How We Do Second Grade History

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This month I am starting a blog series on how we do certain subjects, and I’ll be sharing the specific resources, my process, and what a typical week looks like for these subjects. I’m kicking off this blog series with how we do history because it is the most asked about. Even though I am sharing how we do history for second grade, the general process and resources can simply be applied to other levels. 

We use Ambleside Online for the spine of our subjects except for math, foreign language, handicrafts, and language arts. For history, we’re following AO’s Year 2 schedule. This is the second year using AO and I continue to love AO’s history rotation schedule. We have chosen to postpone Trial and Triumph until a later year, but have kept the rest of the books scheduled. Since we are going through the middle ages, finding books about knights, castles, kings, and queens has been fun (what kid doesn’t find interest in great heroes, kingdoms and battles?!)! We are also enjoying the intro to early American history and discoverers such as Vikings, and Columbus. Some of our favorite supplemental resources have been:

• Top Spiral Sketchbook for Notebooking
• Beautiful Feet Books Early American History Teacher Guide
• Kings and Queens of England and Scotland
• Castle by David Macaulay
• Kings and Queens of England Coloring Book (Dover World History)

Scheduling Our History Readings

With the AO Year 2 schedule, we normally have 2-3 history readings each week. We follow the reading schedule exactly, and have never felt too overwhelmed, or that it was too little. The Year 2 readings have been shorter chapters at a time and if they’re not, the AO advisory team has even done the work of breaking up the longer chapters and including it in the schedule. At the beginning of the new week (I homeschool plan on Sundays), I start by looking over the Ambleside Online Year 2 schedule I have printed and figure out how many history readings we have for the week. Our history readings last no more than 10-15 minutes each day, and that’s including oral narrations.

How We Do History Lessons

Before we begin, I always ask what we read about from the previous chapter. Sometimes I give a reminder by stating someone’s name and that usually sets the stage for my daughter’s breif retelling. To begin our reading, I’ll mention the title of the chapter and remind my second grader to be listening carefully because I will ask her to tell me back what she knows from our reading either in between paragraphs or at the end of the chapter. It really depends how long a chapter is, but I have found asking for an oral narration between each paragraph or two is the sweet spot for a well done narration. 

Also, I just want to add that we have been doing oral narrations for over a year now so her habit of attention and my expectations of narrations are because we have been consistent (however imperfectly) and keep working at them. I also don’t repeat any of the reading which was an extremely helpful tip from the book Know and Tell by Karen Glass.

Once I finish reading the chapter, I will ask one more time if there is anything else she can tell me about what we just read or use these narration question prompts. 

Notebooking

One way I have found to be a great record keeping system of our daily readings is through notebooking. We have been doing notebooking since 1st grade, and it started out with just illustrating the reading of what she remembers. I would then write the chapter/name of the history event on the back of her illustration to keep things organized. Now, after a reading she will do copywork of her own brief narration and include an illustration. Her written narration is a short, one-two sentences of her oral narration. I simply write what she wants to put as her written narration on a white dry erase board and she copys it down on her notebook. Notebooking is an additional 10-15 minutes which has worked out to where I can step away and spend some time with my preschooler. At the end of each year, these notebooks have been a great way to look back at the progress and growth of penmanship and her attention to detail! 

Timeline

At the end of each week we take all our history readings and add them to our handmade, simple paper timeline. At this time, it is only dates and names, but eventually she may add a little illustration to it. I found this great tutorial for creating your own accordion-style timeline and it has worked perfectly for us. Instead of handwriting each time period on a piece of paper, I created a blank timeline template which you can get here if you don’t want to write out each century. We unfold it, write our new dates and names, and see a large overview of the time periods we’ve covered and will cover in the years to come. I have it hanging over our little homeschool nook but it can easily be folded and put into a binder for safe keeping. 

Extras

• When deciding to use AO curriculum for history, this page on ther AO website was extremely informative and encouraging when deciding which history curriculum we would use. 
• I also really appreciate Anne White’s Study Notes for The Little Duke available for free on the AO website which has a summary of each chapter, the timeline and more. Search “Study Notes for The Little Duke” on the AO site to find it.
• When looking for maps (or anything really), I turn to the AO forum. It is one of the hidden gems of the AO website. I found this free map for our Little Duke readings. 
• Lastly, I purchased Our Island Story A Gudied Study by Lisa Kelly and although we don’t follow it every week, it’s a solid guide for first starting out and wanting a little more to the history reading each week.   

So that’s how we do second grade history! It’s quite simple and I know lots of families do more or less, but this is what has worked for my family. Stay tuned for more in my ‘How We Do’ blog series!