Our 2nd Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices

If you have a child going into 2nd grade this year, finding helpful homeschool resources is important! Read on to learn about our top 2nd grade homeschool curriculum choices.

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By 2nd grade, our kids are familiar with the routine of an hour or so of daily table time for lessons, lots of read aloud and play, and some group work each day. We still keep things fairly light while moving them along their own track for reading, writing, and math.

Our Top Picks for 2nd Grade Homeschool Curriculum

Bible & Theology

Sound Words for Kids: Lessons in Theology – My theology curriculum for ages pre-k and elementary. Once a week with some weekly memory review. For second grade it involves listening to me read the lesson, coloring, and doing one of the activity pages.
Bible Road Trip – Our staple Bible curriculum that we’ve used for years. It’s excellent and can be used for pre-k through high school. It includes simple activities, Bible reading and discussion, and memory work. (Notebooking isn’t until later grades.)

Language Arts

Reading & Reading Practice – Once they have shown signs of reading readiness, we start teaching reading. This may be anytime between kindergarten and second grade. It just depends on the kid.
- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons – This is what I use for most of my kids. It’s straightforward and gets the job done. I print out a hundreds chart and they get a sticker at the end of each lesson, a treat at the end of each row, and a treat and a book at the end of the whole thing. We also don’t do any of the writing portions – just the reading.
- All About Reading – One of my kids has a touch of dyslexia, so we use All About Reading for him and it has been a great blessing. We go at his pace and he loves the fun activities. It’s working really well! You can read my All About Reading review here. For those who want to add spelling, you may also bring in All About Spelling after they are well along with reading.
- God’s Big Story – Generations has a leveled Bible reader program that we really like. My 2nd graders read a chapter a day and narrate it to us orally and we discuss. There are also workbooks that go with them.
Handwriting – When they show signs of writing readiness, we start A Reason for Handwriting The lessons are short and use Scripture.
Narration – Narration is a huge part of our homeschool. At this age, I typically forego any formal spelling, grammar, or composition in favor of narration. It’s the Charlotte Mason practice of orally telling back what was just read / heard. For second grade, every day they will tell me in their own words what they just read from their reading practice or from the portion of the read-aloud just completed. It starts with just a small paragraph, and over time they are able to narrate longer pieces in greater details. Narration helps with pre-composition skills, speaking skills, retention of knowledge, and more. Around 3rd – 4th grade, written narration is added.

Math

Christian Light Education for Math – My preferred math curriculum if you’re looking for something straightforward and not online. Uses a spiral approach and lots of practice. Just delete extra problems if you think there’s too much.
Hands-on Activities – It’s helpful to reinforce math concepts as needed using manipulative (like legos, snap cubes, etc.) and youtube videos.

Science

Nature Study – For science we don’t do independent or formal science until later grades. Instead we use resources like the Handbook of Nature Study, the Burgess nature books, and YouTube video playlists we find that go along with them. We’ll do nature studies on our own as well as using No Sweat Nature Study LIVE membership.
Fun Experiments – If you want, grab a fun experiment book like this one or the books in this series and do one every week or two. It doesn’t need to be complicated at this age!
Journey Homeschool Academy – These science courses can be done as group work (which is what we usually do for elementary) or independently. They are video-based and include hands-on activities and printable workbook pages.

History

I feel like history is optional for 2nd grade homeschool curriculum, or at least best kept light. If you have just one student, something like history videos, read-alouds, and fun hands-on activities is more than enough.

These days, we do history with a multi-level curriculum, BiblioPlan, occasionally breaking for unit studies such as Prairie Primer or those at Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. Even then, my 2nd graders enjoy these resources through read-alouds, fun videos, and occasional hands-on activities. It’s so much fun and that’s how it’s meant to be!

A Note About False Gods

In our early years homeschooling we used an audiobook of a popular history curriculum. All of my kids were very young. The curriculum leaned a bit too far toward evolutionary concepts for me. It also had violence and talked about false religion and false gods a lot, without calling them out as such. (You’ll run into this a lot with literature-based curriculum as well.)

I decided to drop history and just focus on Bible that year. Through Scripture as history, I was intentional to teach my kids what God’s Word said about how the world was created, idols and false gods vs. the one true God, and approach hard topics like violence with them. The next year, when we went back to using history resources, we were better equipped to discuss those biblical perspectives when those issues cropped up in our read alouds or audiobooks. I am so glad we did that!

Even with that preparation, however, I still don’t go too terribly deep into things like Greek gods until the later years when they’re more adept at discussing worldview in history and literature.

Arts and Crafts

I am not much of an arts and crafts person, but my kids love it so I try. 😉 In addition to the activities book from BiblioPlan I mentioned above, below are some resources we’ve enjoyed:

Masterpiece Society Art – Includes seasonal art projects, drawing lessons, artist studies, and more. Find out more about how we use it.
Art Hub for Kids – Free channel on YouTube with (mostly) cartoon drawings. My kids love this channel and it’s great for a quick no-brainer art lesson.

Gameschooling

Have a kid who is really into games? Laminate a copy of this blank activity grid and fill it in with a bunch of educational games you can do once a week, such as every Friday. Things like Bananagrams, Farkle, Uno, Dos, Sorry, Mastermind, Dixit, and many more…

It’s important to remember that we don’t do ALL of this every day. Also, no matter what resources we use, first grade is short and simple, focusing mostly on read alouds, fun activities, and an hour or less of “table time.”

Have a great homeschool year!

~ Tauna