Our 2nd Grade

As classical homeschoolers using The Well-Trained Mind as a guide, we will be studying the Middle Ages/Early Renaissance & Reformation period in history.

Here's my purchasing list for 2nd grade and I put an asterisk by items we've already acquired. (I find it's useful to buy a little at a time.) We are buying most of our items from RainbowResource.com because they have the best selection and price.


GENERAL BOOKS & OTHER HELPS
The Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist
Girls Think of Everything: Stories Ingenious
Writing Without Fear CD by Susan W. Bauer*
Science in the Classical Curriculum CD by Susan W. Bauer*

BIBLE
Daily Morning Study: Explorer's Bible Study-Beginnings II, Precious in His Sight (NT). Evening Reading: We also intend to keep reading Egermeier's Bible Storybook. I recently found a wonderful book called Beautiful Bible Stories by Patricia Summerlin Martin, and will use this as a follow-up to Egermeier's.

LATIN
Prima Latina with CD, DVDs, flashcards, Lingua Angelica CD and songbook.*

HANDWRITING/COPYWORK
Classically Cursive from Veritas Press. Since Camille has learned D'Nealian handwriting this is perfect for us, it uses scripture and catechism for cursive instruction copywork. I'm also looking at creating our own copywork books based on free resources from the web using literature and poetry.

MATH
We're continuing our Horizons usage with Horizons 2 box set. We are very happy with Horizons and Camille is excelling.
Extra: Daily Mental Math Student Book - Grade 2, we also bought Right Start Math Games Kit (K-6) and love it.

GRAMMAR
First Language Lessons, second grade portion. Thankfully, Jessie Wise will have another installment of First Language Lessons for third grade available in 2008 but if for some reason we don't use it, we'll move onto Rod & Staff's English 3. I did purchase the First Language Lessons audio cd and I am very pleased with this.

SPELLING
We're finished with Spelling Workout A and we've just started the B workbook. This is working well for us and Camille enjoys it. If she keeps up the current pace we'll be using Spelling Workout C and D for 2nd grade. Games: What’s GNU Game

SCIENCE
I'm creating my own lessons for Earth/Space and I'm incorporating Geography, there is no better match up! What we're using: Usborne's First Encyclopedia of Our World, First Encyclopedia of Space, and The Geography Book by Caroline Arnold as our spines. The Geography Book has wonderful age-appropriate activities that align perfectly with earth science study.

Other items:
Hands-On Earth Science (this is great!)
Weather Gr. 1-2 (Brown Bag Science)
Color & Learn: Space Exploration
Color & Learn: Dinosaurs
Color & Learn: Rocks and Minerals,
Color & Learn: Solar System
My Calendar Book
Seeing Stars
Break-Your-Own Geodes (Box of 10)
Nature Reader Book 1 & 2
Cheap Charts - Solar System
Fun with Nature: Take-Along Guide
Glow-in-the-Dark Constellations
Stargazer's Guide to the Galaxy
Global Puzzle*
A Child's Introduction to the Night Sky* (I highly recommend)
Professor Noggin's Earth Science, Scientists Card games
Activity Rock Kit at RR($4.75)
Galileo and Stargazers CD by Jim Weiss
Planet Quest game

We found a planetarium at Walmart that allows you to rotate the planets around the sun for $20, a deal in comparison to ones seen online. It does reflect the stars on the ceiling but this wasn't my purpose in buying it. I want a visual aid to show the alignment of the planets and their orbit around the sun.

We're also going to use Men of God, Men of Science* by Henry Morris to do a short monthly biographical study of scientists, which I will create a worksheet to use for this.


ART & MUSIC
We're going to continue our journey with Artistic Pursuits K-3, Book 2. It has been super simple to use and Camille loves it. I have added other art books to enhance our learning experience and I absolutely love Harmony Fine Arts' art and music curriculum for this reason. We're going to continue with a weekly nature journal and weekly art lesson, if Camille had her way she'd do art everyday.

Other than private piano lessons, which are dependent on funds, we'll be using Classical Magic. I absolutely love their six year schedule for classical music appreciation. Music will be our main focus of our 2nd grade year and we'll be learning a little musical theory as well. I'm still looking for a great book to introduce us but we will get these flashcards- Essentials of Music Theory Note Naming Flash and Music for Little Mozarts Music Activity Board to help with showing musical notes on a scale. I'm assuming our teacher for piano lessons will have a preference book for theory or will be able to suggest an excellent one. If not, I have one in mind, Let's Learn Music series by Hayes. We're also getting Stories of Great Composers Book and CD for biographies. I'll figure out how to intermingle these things once I have them.

