[2017-2018 planning thread for 2nd grade]

This year is kind-of experimental for me. I homeschooled my middle child a couple years ago and failed miserably, put her in PS and wasn't happy with that either, so I'm going to give HSing another try. Her personality is the polar opposite of mine, so it's difficult to choose curricula because she hates everything I like! 

 

Math: MEP2. Backup: Miquon. Supplement: Prodigy (She already likes that so I'm safe there.)

 

LA: TG&TB2. Backup: Language Smarts C. Maybe: Editor In Chief. 

 

Science: Elemental Sci Biology (non-negotiable b/c she has to do this w/ sis)

 

History: SOTW1. Also w/ sis. I've incorporated a lot of arts, crafts, & cooking projects into it.

 

Handwriting: Cursive that I come up with. 

 

Bible: Easy Peasy

 

Reading: Her choice of library books.

 

Piano: Hoffman Academy

 

Typing: Dance Mat Typing 

 

PE: Her grandma is getting her a Wii Dance game and we'll have lots of park days.

 

Character Building: Piecing together lessons from hubbard's cupboard and character first ed.

 

I might start Song School Latin 1 halfway through the year; it just depends on how the first half goes. 

[What should I add to SOTW1 for young child?]

I found this while digging for SOTW supplements. There's quite a few activities that you could do to include a youngster. :)

[2017-2018 1st Grade Plans!]

My youngest will be in 1st this fall; I think I've finally figured everything out....

 

Math: continuing MEP 1; starting 2 if we get that far

 

Phonics: continuing OPGTR; might start Good and the Beautiful if she finishes OPG

 

Reading: her choice

 

Handwriting/copywork: she'll probably get exposure to that in sci and history, but if not, I'll wing it

 

History: SOTW 1

 

Science: Elemental Sci Bio 1

 

Bible: undecided. Might just wing it

 

I want to do some sort of hymn study but we'll see.

 

I'll also be homeschooling her never-stops-moving older sister next year so I'm sure she'll get plenty of PE/art/music during the millions of dance/brain breaks we'll be taking each day.

[SOTW question!]

I had high hopes for my kids studying the same science and history at the beginning of the year (I have 1 in K and 1 in 5th) but it turns out my kindergartener just didn't have the attention span for it. I ended up focusing on the 3 R's and fitting sci/SS into the occasional unit study. 

 

It won't hurt to give it a try and see how he handles it, but if it were me, I'd probably just skip it or let him sit in the room and color or play with playdoh or something while reading aloud to the older, then start on book 2 in 1st. It'll be a little out of order, but as long as you get back to the 1st one in the rotation your DS won't be missing anything.

[Visually stimulating chapter books for boys 5-8]

Mine like the Stick Dog and Stick Cat books.

[DuoLingo]

I wanted to love Duolingo for Irish (not sure why that's in scare quotes?) but its content for Irish was apparently sourced by volunteers and it has serious problems with things like word frequency - I got thoroughly sick of being drilled on the words for elephant and butterfly a thousand times before many high frequency words were introduced. Also, Irish is grammatically much more different from English than are French, Spanish, German, etc., and the sentence structure is hard to pick up through that implicit approach. I'm sure Duolingo is lovely for more accessible languages but given the special challenges of Irish a small investment in something professionally produced, like Gaeilge Gan Stró ("Irish without stress," by a major educational organization in Ireland) would go far.

I put Irish in quotes because I question whether it's truly Irish or more Gaelic. Since I've never encountered a native speaker, and I barely know the difference myself, I'm not putting much stock into him actually learning Irish.... Like you said, nuances and whatnot are difficult to pick up from a computer program. 

 

But he enjoys it, so I let him.

[DuoLingo]

I took 5 years of Spanish in school and started using DuoLingo as a refresher a couple years ago. DH had never taken any foreign language and he started using it shortly after I did, and --honestly-- I didn't think he was actually learning anything judging by how often I had to help him. However, after a year of using it, Spanish came up in our conversation and he knew a word I didn't! Color me impressed!

 

A couple of months ago DS finished his Latin book and I gave him the choice of continuing Latin or moving to a different language; he decided to do something different so he's using DuoLingo to learn "Irish". 

[Logic to the Rescue kindle edition free]

Thanks, OP!

 

Does anyone know of similar books that could be gotten from a local library?