Homeschool Curriculum Picks for 2nd Grade and Kindergarten

Take a look at what we’ve chosen to use for our homeschool curriculum in second grade and kindergarten. 

This year all three of my boys are doing some form of learning. My oldest, Mr. C, is in second grade. My middle son Mr. B is in Kindergarten and my youngest, Mr. I is doing preschool. I’ll be sharing a post on how I homeschool preschool soon, so stay tuned! As an eclectic homeschooler, I like to reaserch each subject area and find a curriculum that I think will best each child. Getting to pick and choose what we use helps me to ensure each child is getting what they need. Here are the established resources I have chosen to use for my oldest two boys this year. 

Second Grade

Mr. C is my oldest and has more on his plate this year than his brothers do, although his younger brother is definitely very enthusiastic in his learning and is tackling just about the same amount of schoolwork. For individual subjects we focus on reading, writing and math. Simple, and effective. 

Reading

This year we are finishing up some curriculum from last year. We used The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts program last year. While I didn’t love the curriculum, I found the reading cards to be effective in helping Mr. C learn to read. We will transition to All About Reading once we are finished. AAR is a comprehensive phonics based reading program. 

Writing

Handwriting Without Tears is a simple yet effective way to practice good handwriting. Mr. C used this in his Kindergarten class and I am bringing it back for this year because I’ve noticed a decline in the neatness of his penmanship. We will be using the first grade books even though he is technically in 2nd grade so he can really get the proper letter formation down. Throughout the year, I will sprinkle in other writing projects that relate to our curriculum such as writing prompts that relate to our daily life or writing to family members/friends to practice mailing letters. Finally, we are using Fix It! Grammar, a program that will teach him grammar rules and get him identifying and fixing the issues in the examples given. 

Math

Math last year was a bit of a struggle. We used The Good and the Beautiful for math because it looked really pretty and engaging. I quickly found out that it is a spiral curriculum which made it very hard for me to know if he had truly understood and mastered a concept. A spiral curriculum introduces a concept and spends one or two days on that concept before moving to something else. The concept will reappear several times throughout the course, “spiraling” with other concepts. I found this to be difficult, jumping from one concept to the next before I felt like we had truly covered the first concept well. The spiral method can be incredibly effective for some learners in different situations (see below about Kindergarten math!)

This year for second grade I switched to Math-U-See. I had heard many good reviews of it from friends of mine. Math-U-See isn’t as “pretty” to look at as the GATB, but it really gets the job done and allows my son to focus on the concept he is learning without distraction. Mr. C is thriving with this curriculum and has been able to skip ahead to new lessons quickly when it becomes evident that he has mastered a concept.

Kindergarten

Ahhh to be 5! Mr. B is so enthusiastic and it has been a pleasure watching him blossom into such a vigorous learner. He absolutely LOVES math and is turning into a budding artist. I am so excited for all that he will learn and explore this year. 

 

Reading

Currently, we are working our way through the BOB Books series. We own all of the boxes as they proved very effective when Mr. C was learning how to read. We love these books in our home. There is something about the simple illustrations and text that draw us in and make it easy to sound out words for the budding reader. We will use these books all the way through the series. In addition, I will add on All About Reading for Mr. B so we can learn and reinforce some phonics skills. I also grabbed this Sight Word workbook to supplement the sight words he needs to learn. This can fall under both reading and writing. 

Writing

Same as Mr. C, we will use Handwriting Without Tears for Mr. B as well. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right? The simple layout of this book makes it incredibly easy for each child to do on their own without much intervention from me. I will observe them as they work to make sure they are following the correct letter formation and step in when there needs to be a correction. Mr. B also does a lot of writing in his history notebook as well which I didn’t expect of him. He doesn’t mind writing so the more practice the better! 

Math

As I mentioned above, Mr. B absolutely loves math. He asks for it frequently. As this is his first formal year of learning math, I decided to start him on The Good and the Beautiful because it is so visually appealing. This curriculum also makes learning each concept feel like a game, even though each lesson is really simple. There are manipulatives to use and different themes throughout the book. He is eating this curriculum up and I don’t find it challenging to work through because he is so new to everything, he could use the practice on every concept. The stakes are very low when learning math in kindergarten (it’s basically number recognition and formation so far) that I’m not concerned with him “mastering” each concept before moving on to a new one. 

That’s it! Along with each boy’s individual curriculum, I have chosen a read aloud for each month that I think will be fun for us to engage with as a family. We will also have some family-style learning that we will do together in science, history, art, music, and nature study. Stay tuned for a post about our morning basket which includes these items! We are looking forward to this fun year full of enriching curriculum for second grade and kindergarten. 

Which curriculum did you choose to use this year? Share in the comments below!