2nd grade homeschool plan: 180 days, day by day

2nd grade is the year reading gets fluent and math moves past 100. This plan reviews and stretches phonics into long vowels spelled several ways, prefixes and suffixes, and in math goes from facts within 20 to place value to 1,000 and adding and subtracting within 100. All 180 days are written, a day at a time, and the year at a glance below shows every week.

What the year covers

Reading

A spelling pattern a week: a fall review of closed syllables and silent e, then long a, e, i, o and u each spelled several ways, and doubling or dropping a letter before -ed and -ing; in winter bossy r, air and ear, and the vowel sounds oo, ou, ow, oi, oy, aw and au; in spring soft c and g, silent letters, -dge and -tch, plurals, prefixes and suffixes; then syllables, homophones, contractions and longer words. Sight words finish the Dolch second grade list and take the third. A new library story each week at levels 5 to 8, a reread of last week's, and 2nd grade passages with questions.

Writing

Twenty minutes a day with a pencil and paper: a strong paragraph with a topic sentence, details and an ending, joining words and time-order words, answering a question in full, explaining why, and true stories with feelings in the first quarter; then opinions with reasons and linking words, how-tos and letters; informative writing with facts, definitions, diagrams and a short shared report; and in late spring stories with talking, poems, and revising and editing.

Math

Facts within 20, odd and even, tens and ones, hundreds, tens and ones, skip counting by 5s, 10s and 100s, comparing numbers to 1,000, and adding and subtracting within 100 with story problems in the first quarter; then regrouping, measuring in inches, feet, centimeters and meters, time to five minutes and money; adding and subtracting within 1,000, graphs and line plots, arrays and equal groups; and shapes, halves, thirds and fourths.

Science and social studies

The same weekly topics as the other grades, at 2nd grade depth: describing and testing materials, pitch and how sound travels, mirrors and shadows, measuring the weather, how heating changes things and whether the change can be undone, shadows through the day and the spinning Earth, seeds that travel and plants that grow from parts, fair tests of what plants need, food chains, habitats and how many kinds live in one place, friction and ramps, water that freezes and melts, how animals get through winter, where Earth's water is and how it cycles, erosion and how to slow it, volcanoes, joints and muscle pairs, the heart's chambers and pulse, germs, food groups and sleep, insects and camouflage, life cycles with three and four stages, layers that float, bridges, towers and an egg drop, recycling and habitats, air's weight and push, and summer sun and water safety, and, for history and social studies, a timeline of my life, rules, laws, rights and responsibilities, maps with a key, a compass rose, a grid and a scale, goods and services, producers and consumers, income, spending and banks, the railroad and how goods travel, one-room homes and schools, and a hornbook to make.

Fifteen minutes a day on the other subject: a science notebook on the history weeks (observing and inferring, properties and classifying, rocks, magnets and their poles), and social studies on the science weeks: my family then and now, paid and unpaid work and a fair job chart, home, road and screen safety, listening and disagreeing kindly, how groups decide and a family election, and public and private places in the first quarter; then the four directions, a neighborhood map, landforms and map symbols, states, capitals and leaders, earning, prices and change, scarcity and budgets, barter and trade, and where food is grown; in spring past, present and future, months and seasons, primary sources, artifacts and oral history, decades and timelines, and community rules and services, with mixtures, birds, trees and soil on the science side; and in the last quarter public services, city, suburb and country, compromise, three levels of leaders and how laws are made, the flag, the Great Seal and state symbols, landmarks, voting, and a fair test of the child's own.

Read-alouds

A read-aloud every day from Peabody's free library at levels 6 to 9: longer stories, old tales, fables and true books, most tied to the week's topic, each with one thing to talk about.

How a day goes

A 2nd grade day takes about two hours and ten minutes: 30 for reading, 20 for writing, 30 for math, 20 for the main topic, 15 for the shorter one and 15 for the read-aloud. Many families do reading, writing and math in the morning and the topics and story after lunch.

Each day has a page with its six parts (reading, writing, math, science, social studies and the read-aloud), the links it uses, and a checklist to print. About 130 minutes in all.

Records, without an account

Press "Mark this day done" and the day is ticked off in this browser. If you keep Peabody's Record Book, the same button writes the day into it: a school day on the attendance chart, the minutes for five subjects in the hours log (language arts, writing, math, science, and history and social studies), and the books in the reading log. It all stays on your device; nothing is sent to us.

More than one child

Teaching more than one child? Turn on family mode and pick the grades you teach. Science, social studies and the read-aloud are for everyone together, and each child's reading, writing and math come from their own grade on the same day.

Questions

Related

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