2nd grade LA- what would you add?

[amyc78]

We will continue AAR and AAS for 2nd grade, plus some sort of handwriting curriculum. What would you add to complete our language arts? Anything for grammar? Copywork? Composition?

 

I am considering adding Writing Strands and using that for gentle grammar instruction… Thoughts?

 

Edited to add: it needs to be fairly independent. AAR and AAS are both parent intensive and I will have a 4th grader and a newborn next year.

Edited January 17, 2016 by amyc78

[WahM]

For second grade English we do spelling, writing, grammar, handwriting.

[Ellie]

We will continue AAR and AAS for 2nd grade, plus some sort of handwriting curriculum. What would you add to complete our language arts? Anything for grammar? Copywork? Composition?

 

I am considering adding Writing Strands and using that for gentle grammar instruction… Thoughts?

 

Edited to add: it needs to be fairly independent. AAR and AAS are both parent intensive and I will have a 4th grader and a newborn next year.

 

Copywork, yes. Grammar, no. Real composition, no.

 

I can't figure out how you'd use Writing Strands for grammar. :huh:

[Peaceful Isle]

I love the Voyages in English books for first and second grade. It has grammar and writing and is very colorful. It won't take much time each day, but adds a nice introduction to grammar

[Guest]

ds8 adores grammar.

 

He doesn't have enough of an attention span to explore that new passion without it cutting into the time he is able to devote to math.

 

It shows.

[craftyerin]

My 2nd graders are reading fluently, so they don't have something like AAR, but we covering copywork, dictation, spelling, handwriting, composition, and grammar (mechanics) through Brave Writer (Quiver of Arrows units and Jot it Down!). They were begging for more, so we're also listening to Grammar Land and doing the little exercises at the end of each of those chapters, on the pace of about one chapter/week. Nice and gentle, and super fun! 

[zarabellesmom]

I have a young second grader this year. We have dabbled in voyages in english a bit. It's not bad, but it moves really slowly. Right now we read (we've passed phonics and are just working on increasing fluency). We are using Apples and Pears for spelling. We are also using English Lessons Through Literature which covers grammar, literature, narration, picture study, and copywork. She also composes a few(4) original sentences in response to our read aloud daily. I'm not sure that's helpful, but that's what we are up to. I feel like I took a more relaxed approach with my oldest and she seems behind to me. I recently talked to my SIL whose son is in first grade and is composing 5 to 7 sentence paragraphs. I'm thinking that's not totally age appropriate, but I don't want to be too far behind that (i'm kind of a worse case scenario,i die, kids go to school, person lol). Anyway, next year my third grader will start IEW(which I'm using with my oldest who really needs explicit instruction). I like IEW a lot so far. I was more of a natural writer, so it doesn't really fit me as a writer, but my oldest needs a lot of hand holding.

[Coco_Clark]

We do a spelling program (rod and staff) and ELTL (covers copywork, a bit of grammar, and a bit of writing).

[amyc78]

Copywork, yes. Grammar, no. Real composition, no.

 

I can't figure out how you'd use Writing Strands for grammar. :huh:

 

Basically the way Sonlight does- pointing out capitalization, punctuation, etc as she dictates and copies her own writing.

[3 ladybugs]

My son is currently sort of in 2nd grade (he is doing mostly 2nd grade work). I am changing things up in February though so he will now have AAR 3 (he is just about finished with 2), AAS 2, ZB GUM, ZB 2C Handwriting with this fountain pen, and ZB Word Wisdom (this starts at 3rd grade but because of his reading abilities, he needs it now). 

 

It may seem like a lot but I am planning on him not doing everything everyday. Also the way I see it, even if my son spends 4 hours a day on schoolwork, a long day for him, it still is no where near as long a typical school day in public school. 

[MrsWeasley]

Writing with Ease, First Language Lessons, and Handwriting Without Tears

[Heidi]

No grammar. I would add copywork. My goal for my 2nd grader is to get her comfortable writing half a page of writing, hopefully onto wide ruled paper by the end of the year.

Then have her read aloud a chapter in a book and narrate it back for both oral composition and reading practice.

[u2006kids]

Any open and go Copywork like a workbook ?

