The Ultimate Guide To Homeschooling Second Grade

Homeschooling second grade was a blast here. We declared our second grade homeschool school year Our Year of Magic!

Because we had been homeschooling for a few years, I felt more confident and inspired. I wanted to focus more on the fun and magic in learning. Instead of just getting through our work each day.

Homeschooling secong grade does not have to be complicated. Let The Waldock Way show you just how easy and fun it can be!

Table of contents

Curriculum Choices For Homeschooling Second Grade

These curriculum choices reflect our continued shift to play based and interest led learning. I based all of my choices around the fact that we wanted to have a magical homeschool year.

Please keep in mind that we will be dabbling in these resources and not necessarily completing all of them in their entirety. We choose to use multiple resources to teach language arts and math goals. While following our daughters interests for the other subjects.

Homeschool Language Arts and Math For Second Grade

Language Arts: Grammar Galaxy Nebula and Protostar, Explode the Code books 4 and 5, Brave Writer Jot it Down, and of course tons of language arts games.

Math: Evan Moor Daily Math Grade 2, Life of Fred Dogs and Edgewood (maybe more), Teaching Textbooks 3.0 Math 3, Wild Math 2nd/3rd Grade, and of course tons of math games.

Science, History, and Geography for Second Grade Homeschooling

Science: Waldock’s Wizards and Wands, Passport to More Adventures, Sassafras Science books, and of course tons of science games.

History & Geography: Waldock’s Wizards and Wands, Passport to More Adventures, Subscription Letters, Universal Yums, and of course tons of history & geography games.

Art, Nature, And Extras For Second Grade

Electives: Exploring Nature with Children, Chalk Pastel, Rooted Childhood, CG Kids From Seed to Table, and of course tons of elective games.

Supplemental/Extra Material: What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners in all Subjects, and tons of Usborne.

Our Second Grade Homeschool Schedule

Here is a basic overview of how we approached our second grade year.

We began each day with morning chores like making beds and getting read for the day. Next, we will move into our breakfast and morning basket time.

Once we are done with morning basket, Emily will have a choice for her Arithmancy/Math for the day. She will have four math selections to choose from, each day she will cross off the one she did. Once all four have been selected they will be erased to be chosen from again (essentially this is a self directed math loop).

Sometime through the day up to this point she will need to have read for at least 15 minutes, if she has not read yet this will be when we do that.

The next thing we will do is our “loop time” this will have a maximum of one hour a day. There are six loops built and each includes a language arts component and a “Hogwarts Class” (this is our courses from Waldock’s Wizards and Wands and Passport to More Adventures).

Once my husband gets home from work we will do an afternoon activity together as a family. Each day has an activity assigned to it.

  • Mondays (Mail Time Monday) we will open and enjoy one of our subscription letters or boxes.
  • Tuesdays (Teatime Tuesday) we will enjoy poetry teatime together.
  • Wednesday (Nature Walk Wednesday) we will go for a nature walk or do a lesson in Wild Math.
  • Thursdays (Think & Tinker Thursdays) we will do a science experiment or a S.T.E.M. challenge as a family.
  • Fridays (Fine Art Friday) we will do an art project together or enjoy a local Art Walk that is hosted one Friday a month.

Second Grade Books to Read Aloud & Independently

Our homeschool is largely comprised of books and games. Reading aloud plays a very crucial role in our homeschool. Most of our days begin and end with me reading aloud to Emily.

I will be specifically sharing the chapter books we enjoyed throughout the year. But, we also read a lot of picture books in addition to chapter books. The majority of the picture books we read each year can be found on Read Aloud Revival’s a year of picture books list.

Read Alouds for Second Grade

A very large portion of what we read was book series. We tend to get invested when the story keeps going and we were more excited to race through a book knowing there was another one waiting.

It seems like there is a mourning period (at least for us) when a book ends. So maybe we just like series because there is less mourning that way.

 Magic Tree House Merlin Harry Potter: The Illustrated Tuesdays at the Castle The Secret Mermaid Collection, The Worst Witch 7 The Marvelous Magic of The Dragon with a The Wayward Witch and The Sixty-Eight Rooms (The The Kingdom of Wrenly The Heidi Heckelbeck Collection:

Independent Reads for Second Grade

Emily loves to read. her favorite spot in the whole house is her little book nook corner. She loves when her cat Nala comes and curls up with her for story time.

 The Greetings from Somewhere The Daisy Dreamer Collection: Olivia’s Secret Scribbles: The Posy the Puppy (Dr. WellieWishers 3-Book Set 2 The Mia Mayhem Collection: Meet Yasmin! The Critter Club Collection:

Keeping Track Of What We Read

If you are looking for a way to easily keep track of the books you read in your homeschool, I highly suggest the GoodReads app.

