Second Grade Plans

I like to share what we are doing school-wise here so that I can refer back to it in the future... I can't believe Cecilia will begin Kindergarten next year!!!  I am glad to have posted about all the fun Caroline had in K so that I can look back and hopefully implement some of it with Cecilia next year (although I don't know I will be able to do quite so much, since I'm also teaching Caroline and caring for Lucy now!).

Another reason to put my plans and actions into posts here is for the accountability.  Not only can people glance over this and see the "meat" of what we are doing (you know, and not just sitting around in our pj's all day, ha!), but if for some reason I ever need to document any of our learning, I have some of it here.  In fact, I am having to go back and pull things I posted about our chickens being used for educational purposes... sigh.  We're going to hope to prove that they are useful in our home-educating household so that we'll get to keep them.  Long story short, a neighbor reported them after seeming to be okay with them for almost three years, and now we're going to put up a fence and present how they are helpful in our home learning by applying for a special use permit which will hopefully allow us to keep them for educational purposes.  I hope it works out... it will be a big to-do, with letters being sent to all the neighbors and a sign in our yard about the public hearing date... ugh.

Anyway, I want to list out what we are doing in second grade and what resources we are using.  It is a big year: a sacramental year!  I also envision this year as preparing Caroline to do more independent work in third grade.  So, here's a list of all that's going on in our second grade homeschool!

Math:
Math U See Beta
Addition/Subtraction flashcards and games
Time Bingo
Skip counting with beanbags
Time and Amount of the Day
Math Living Books correlated to MUS

English/Grammar:
Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl (half this year, the other half in 3rd grade)
Kolbe English 2 workbook
Journal writing 2x/week

Handwriting (hoping to introduce D'Nealian writing soon in preparation for cursive):
Poetry Copywork
New Testament Bible verse copywork

Reading/Literature:
Reading/narrating from New Catholic Picture Bible (NT)
Classic Myths to Read Aloud
More Once Upon a Time Saints
Poetry: selections to be memorized from The Harp and the Laurel Wreath and Favorite Poems Old and New

Various other books, such as stories of the saints, and various chapter books read aloud for enjoyment... some we will do/have done this year are Ramona and her Father/Mother, Family Under the Bridge, The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, and others to be determined...  Also, we will have read-alouds during tea time every few weeks from The Acts of the Apostles for Children and The Seven Little Sisters Who Lived on the Round Ball (free ebook download!), and others as I decide.

Science:
Nature study/sketching in nature notebooks
The Earth: weather section (read and do experiments/record observations)
Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton Burgess (read and narrate, make own field guide using coloring pages from Peterson's Mammals Coloring Book Field Guide, refer to Audobon First Field Guide: Mammals)
Seed Babies (read, narrate, explore various seeds)
Trees Every Child Should Know (trying to decide whether to just use this as a reference... I downloaded it free here)
Nature Stories for Young Readers by Florence Bass (downloaded free to tablet here)
The Living Year (downloaded free here)

History:
American History Stories Volumes I and II by Mara Pratt (spine)
Supplementing with corresponding stories from these sources:
Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Eggleston
Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Thirty More Stories Retold, Fifty Famous People by James Baldwin

We are also continuing to locate places on a world map where historical figures and saints lived and mark them with flags.

(I have found free ebooks of all of these additional books, but they are also available free at the Baldwin Project, which is where I linked them)

Foreign Language:
Learn Spanish with Grace! (once a week... I happened to have this program on my bookshelf, given to me for free - yay!)

Music:
Wee Sing America
Monthly hymns (selected by me to reflect the liturgical season)
Composer Study - Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Grieg - if we get to all of these!!  (Listen to selections from each composer, read biographies of them, play their music in the background, draw what a selection makes you think of... I also hope to get some use out of the Classics for Kids website.)

Art:
Picture Study - Renoir, Degas, Monet (read biographies of each, study their paintings)
Discovering Great Artists (doing projects from this book that reflect each of the three artists above in particular)

Religion/First Reconciliation Prep/First Communion Prep:
Faith and Life 2: Jesus Our Life (our PSR/CCD classes will actually be using this series as well this year, so she's going to get it in two places, ha!  I will have to see what to do in future years if they continue to use F&L in the PSR classes...)
St. Joseph First Communion Catechism (reviewing the questions; she learned them all last year)
Angel Food for Boys and Girls Volume 2 (read/narrate stories that correspond with catechism and F&L)

First Holy Communion Notebook (completing several activities to be compiled into a keepsake notebook)
Sacrament of Confession lapbook
Sacrament of the Eucharist lapbook

