My Little Soapbox

Jr. will begin his Year 2 next Monday. This year we have lots to do and hopefully most of it will be fun for both of us. I am almost ready which I suppose is better than not ready at all. Finding time to actively focus on planning is still an issue. And one that must get resolved if we are to get a significant portion of our plans completed this year. Unfortunately without time to plan what falls to the wayside are the fun, big projects that require me to make sure we have stuff on hand. My goal this year is to carve out time to plan and to gather up the necessary materials for the big projects.

The plan may seem ambitious but if last winter was any indicator of what’s to come this year we will have a number of months where we are effectively here, home and hardly anywhere else. Long winter days are perfect for keeping busy with learning fun!

Year 2 Plan

Math: Singapore 2A/2B
We will be continuing with Singapore Math. Jr. is still lightening fast with picking up math concepts and continues to develop his interest in numbers. This program has worked well with keeping him slightly challenged and growing. We will be adding in Challenging Word Problems this year.

Grammar: Growing with Grammar 1st/2nd
I love this program! What’s more so does Jr. The lessons are nutshell lessons that are easy to complete with no frustration from my reluctant writer. The writing is there but not so much that Jr. gets fatigued which is what leads to frustration. We started this late in the year last year so we will not actually hit the 2nd grade pages till closer to November.

Reading: ETC Online, Various Read Aloud Books
Reading is the bane of Jrs. existence. He can read and read well for his age in my opinion. But he loathes reading aloud. So this year we have an assigned books for him to read to one of us (the parents) at varying levels. We’ll be starting out the year with easy books to encourage his confidence in himself and move up as the year progresses. For additional reinforcement of the phonics rules Jr. will use Explode The Code Online.
This is probably the area of I expect the largest adjustment throughout the year.

Handwriting: HWT 2nd Grade
We need to refine some of the technique and then add more writing to the day. Jr. has nice chunky handwriting when he takes his time but does still tend to utilize all uppercase letters when writing. He’ll also be continuing with writing to his pen pal across the pond. And we’ll have copy-work pages to change up from the technique days.

Geography:
I do not have a set resource for Geography as our focus for this year is just exposure. We’ll touch on Oceans, Continents, US Geography and some World Geography. But the main idea of the year will be to make him more aware that there are other places, countries and peoples.

Science: R.E.A.L. Science Life & Earth & Space
Originally I was just planning on working on Life but instead I am going to be combining the two throughout the year. Depending on how it goes this combination may extend into next year as well. Due to the time of year and what is available we actually started this two weeks ago to cover the first two preliminary units so that we could jump ahead to the butterfly unit since we have caterpillars in a jar now. We will focus on life science for August and then switch to the Earth & Space weather units for September while I regroup for Life again in October.

History: History Odyssey Level 1 Middle Ages
The Ancient while fascinating just never grabbed my boys attention. So while we plodded through as much as we could we will not be continuing on Ancients this year. Instead he will move forward to the Middle Ages and return to Ancient times in a couple of years. I will reiterate my love for rotational nature of history in the Classical method. In a fun and interesting twist on history Jr. has already snagged a few of my “to be read” books for History - knights seem to be right up his alley this year.

*****

So there is our plan well along with some extra curriculars, art projects and field trips. It will be a full year but one that I hope only keeps us pleasantly busy and learning. If it seems to overwhelming I’ll dial back a bit. On paper it looks crazy but when I look at the lessons themselves it evens out to be an engaging, doable year.