[Heidi]

Any open and go Copywork like a workbook ?

ELTL has a workbook you can use with their curriculum, and I do use that with my 2nd grader. But I add more copywork to her schedule by giving her a book on her reading level, point to the sentences I want her to copy onto a separate paper, and say, "copy that." So that's open and go :) I specifically want her to learn to copy from a book onto her own paper. I think mid 2nd grade is a good time to teach that skill.

[BusyMom5]

We do copywork, spelling, and AAR.  Anything grammar related is something like Mad Libs or just talking about something in our copywork (proper nouns need capitals, punctuation, commas in a series, basic parts of speech).

[MrsRobinson]

In addition to reading and spelling, which you already have, We are doing Language Lessons for Today. Its a very Charlotte Mason gentle approach to language arts. There is some copywork, oral narration, poetry memorization, picture study and a very gentle introduction to grammar. Dd is loving it! Very quick lessons and very affordable, too. Its put out by My Father's World but I haven't run across any Christian content. I think its a modernization of an old school text.

[kalusignan]

We are also doing AAR and AAS for 2nd grade. I added Pictures in Cursive for handwriting.

 

We use FLL and WWE for grammar and writing. They are not independent but very 'open and go' and take very little time each day. I skip the dictations since we are doing that in AAS. I also don't do the copywork in both FLL and WWE; I pick one each day.

[Guest]

Memoria Press has copywork workbooks. 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but Jot It Down from Bravewriter is a fun intro to writing.

[SilverMoon]

My second grader has grammar, writing (all copywork based), intro cursive penmanship, spelling, and literature. She's a strong little reader that doesn't need more phonics instruction than her spelling book can provide. Her English and spelling books say 3 on the cover, and her current independent reader is a Thornton Burgess animal story (Paddy the Beaver, I think).

 

All that said, if your little person still needs to work on reading, I'd make that my focus and set stuff like grammar, spelling, and literature aside for now. Until they're reading fluently the only subjects my little ones have for language arts are phonics and penmanship.

[My3girls]

For 2nd, we did spelling, grammar, composition, handwriting, and phonics.  Although, I classified phonics as reading not language arts.  This way there was an hour of language arts, 30 minutes of reading, 30 minutes of math, and 30 minutes of science and history (alternating days).  2.5 hours was plenty of time for school in 2nd grade.

[Raifta]

I would add FLL (might seem parent intensive but I found that it only took 5-10 minutes a day and not every day either) and Bravewriter's Jot It Down and think that was absolutely all you would need for 2nd grade LA.

 

[Hobbes]

If still working on reading, I'd leave that as priority and not add grammar, composition, etc. Penmanship/copywork might be useful.

[heartlikealion]

I'm not really sure if I understand what people mean when they say grammar. We are doing 2nd grade this year. We are reading The Sentence Family and working on this workbook: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Arts-Grade-1-Spectrum/dp/076968131X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453443058&sr=8-2&keywords=spectrum+language+arts+grade+1. It says grade 1, but it was too much for us last year.

 

The Sentence Family (to me) is not independent. The workbook, some of it could be considered independent though I find that I need to be nearby to get the lesson started or at least to check the work.

[amyc78]

I'm not really sure if I understand what people mean when they say grammar. We are doing 2nd grade this year. We are reading The Sentence Family and working on this workbook: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Arts-Grade-1-Spectrum/dp/076968131X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453443058&sr=8-2&keywords=spectrum+language+arts+grade+1. It says grade 1, but it was too much for us last year.

 

The Sentence Family (to me) is not independent. The workbook, some of it could be considered independent though I find that I need to be nearby to get the lesson started or at least to check the work.

 

Well I can't speak for everyone but when I say grammar- at this age- I mean punctuation, capitalization, basic sentence structure, learning about nouns, verbs, etc.

[heartlikealion]

Well I can't speak for everyone but when I say grammar- at this age- I mean punctuation, capitalization, basic sentence structure, learning about nouns, verbs, etc.

 

This is what we're doing. I just didn't know if anyone was talking about conjugating sentences. The workbook we're doing has things like making things possessive (there's a word bank with names and nouns) and adding commas in dates, between city and state, etc.