Books:
Leading the Little Ones to Mary
Blessed Imelda Glory Story and coloring book (free download at Holy Heroes)
Going to Confession by Fr. Lovasik
The Butterfly that Found her Way Home: A Story of Forgiveness
Little Nellie of Holy God
Friendship with Jesus: Pope B16 Speaks to Children on their FHC
The Little Caterpillar Who Finds Jesus
The Weight of a Mass
Jesus Speaks to Me on My First Holy Communion
Receiving Holy Communion by Fr. Lovasik

These longer books are to be read gradually and narrated/discussed after every few pages, gradually over the year:
St. Patrick's Summer: An Adventure Catechism
King of the Golden City
I Belong to God
Little Catechism on the Eucharist

"Retreats" just prior to FHC date:
My Path to Heaven
Little Lamb of Jesus Novena (downloaded here for free)

.........

Whew!!!  A lot of that is done only once a week, or spread out over the year, and some of it is incorporated into a daily Circle Time/Morning Basket.  We also read from Morning Exercises for All the Year at this time (downloaded free version to my tablet) and do a calendar and saint of the day at this time, and Cecilia gets some nursery rhymes and fairy tales and classic children's literature read to her at this time.

My goals for this curriculum is that it is meaty yet easy to get through.  The plan is to spend no more than twenty minutes on each particular book or activity, although sometimes we spend more time creating pages for the FHC notebook.

A lot of this was selected from Mater Amibilis's free online curriculum list for grade level 1A, and the rest was pieced together by me from various resources and ideas I gathered from various places.

I have some photos of some of Caroline's work so far this year, but I'm going to go ahead and post this and maybe add the photos later...

Back to School and the Feast of St. Anne

Apologies for not posting anything in so long!!  I have Zoo Atlanta photos to share from over a month ago... hope to get to those eventually!  But in the meantime, here's what we have been up to in the past two weeks.    Caroline began second grade - here she is on the first day of school, which was July 23rd.  We got a bit of an early start so we can take our time when needed throughout the year.  I'm about to find out how homeschooling with a toddler in the house goes!

We are really excited that this is a big sacramental prep year for Caroline... she will make her First Reconciliation at the end of January, and her First Communion in May!  We had a special treat to kick off the preparations and learning she'll be doing about these sacraments this year.

I found this idea on Catholic Icing... we cut the ends off large marshmallows and frosted a cross on each one and then stuck them on some sugar cookies we made.  The marshmallows represent the host, and of course I made sure that the girls - Cecilia, mostly, as Caroline would not confuse this - understood that this was NOT the actual host and they were not consecrated - they are just to be a symbol of the Eucharist to celebrate Caroline's beginning of her sacramental preparation.

They ate their snack with milk while I read to them from St. Patrick's Summer, which is one of the chapter books we're using in our in-depth, fun sacramental prep curriculum.  I have had so much fun putting together our religion materials this year!

Caroline will be putting together a First Communion notebook this year... here she is creating a cover for it using special stickers she picked out from the craft store.  I hope this will help make the preparation meaningful and enjoyable, and then she will have a keepsake book to share with guests on her First Communion day and to look back at over the years to come!

The following week, we celebrated St. Anne's feast day.  St. Anne was the mother of Mary, and traditionally she is pictured wearing red and green.  We made some red and green watermelon treats for the day: a watermelon sherbet pie and a watermelon drink garnished with mint.

I don't like to use artificial colors, so I was excited to find a simple watermelon drink recipe with just the natural coloring from the melon.  The sherbet, of course, is artificially colored, but after I made it, I was struck with a great idea for next year: use natural strawberry and pistachio ice creams for the green and red!!  

Mmmm...

Caroline shows her new St. Anne card - they always get a holy card on their name days.  Caroline's middle name has the name "Ann" in it.  July 26th is also St. Joachim's feast day (Mary's father), but we focus on Anne since it's Caroline's name day.

Cecilia enjoying her snack

One other thing we've done recently... we made a "Fishers of Men" craft for St. James's feast day, since he was one of the apostles who was a fisherman prior to being called by Jesus.  I gave the girls some construction paper and let them be pretty free with their design: I instructed them to sketch a boat shape and cut it out, to cut out dark blue paper to look like waves, and then to cut a mast and sail.  Actually, I think I cut the sails, now that I think about it...

Then they glued it all down to make a boat scene.  they drew apostles on the boat and fish in the water, and then we attached nets: pieces of a mesh bag that had onions in it.

Here's Caroline's... she opted for two small nets and copied her own Bible verse.

And here's Cecilia's... she chose to have one very large net!