Homeschooling Second Grade

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This was our second time around homeschooling a second grader in our house. So, what did we do this time? Since this was our daughter's second-grade homeschool year, we used Adventures in U.S. History from My Father's World as our spine. We also used a variety of other resources to make this year educational and fun. 

Resources for Second Grade 

With Adventures in U.S. History as our starting point for our daughter's education, we added in lessons from Math Mammoth, Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2, Stepping into Science Kit, and Science: Lessons and Investigations - Grade 2. We also used Math Challenge from Memoria Press and I Can Do All Things Book and DVD for art.

We read wonderful books for history and as read-alouds. These included: 

• Pilgrim Adventures 
• The Courage of Sarah Noble
• On the Banks of Plum Creek
• Sarah Whitcher's Story
• In Grandma's Attic
• Mountain Born
• Farmer Boy
• Squirreled Away (The Dead Sea Squirrels) 
• Crossroads at Galilee 

One of our favorite resources was the Patriotic Songs of the U.S.A. CD that was part of the second-grade curriculum. It contained the following songs: 

• God Bless America 
• America
• Yankee Doodle
• America the Beautiful 
• There Are Many Flags
• The Star-Spangled Banner 
• You're a Grand Old Flag
• The Stars and Stripes Forever
• Columbia the Gem of the Ocean 
• The Battle Hymn of the Republic 
• Armed Services Medley 

We spent the year listening to each song for two to three weeks and learning the words. It was fun singing along with the songs with our children. We also spent time looking for different versions of the songs to hear the different lyrics and musical choices. 

Homeschooling Second Grade Science 

We used a variety of science resources including those that are part of Adventures in U.S. History: 

• First Encylopedia of Science 
• Science in the Kitchen 
• Sicnece with Air 
• Birds, Nests, and Eggs
• Fun with Magnets Kit 

And a fun science kit we reviewed, courtesy of Timberdoodle, brought science to life with more experiments. There were quite a few experiments from all these resources that our children loved doing! 

A Fun Year 

Homeschooling second grade was so much fun. Our daughter built upon the skills she started in kindergarten and first grade with My Father's World. We spent time working on speed and accuracy in math. We read more books and dug deeper into U.S. History with Drive Thru History, our read-alouds, timeline, and more. And we also worked on adding more Scripture to our memorization work. 

Adventures in U.S. History was a great curriculum for both our daughter and son. It was our spine for our daughter and we used the history, scripture, and read-alouds for our son. I can't wait to see where Exploring Countries and Cultures will take our family!

Including Geography in Your Homeschool: A Review of Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 2

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this book from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page for more information. Thank you.

There are several subjects that sometimes get pushed to the side when planning homeschool lessons. Electives like music and art, along with studies that are more like sub-subjects (word?) such as spelling and geography. These subjects may be skipped or shortchanged. With Evan-Moor's Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 2, you can easily incorporate educational, interesting, and fun geography lessons. Including geography in your homeschool has never been easier!

Timberdoodle includes Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 in their second-grade curriculum kits. We were lucky enough to receive both the second-grade and the fifth-grade books to review and use in our homeschool. Our daughter has been using the second-grade workbook for several months as part of her normal homeschool lessons, and it has been very useful.

About the Book 

Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 is a 144-page consumable paperback book. The pages are perforated, so you could pull them out to work on specific pages. And some of the pages are meant to be pulled out, so you can use those with the hands-on activity at the end of the lessons. Including geography in your homeschool with this workbook is easy, as the units include a lot of different topics and ideas. 

There are six units that include: 

• The World in Spatial Terms 
• Places and Regions 
• Physical Systems 
• Human Systems
• Environment and Safety 
• The Use of Geography 

Each lesson with the unit has a specific concept and skills that will help your child learn about the world around them. The lessons include: 

• reading selections
• vocabulary and vocabulary activities 
• visual literacy 
• what I learned from activities 
• hands-on activities 

A Look at a Lesson 

In the "A World Map" lesson, our daughter learned about continents and oceans. She is now able to define the ocean, world, and continent, as well as interpret a map of the oceans. Her hands-on activity had her cutting out the continents and properly gluing them on the map. 

My Thoughts 

I enjoyed using Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 to include geography in our homeschool lessons. The fact that each lesson included a hands-on activity was great! Because our daughter was finishing up second grade when we started the book, I could easily assign lessons to her, and she would work on those independently. Sometimes, she did have questions, and they were easily answered. I didn't even need to refer to the answer key at the back of the book. 

While some workbooks are geared more toward school than homeschool, I didn't find any activities or questions that we needed to adapt as homeschoolers (although we haven't finished every lesson yet). Questions were about the state or neighborhood and not the school or classroom. 

The pages are very colorful. All the graphics are colorful clipart or photographs. This makes it easier to identify what each image is of when completing exercises. Sometimes, workbooks are only in black-and-white, which makes assignments difficult to complete. 

While the lessons do build on each other, you could do them out of order to accompany your history or social studies lessons with a few modifications. For example, you could include the reading for "A Product Map of Kansas" with lessons on the state of Kansas or "An Ocean Habitat" when studying coastal states or islands.

Our daughter enjoyed this workbook so much that she would complete extra pages after dinner. She asked me on more than one occasion, "How many more pages can I do?" What parent doesn't love it when their child willingly and excitedly completes homeschool assignments? 

Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 is perfect for ages 7-9. You could easily use it with an older first grader or a younger third grader. I would recommend second grade for use in your homeschool. This was a perfect way to help us include geography in our homeschool. 

I'll be sharing my review of the fifth-grade book soon! 

If you are interested in more from Timberdoodle, please check out my posts about other products here: 

Art History for All Ages: A Review of Have I Got a Story For You! Downloadable Art History Video Series (Renaissance)

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