Every school year, homeschool families should be assessing what they want their children to achieve. Of course, there are minimum skills and knowledge that your child should have at the end of each year, but that isn’t always clear. In this post, we’re going to cover homeschool goals for second grade to ensure your child is on a successful track.
I’m going to be covering Second Grade standards for your homeschooler. You know I’m all about handy tools, so here’s a printable Second Grade Standards Checklist for you.
Skills
The first set of standards are basic life skills your child should be achieving in the regular course of their education and interactions with others. Second Grade can be a big step up in your child’s independence.
- Understand fairness and consequences. For example, if your child breaks their sibling’s crayon, they should understand the fair thing to do would be to give their sibling one of their own crayons.
- Asks questions about things they don’t understand
- Tells time to the nearest five minutes
- Knows days of the week and the names/order of months
- Tackles challenging tasks and problem solves
- Understands the value dollars and coins (nominally, don’t actually expect them to know how hard it can be to earn money)
- Shows and increase in patience and self control
- Able to work on tasks for at least 20 minutes at a time
Reading and Writing
The core of everything is reading and writing. By the end of Second Grade, your child should be able to produce longer compositions and read critically. FYI, I have some free reading tools that will help you reach these goals.
- Writes multiple paragraphs on a range of topics
- Spells irregular words (i.e. words that don’t follow traditional pronunciation rules: above, broad, gym, other)
- Reads fluently and with expression
- Proofreads and fixes mistakes in writing
- Uses strategies to understand reading (questioning, look at pictures, rereading)
- Discusses characters, main events, lessons, ideas, and concepts in stories
Science and Social Studies
Second Grade Science and Social Studies takes a bit more critical thinking and deeper exploration into various topics.
- Explains changes in matter
- Classifies items and sorts by color, texture, hardness, flexibility, state of matter, etc.
- Explains natural disasters
- Observes and collects information to solve a problem
- Creates maps of land and bodies of water
- Creates personal timelines (documenting events in their life with years or dates)
- Discusses natural resources and what they are used for
- Identifies the States of the United States on a map
- Knows some history of their local community
Math
Unlike Science and Social Studies, Math can pose a much greater challenge to many children. Don’t freak out if your Second Grader can’t do all of these. Some kids will be slower in developing their math skills, you just need to stick with it and encourage them.
- Adds and subtracts 1 and 2 digit numbers up to 100
- Understands the basic concept of multiplication (3 x 4 represents 3 rows of 4 items)
- Completes word problems with numbers up to 100
- Understand place value of 3 digit numbers (ones, tens, hundreds)
- Organizes and interprets data in graphs and pictures (these will be very simple visuals)
- Knows basic fractions: whole, halves, thirds, fourths, and quarters
- Measures with metric and imperial units (metric = centimeters, meters, kilometers; imperial = inches, feet, miles)
Wrapping Up
Keeping track of these homeschool goals for Second Grade is a great way to make sure that your schooling is on track. I personally like to have my Checklist printed out and hung up in our schoolroom to check on it occasionally. When the kiddos prove they’re competent with an item, I have them check the box. It’s a great reward and makes them feel proud of their hard work.
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Do you have any other goals that you track for you second grader? I’d love to hear your thoughts on social media!