Homeschool Curriculum - 2nd Grade - Happiness is Homemade

Looking for second-grade homeschool curriculum? Come take a peek at the homeschool curriculum we’ll be using this year in our 2nd-grade homeschool classroom!

Overwhelmed with second-grade curriculum choices for your homeschool? There are a LOT of different curriculum options, and there are just as many different styles of schooling! My family belongs to a public homeschool charter, meaning that we are able to use public school funding to purchase curriculum materials provided that we follow all state public school guidelines and standards including teaching Common Core methods and participating in annual state testing. We use a variety of school-recommended textbooks along with learning materials of our choice, and we like to incorporate many different unit studies as well.

This second-grade homeschool curriculum is being used for my seven-year-old son, and as the school year goes on, we will update this post with any new curriculum additions.

Homeschool Curriculum for 2nd Grade:

Language Arts

Reading – Novel Units from Teachers Pay Teachers – Novel units are my favorite for this age group! These novel units consist of reading comprehension questions, vocabulary words, character analysis, cause and effect, sequencing activities, and SO much more. It’s a great way to immerse your student in the story and get a lot out of each one. These no-prep packets save me a tremendous amount of time – all I have to do is read along!

A few of the books that we’ll be reading this year include Charlotte’s Web, Fairy Tales and Fables, Little House in the Big Woods, The Magic Treehouse series, and The Chocolate Touch.

Spelling – Sequential Spelling 1 – this year we’ll be working with the updated DVD-ROM 2.5 version which is entirely computer-based (no internet required) and requires no printed materials like previous versions did. If you prefer to use the traditional workbooks, they are still available as well – you’ll need both the student workbook and the teacher edition (or get both in a bundle pack). My older children used the workbooks in the past, and we highly recommend them, so I’m hoping that the computer-based edition will be just as great. Simon is an excellent speller, so Sequential Spelling is perfect for him because it starts out easy, but gets challenging rather quickly. Regardless of your child’s grade, everyone should start with Sequential Spelling 1 and work their way up.

Grammar & Writing – Growing with Grammar 2 and Winning with Writing 2 are both broken down into a 36-week school year. Within each week are five easy-to-follow lessons, one task to be performed each day. We have previously used the Growing with Grammar and Winning with Writing programs successfully with all three of my children, and will continue using it again this year. The program is very comprehensive and easy to use with no prep time required.

Math

McGraw-Hill My Math 2 (Volume 1 and Volume 2)

My Math is a Common Core based math curriculum that consists of two volumes of student workbooks (one per semester) along with an interactive online component (student and teacher versions can be purchased separately). At this level, a teacher’s edition and answer key are probably not necessary since it’s not too challenging to correct basic mathmatics work; however, it will speed things up! If you choose to use a teacher’s edition, you will need both Volume 1 and Volume 2 for teachers as well.

Hands-on manipulatives play a large role in our math curriculum, and we love this Hands-On Standards kit. It technically has enough pieces for up to four students, but since we like to spread things out, we occasionally will use the entire contents for just one student. It has plenty of pieces to share, though, if you have more than one student!

Science

California Science: Harcourt Science, Grade 2

This will actually be my second time teaching from the California Science 2nd grade textbook – my older boys used this curriculum in 2014-15, and they really enjoyed using it. In fact, both of those older boys said that science was their favorite subject that year, so I’m hoping their younger brother will love it just as much! This textbook is California-centric, so if you’re not from California, I’d recommend the standard Harcourt Science: Grade 2 version. We also use the accompanying lab manual and interactive content reader workbooks and activities. For science labs, we use a composition book to keep a science notebook filled with notes and experiments.

Social Studies

Neighborhoods: History-Social Science – Grade 2

Much like our science curriculum, this year’s history-social science textbook is one that I have previously worked with and enjoyed using. It is also California-based, so if you are not in-state, I recommend the general Neighborhoods textbook. In addition to the textbook, we also use the student practice book and Bringing Social Studies Alive! extension activities. To keep things interesting and fresh, we like to mix in a lot of topical unit studies from Teachers Pay Teachers as well. We will also be incorporating Road Trip USA this year to learn about the geography of the United States.

Visual & Performing Arts

I recently shared 36 Elementary Art Lessons for Kids, and we will be using these lessons and ideas for our visual art curriculum this year. We are also incorporating Meet the Great Composers into our music appreciation lessons.