Grade Two

The student’s development continues in Grade Two. Each child has a deeper sense of his or her ability to grow and learn. This confidence comes with a bravado and social assertion that sometimes needs to be softened for a healthy social life.  The curriculum addresses this by presenting animal fables, legends, and stories of ‘saints’. The animals in the stories often reflect an aspect of our human nature that needs to be ‘tamed’, and the children find these stories reassuring and inspiring.

The Grade Two  year continues to be structured around rhythms- the calendar and its festivals, the rhythm of the lessons which balances quiet focus and active movement,  the rhythms of movement such as clapping and stamping while reciting multiplication tables.  Movement activities deepen learning and balance children’s natural desires to move with the quiet listening and writing activities of the lesson.

 

Main Lesson Subject Blocks

• Form Drawing : continued work straight and curved lines and running forms
• Language Arts: writing and early reading
• Arithmetic: continued work with the four processes and introduction to carrying and borrowing

Daily practice of singing, recorder playing, recitation, and mental math are incorporated into the main lesson.  A curriculum-based play is also produced during  this time over a period of several weeks (usually one play  per year).

 Specialty Subjects

French, German, watercolour painting, nature story and modelling, handwork (knitting), Crafts/Baking/Gardening, nature walks, games/physical education.

Field trips

Field trips in Grade Two continue to foster the connection between the children and our environment. They typically include day trips to a farm and to local sites for seasonal activities.  This direct experience of the natural world is an important foundation on which the sciences will be built in the older grades; this experience also nurtures a love for nature and hopefully future respect for the environment.