Second Grade Report Card

We have finally reached the end of our one hundred and seventy something days of school and are ready to call second grade complete. I think it was an excellent year. I started the year with the intent to get CC to write more, improve her handwriting, move into more complex math, be ready for multiplication, increase the length and complexity of the books she is reading, and discover that Rome isn't the only time period in history worthy of study. I think we accomplished that and more.


ART
She took several classes at the local art school. Plus she had weekly art at a Public School enrichment program. She loves art.

Math
We had a rough start in math. We started out the year with her in tears over 5+7, and ended with her whizzing through complex, multi-step problems in her head. There were two - or three - great changes in our math thinking. First, BB explained to her the stuff that was stumping her and she then instantly "got it." Second, I realized that her love of word problems is my key to her math mind. And finally we found MEP. She now loves math.

Here is what we have used this year.
Math Mammoth Add and Subtract 2B and 3
Singapore math 3 A
Singapore Math Challenging Word Problems 2, 3
Miquon Green and some Orange
MEP 2 and 3
Ray's New Intellectual Math - I read these over breakfast a couple of times a week.

English

Again, this was more of a journey than a curriculum. She discovered that she loves writing tiny, and it transformed her handwriting. She discovered old-fashioned ink pens and cursive. We tried several things, but decided that copywork and spelling would cover all that we needed. We took copy work from beautiful sentences that she chose and from poetry that she memorized. She learned several poems of her choice including Jabberwocky.

History
We read through SOTW2 mostly, but still have some of it left. She discovered the middle ages, Shakespeare, Robin Hood, castles, knights, feudalism, King Arthur, Richard the Lion - Hearted and much more. She also did a unit on westward expansion and a unit on ancient Greece in her enrichment program. Rome is still her favorite, and she spent a lot of time reading about that on her own.


Science
We did a unit on earth Science with our friends and had lots of fun. We also did a short study of Darwin. Other than that, she did science at her enrichment program and covered life cycles and physics.

• The Voyage of the Beetle by Anne Weaver

The Literature -
She reads daily on her own, but this is literature that we share. I have been focused on myths and tales. We have loved the stories we read this year. The Arabian Tales was especially loved. When we read the Shakespeare Stories, it inspired her to go deeper into A Midsummer Night's Dream. She has read about 5 versions of that now and loves it. She recently also decided that Hamlet is her next favorite.
Celtic myths -
Norse myths -
1001 Arabian Tales -
Shakespeare Stories -


That was Second Grade. We finished differently than we started. I don't think we completed a single workbook. We changed a great deal. We learned a great deal. Most days were very short, but in the end my dd knows some history that she didn't know, knows more math and enjoys it more than she did before, writes better and more clearly, knows more science, has learned new techniques in art, and loves Shakespeare, Norse mythology, and the Arabian Nights. I think it was a VERY good year.