year and it has been great! Are you really excited about one of the resources I mentioned? Or do you have a question about something? I’d love to hear about it! Just pop it in the comments and I’ll get back to you!