Planning for Second Grade

It is the time to start planning for next year. Really. If I plan now, I can have everything picked out for next year in the next month or so. Then I still have time to second-guess myself, look for sales, wait for a tax return, order early, make lesson plans and schedules, second-guess myself again and still be ready for school to start when ragweed season hits next year. That is my brilliant plan this year. When late summer comes and I am forced indoors to avoid ragweed , we will start school instead of just sitting inside and wishing it would quit blooming.

Here is my plan for next year at this point. It is sleek and clean and makes a nice list. It will follow LCC-style simplicity.

Daily - Math (R&S) , Latin (Minimus then Lively Latin), Writing Tales, Memory work
Once a Week - History (TOG Year 2 at half pace), Literature (TOG Year 2), Geography (TOG Year 2), Science (RS4K Chemistry)

It is a beautiful plan isn't it? Doing the TOG at half pace will allow us to enjoy the richness of TOG but not have it dominate our school day. I will be able to schedule 8 things from each Tapestry week (two of them would be art projects). If some weeks there is something not to be missed in one category, I can use that instead of something in another category. I think it will work wonderfully.

I like that Minimus and Lively Latin both include Roman Mythology as part of their course. It allows me to cover more than one subject at a time. I will use the Latin to cover not only the obvious Latin and Roman Mythology, but it also covers grammar, logic and vocabulary. That is efficiency.

If you haven't read about teaching writing using the progymnasmata, it is time to go back to Classical Greece. It is all about teaching writing and logic by small exercises. Writing Tales is one of the homeschool products designed to make it easy to teach this ancient art to modern students (and their parents). Other products to look into that are similar are - Classical Writing and Classical Composition. I like Writing Tales 1. It covers Fable which is the first part of progym. exercises, and it also includes grammar, logic and spelling. It even has copywork exercises which I think are very important at this age. This will give me two ways to approach grammar and logic which will be good for CC.

Right now the plan is to use R&S for math. I ordered free samples of their curriculum and really looked at how they teach math. They do a good job of teaching carrying and borrowing which CC had trouble understanding in several of the previous products we used. They do a terrific job of teaching the facts. I have recently joined the "facts-first" crowd for math. So, we will see.

That is the plan for second grade. We'll see how it develops.