2nd Grade Spelling Units #25-36

This is our last quarter of real spelling units. Next quarter I will begin to combine our English, Spelling, and Reading units together. Before this every day they had a sheet of writing up their spelling words plus one other sheet of spelling activities. This quarter they will be doing just one of those activities each day, not both. So, here it is, our final, "normal," spelling quarter.

Unit #25 - Long e Words Part 3
beat
heat
meat
neat
seat
treat
wheat
feel
kneel
wheel

Unit #26 - Long e Words Part 4
deal
heal
meal
peal
real
seal
teal
veal
heel
peel

Unit #27 - Verbs
break
build
carry
clean
cut
drop
fix
help
play
work

Unit #28 - Short i Words
bin
din
fin
kin
pin
sin
spin
tin
win
yin

Unit #29 - Short i Words Part 2
dip
flip
hip
lip
nip
rip
ship
sip
tip
whip

Unit #30 - Short i Words Part 3
dish
fish
squish
wish
ditch
hitch
itch
pitch
stitch
witch

Unit #31 - Short i Words Part 4
kick
lick
nick
pick
quick
sick
tick
wick
rich
which

Unit #32 - Long i Words
bide
glide
hide
ride
side
tide
wide
high
nigh
sigh

Unit #33 - Long i Words Part 2
blight
bright
flight
height
light
might
night
right
sight
tight

Unit #34 - Long i Words Part 3
pipe
ripe
swipe
wipe
dine
fine
line
mine
pine
vine

Unit #35 - Long i Words Part 4 & Short u Words
bike
dike
hike
like
pike
cub
dub
rub
sub
tub

Unit #36 - Location Words & Long u Words
across
around
behind
beside
between
inside
outside
cube
lube
tube

Two Week Review: December 14 - 27

Like I said last post, we took Scooby-Doo to the doctor's office to begin testing for autism. The doctor told us that yes, he does have autism and after the holidays are over he's going to look into a child psychiatrist for us. He also gave us a prescription for him to take to help his panic attacks. Meanwhile, I'm not sure how this will effect his speech therapy. After the holidays I'll talk to them about it. We just worked on his magazines for his schoolwork. Colors, letters, numbers - things like that.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee had finished up their magazines, so we did schoolwork based on the formula of their magazines. They had some basic math and started work on a letter book. They also had some dot-to-dots and mazes, and we also read a bunch of stories. For our Concept Weeks we did Prehistoric Life and Elephants.

A nice easy two weeks. :)

Expanding the Concept Weeks

Concept Weeks are something that have been slowly evolving since they have started. It began as an additional unit the first week of each month to help us cover things that they were either interested in or things that were not covered in our workbooks but I felt were important. However, I've wanted to expand them for a while now. Then, last summer the first opportunity came about when we spent three whole months working on dinosaurs. Then, this quarter another opportunity came about with a new unit each week.

However, lately I was thinking I'm tired of doing workbooks. Then I realized that most of our Concept Weeks revolve around either science, holidays, history, or mythology. And then, a new idea popped into my head.

Starting next quarter I'll be assimilating the Concept Weeks into our regular units, starting the process of phasing out workbooks and shifting the emphasis towards more reading - whether it is me reading to them or them reading on their own.

The ultimate idea here is two-fold:

1. Come 3rd or 4th grade most of our focus is going to be on reading with less time spent on workbooks. This will help prepare them for that.
2. Concept Weeks are blended units, a single theme or idea covering a wide range of subjects. Once Concept Weeks are fully blended into our regular units this pattern will continue. For example, for 3rd grade science I have a book similar to our 1st grade Science book covering animals by continent. Once Concept Weeks are assimilated into our regular units when we do this Science book we will also be covering Geography, making that Science unit more like a Concept Week that covers multiple subjects while remaining in the same theme.

So, next quarter all of our Concept Weeks will be science based. 12 separate science units that will be treated more like Concept Weeks. The following quarter we will begin switching over more subjects that way so that by the time they are ready to begin chapter books on their own all subjects that can be switched will be switched. 

Concept Week #24: Elephants

This unit was pretty easy and fun. We had two books and a few worksheets that I found online. The books were DK Eyewitness: Elephants and Picture Library: Elephants. The second one was FAR more kid friendly!

We learned some neat facts - like how elephants are pregnant for almost two years! - and we also learned about how elephants can be trained for military use as well as other jobs such as hauling logs. This prompted Optimus Prime to tell me he wished we lived in India so he could be trained to be an elephant handler like the 8 year old boys there! I told him maybe his son would get to be one.

I actually don't have anything else to say about this unit... which is kinda odd since we talked about nothing but elephants for a whole week!