Second grade history and social studies

Second grade in Texas is the local year. The community, how it has changed, who shaped it, and how it compares with communities elsewhere and in other times. This is the year the free Texas archives start earning their keep, because your own county's old newspapers are online and searchable. If you run a world history cycle this year, understand that it does not touch the local strand at all.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

By the end of second grade, a child working at grade level can usually do these.

• Explains how his own community has changed over time using photographs, old maps, or an interview with an older neighbor.
• Compares his community with a community somewhere else in the world and names two real differences.
• Identifies historical figures connected to the local community and to Texas.
• Reads a map with a legend, a compass rose, and a simple scale.
• Explains scarcity and why people cannot have everything they want.
• Describes producers and consumers, and traces a familiar good back to where it came from.
• Names the mayor, the governor, and the president, and says what each is responsible for.
• Says why we mark Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Presidents' Day, and Juneteenth.
• Places family or community events on a timeline spanning several years.
• Explains how people in a community depend on one another to get things done.

Free, and legal to use

Every one of these costs nothing. The license tag says what you may actually do with it, which is not the same question as whether it is free to read.

• The Portal to Texas History (University of North Texas Libraries) Free Public domain

  An enormous digitized collection of Texas material: small-town newspapers going back well over a century, photographs, maps, land documents, and yearbooks, browsable by location, collection, partner, subject, and date. For a local history unit there is not much else like it. Find your county, find the year, read the paper.

  License: Free to view, and rights are stated per item rather than across the site. The Portal's own policy is candid that the nature of archival collections often makes copyright status difficult to determine, and it puts the responsibility on the user to check with the holding partner before reusing an item. Do not assume an old newspaper is public domain because it is old.

• Texas Historical Commission Free Free to use

  The state agency behind the roadside historical markers, with a searchable atlas of marker text and a list of state historic sites. The marker two miles from your house has a full write-up you can read before you go stand in front of it.

  License: State agency material, free to read. Check the agency's terms before republishing marker text or photographs.

• Core Knowledge History and Geography, Grade 2 Free Creative Commons

  Units including ancient Greece, ancient India, ancient China, the American Revolution, and the Constitution, with teacher guides and read-aloud text.

  License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Attribution in their specified wording, no commercial use, and any adaptation you share carries the same or a similar license. Images inside the PDFs are not yours to extract.

• EconEdLink (Council for Economic Education) Free Openly licensed

  Free economics and personal finance lessons sorted by grade band, including a usable set for K-2 on scarcity, wants and needs, and producers and consumers. Short and ready to teach, which suits the second grade economics strand well.

  License: Free to use, with a free account required for some material. Copyrighted by the Council for Economic Education rather than openly licensed, so read their permission policy and do not redistribute the files.

• National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places Free Public domain

  Lesson plans built around real places in the park system, with photographs, maps, and readings. Good modeling of how you question a place rather than just visit it, which is exactly the habit the local history year wants.

  License: United States government work and generally public domain, though individual images inside a lesson may be credited to others.

Paid programs, honestly

Nothing here is required. These are the programs families most often ask about, with the real drawback of each one named rather than skipped.

• The Story of the World, Volume 2: The Middle Ages Paid Text plus activity book, with the activity book the pricier half. Publisher pricing not confirmed for this page.

  Good at: Year two of the cycle, and the volume with the most pull for a seven-year-old. Knights, plagues, and explorers, with enough narrative momentum that a child asks for the next chapter.

  Drawback: Chapters short enough that complicated periods get flattened, and coverage outside Europe is thinner than coverage inside it. No connection at all to the local community focus that second grade is supposed to have in Texas.

  Suits: A family already committed to the four-year cycle, running the local strand separately alongside it.

• History Quest (Pandia Press) Paid Sold as a text plus a study guide, each priced separately, with PDF editions cheaper than print. Confirm current pricing at the publisher.

  Good at: Secular by stated policy, narrative, and written in a lighter and funnier voice than most spines. The separate study guide supplies activities, maps, and questions without forcing them on you. Note that Pandia also publishes a History Quest: United States covering United States history and civics for grades 3 to 6, which solves the American gap that world history cycles leave open.

  Drawback: You buy two components to get one course, and the study guide's activity load can swamp a parent teaching alone. At second grade the United States level is still slightly above the target band, so this year you are choosing between Early Times and Middle Times, both of which are world history.

  Suits: A secular family that wants a narrative spine with a lighter tone, and that will pick up the United States level a year or two later.

• Build Your Library Level 2 Paid Sold as digital levels. Current pricing not confirmed; check the publisher.

  Good at: Good books, a workable daily schedule, and a secular perspective that does not pretend to have no perspective.

  Drawback: Library-dependent to the point of fragility, and the schedule assumes you keep up. Missing three weeks is genuinely hard to recover from.

  Suits: A secular family with a strong library system and a steady weekly rhythm.

• Sonlight Paid Several hundred dollars for a full package, with history and reading only packages costing less. Confirm current pricing at the source.

  Good at: A box arrives with everything in it and a day-by-day instructor guide. For a parent with no time to plan, that is the whole value, and the book selection is genuinely strong.

  Drawback: Expensive, and a good deal of the cost is books your library may already hold. Explicitly Christian, with missionary biographies as a core part of the reading. The daily load is heavier than most families expect going in.

  Suits: A Christian family with the budget who wants planning taken off the table completely.

• Beautiful Feet Books, Early American History (primary) Paid A study guide alone is the affordable entry point; complete literature packs cost several times that. Confirm current pricing before ordering.

  Good at: Built around older picture books and biographies, with a study guide that asks real questions rather than filling in blanks. Matches second grade's American and local focus better than any world history cycle does.

  Drawback: A providential Christian framing runs through the older guides, and some of the classic titles carry dated portrayals of Native peoples that need talking through rather than skipping. The complete literature packs are the expensive part.

  Suits: A family that wants American content in the local year and is comfortable discussing dated material as it comes up.

Prices are approximate and change often. Check with the publisher before you buy. We describe and link to these programs; none of their material is hosted here.

What a week looks like

1. One local history session: the Portal to Texas History for your county, or a Texas Historical Commission marker within driving distance.
2. Two chapters of whatever spine you are running, read aloud.
3. One economics lesson from EconEdLink, fifteen minutes, on scarcity or producers and consumers.
4. One map or timeline task tied to your own town.
5. An interview or a photograph comparison once a month. An older neighbor is a primary source.

Practice it here, free

These rooms on this site cover part of the year's work. No sign-up, and they work offline.

• know — Continents and ancient Egypt. The rest of the second grade strand is not covered here and needs outside material.
• map — Map legends and directions, which supports the map skills milestone.
• money — Money handling, which supports the economics strand on goods, services, and choices.
• order — Sequencing events, which is the timeline milestone in a different wrapper.

The rest of second grade