GoodReads let you have as many “shelves” as you’d like. I have one for every homeschool year so far. You can scan the books and add them to your shelves with ease.

Games For Homeschooling Second Grade

To say we play a lot of games in our homeschool would be an understatement.

We are what you would call gameschoolers for sure. I make it a point to incorporate games into our days as much as possible. One way I do that is to use them in place of busy work.

Instead of learning about something Emily is uninterested in out of a boring textbook we can do something like play a fun hands-on game while we learn more about one of her favorite things: cats. Plus while we play we’d be connecting too.

Because I know we’re not alone, and many of you would love to add games to your days as well, I have put together a list of our most played games during our first grade year.

Top 15 Games for Second Grade

Mrs. Bernard is a Wild Card – With all the humor found in Dan Gutman’s popular ‘My Weird School’ books (which you don’t need to know anything about to play), this laugh-out-loud game is perfect for elementary school kids and families.

Silly Sentences – The perfect game to practice grammar skills learned in the first three years of school, and developed in association with early learning consultants, this educational tool uses fun puzzle pieces to help children construct sentences—no matter how silly their meaning. 

Word on the Street Jr. – Bring the fun of Word on the Street to the entire family! Get as many letters to your side of the street as you can in this hilarious, vocabulary-building tug of words designed specifically for younger players!

   

 

In a Pickle – Can a giraffe fit in a phone booth? Does a sofa fit in a shopping cart? It all depends on how you size it up in this game of creative thinking and outrageous scenarios. Try to win a set of cards by fitting smaller things into bigger things – There’s some juice in a pickle, in a supermarket, in a parking lot. 

Zeus on the Loose – Catch Zeus if you can! The great Greek god has bolted from Mount Olympus and it’s up to you to nab this dashing deity. Play cards strategically, adding numbers as you climb up the mythic mountain.

EeBoo Telling Time – Players move the arms on their own clock faces to show the time described on cards. It is especially good for correlating analog and digital representations of time as well as wording like “half past” and “quarter to.” Cards are color coded for the progression of skills in learning to tell time; each color representing time to the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour, in five-minute intervals, or for all sixty minutes. 

   

 

Clumsy Theif – This hilarious fast-paced card game has everyone snatching money—when they dare! Big money’s up for grabs and every player joins the fun. This game requires strategy, addition skills, luck and a great sense of humor.

Pay Day – Learn how to get from a Payday to the end of the month. The game board resembles a calendar month, and each space has events like a buying “deal” or receiving “mail” (includes bills, insurance offers etc.) The object of the game is to have the most money at the end of the game, which is over after as many months as the players decide on.

Money Bags – Players race around the board, using lifelike play money to make combinations of coins, counting play dollar bills, and trying to rack up the most money to win.

   

 

Set – Players to race to find as many SETs as they can! A SET is three cards where each individual feature (color, shape, number and shading) is either all the same OR all different! The first player to see a SET calls out “SET” and grabs the cards—there are no “turns” and no luck here!

Planet – In this very unique game, each player’s board is a 12-sided 3-dimensional planet core. Throughout 12 turns, select landscape tiles representing oceans, deserts, mountains or frozen lands, and arrange them on your planet to create the best ecosystems. Win Animal Cards while fulfilling your own ‘’Natural Habitat’’ objective and create the most populated planet in the universe!

Photosynthesis – Plant and shape the ever-changing forest as you cultivate your seeds and your strategy. Take your trees through their life-cycle, from seedling to full bloom to rebirth, and earn points as their leaves collect energy from the revolving sun’s rays. Carefully pick where you sow and when you grow, as trees in the shadows are blocked from light, and from points. This game features realistic gameplay and beautiful graphics.

   

 

Dragonwood – Dare to enter Dragonwood! Deep in the heart of this mythical forest lurk angry ogres, giggling goblins, and even the famed and fearsome fire-breathers themselves! Collect sets of adventurer cards to earn dice, which you will use to roll against your foes. 

Blokus – A family game, a strategy game, and an award-winning game all in one! Blokus starts each player with pieces of different shapes and sizes. Your job is to play all your pieces first – or be the one with the fewest squares left. Can you block your opponents and expand your territory?

Scrambled States – Quick! Find a state that ends with the letter A. Now find one that borders Tennessee. Have fun learning about the United States in this madcap game of observation and quick reflexes. Collect state cards by matching them to a Scramble challenge. 

   

 

Yes, You Can Homeschool Second Grade!

The reality is that I questioned myself all the time during our second grade year. Most homeschooling moms do!

But, I want you to know that homeschooling second grade is not only an educational option, it’s a wonderful approach to you child’s education.

Watch this second grade homeschool playlist to see a indepth look at how our second grade homeschool year went.