HISTORY
The Story of the World Vol 2: Middle Ages with Activity Guide. Here's the books I'm going to buy, the books we own have an asterisk. Any other books will be borrowed from the library.

To Enhance Biblical History

Fox's Book of Martyrs*
The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History* by J. Stephen Lang, Randy Petersen
Church History in Plain Language* (I'll use to help me along, not for dd)
Peril & Peace* by Mindy Withrow
Monks & Mystics* by Mindy Withrow (these are excellent, highly recommended)

Books
Story of King Arthur & Other Celtic Heroes (love Padraic Colum)
Eric the Red & Leif the Lucky
Historic Communities - Life on a Plantation
Whipping Boy
Making of a Knight
From Akebu to Zapotec
Who Were the Vikings?
If You Lived in the Days of the Knights
Minstrel in the Tower
Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess
Before Columbus (Landmark Books)
Medieval Feast / Aliki
Joan of Arc (Landmark)
Montezuma (Historic Bios)
St. George and the Dragon
Shakespeare’s Stories for Young Readers by Nesbit
Who in the World Was the Acrobatic Empress? The Story of Theodora
Who in the World Was the Unready King? The Story of Ethelred

Books we already have
Beowulf: A New Telling
Tales from Shakespeare
The Bard Of Avon
Around the World In a Hundred Years by Jean Fritz
Favorite Tales from Around the World
Medieval Times: Art and Civilization
Kings and Queens (Famous Lives)
Raiders and Traders (All In A Day's Work)
Aztec & Maya Life in an Ancient Civilization
The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS by Ann McGovern
Meet Christopher Columbus
East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales From the North
Exploring lost cities (Explorer books)
Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
Favorite Medieval Tales
Good Queen Bess : The Story of Elizabeth I of England
How Children Lived
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Kings and Queens of Britain
In the Daily Life of the Vikings
The Story of King Arthur
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (Puffin Classics)
Tales of King Arthur (Paperbacks) by Felicity Brooks
The Knight of the Lion
Medieval Times by Pasquale, Giovanni Di
Middle Ages: Everyday Life
The Mightiest Heart
Pirate waters
PRINCE BOGHOLE
Sword In The Stone, The (level 2) (Hello Reader)
The Three Musketeers
Who in the World Was the Forgotten Explorer?: The Story of Amerigo Vespucci (Who in the World)
Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Great Illustrated Classics) by Howard Pyle

I know I have a few different King Arthur books and we'll decide what to use as we come to it.


Activity Books, Kits, Games and Charts
Knight’s Treasure Chest
Leonardo Da Vinci & Renaissance Treaure Chest
Vikings Treasure Chest
Shakespeare Treasure Chest*
Shakespeare for Kids*
Knights and Castles
Marco Polo for Kids
Prof Noggin’s Explorers, Medieval Times, Ancient Civilizations, Earth Science, Outer Space card games
Middle Ages Chronology/Town Life Charts
Renaissance Chronology/Artists Charts


Coloring Books
these are for our read-alouds
Shakespeare Coloring Book
Castles of the World Coloring Book
Celtic Gods and Heroes Coloring Book
Columbus Discovers America Coloring Book
Exploration of North America Coloring Book
Indian Tribes of North America Coloring Book
King Arthur Coloring Book
Middle Ages Coloring Book
Norse Gods and Goddesses Coloring Book
Story of the Vikings Coloring Book
Medieval Alphabet to Illuminate Coloring Book

I learned a few lessons this year, if you can invest in books that will be used multiple times do so. The library, although it is a homeschooler's best friend, is not as dependable as I would like it to be. I've waited 3 weeks to get a book through interlibrary loan with no good reason and it was, of course, a particular story I wanted to read for the time period. These are books chosen from multiple lists- Sonlight, Tapestry of Grace, Veritas Press, WTM, All Through the Ages, and others. I haven't even seen the AG for SOTW 2 so any books from the SOTW AG will come from our library.

I've also decided to get more manipulative items this year, and I'll be forthright, my Rainbow Resource list totals just under $800. Most of what we're purchasing in non-consumable so this is not only Camille's 2nd grade year, it's Danny's too. We've bought the books that we already have through BookCloseouts.com, thrift/antique stores, used bookstores, Goodwill, Salvation Army and I've gotten a good many from swapping books at Book Mooch.

We're also going to be doing a dinosaur study during our month off and starting an informal U.S. Geography/State study using Hold That Thought's U.S. Geography cd. Two states a month is enough for us, like I said this will be very informal.