Year 2 school plan (2013-2014, age 7)

June 2013-June 2014
Age 6 (public school grade 2)

Overview:

Grammar
Last year we were using Susan Wise Bauer's First Language Lessons books. I liked their slow pace, their focus on real literature, and the memorization and copy work strategies, but Calvin mastered the concepts quickly and soon found the repetition tedious. He has completed all the FLL books, so rather than go on with them, this year we will focus almost entirely on free and assigned reading. He will keep a vocabulary journal and write short reviews once or twice a month.
+ Added note July 2014: We started Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts Series with level one in the spring of this year, and we're thrilled. The MCT books are rich and engaging. They vocabulary and language meant to challenge a quick mind, and for us they are the perfect mixture of repetition versus movement. The series includes grammar, vocabulary, writing, and poetry books for each leve. They begin with level 1, meant for late elementary.  

History
We are continuing our journey through Bauer's Story of the World, Volume I this year. Though most people spend only one school year on each book in this four volume series, in order to counter what I perceive as the over sacred focus of the series, we have been spending a lot of time on outside sources with a focus on early civilizations and each people's myths and origin stories. Call it a rudimentary comparitive myths and religions class!

Geography
Most of our study for this discipline comes with history at this point in time—as we learn about the different civilizations we locate them on the map, coming to know the continents and their general makeup over time. I am not ready yet to muddy the waters with current political maps, but we will focus a little more this year on map reading in general.

Details: 

Grammar
Daily free and assigned reading
MCT Island series (level 1): Grammar Island, Practice Island, Sentence Island, Building Language, Music Hemispheres
Spelling Workout E

Math
Math-U-See Epsilon
Logic Liftoff Level 4-6
Perplexors Level A
Logic Safari, Book 1 
Allowance/Budget recording

Science
Building foundations of Scientific Understanding Volume I
+ Personal Inquiry and research: "What was there before the big bang?"
+ Connect the Thoughts: Lower School Physics and Astronomy

History
The Story of the World Volume I: Ancient Times
Intellego Unit Studies, K-2 World History III: Ancient China and Greece
Intellego Unit Studies, 3-5 World History I: Ancient Rome

Geography
The Story of the World: Ancient Times Student Activity Book 
McGraw Hill Complete Book of World Maps & Geography, Grades 3-6
Exploring Maps: Ancient Civilizations
Spectrum World Geography

Art
Classes through our homeschooling group (drawing, mixed media, and metal working)

Music
Piano lessons

Fitness
Swim classes once weekly
Hiking twice weekly in good weather