
Second Grade
Second grade is when reading stops being the lesson and becomes the tool. The workbooks on this shelf are the floor: math, reading, writing, spelling, science, social studies. The series are the ceiling, and the ceiling is where the year is won. A second grader who reads forty Boxcar Children and Magic Tree House books has done more than second grade.
How to use it: twenty minutes of math, twenty of reading and writing, science or social studies twice a week. Then a chapter book, read alone, told back to you at lunch. That telling back is narration, and it is the whole of second-grade language arts if you let it be.
The whole year in one place: The Whole Year: 2nd Grade.
Shop our Second Grade products below
Cece Loves Science: Push and Pull
- Physics & Energy
- Engineering & Technology
- Maker / Problem-Solving
Why it works: Cece Loves Science: Push and Pull gives the class a concrete design challenge: build a dog-treat dispenser that uses both opposing forces. Cece's team has to apply the force idea, create a device, and see whether it works, so the concept carries the leveled-reader story.
Narwhals and Other Whales: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #33: Narwhal on a Sunny Night
Go, Cub! (National Geographic Kids Readers, Pre-Reader)
National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of the World
On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein
- Physics & Energy
- Biography / Memoir
Why it works: Einstein's curiosity and imagination supply the story, while questions about light supply the physics. A child meets scientific thinking as something a person does long before it looks like an equation set.
Skill Sharpeners: Geography Workbook (Grade 2)
Never Smile at a Monkey: And 17 Other Important Things to Remember
The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks
- Earth Science
- Environment & Ecology
- Story / Adventure
Why it works: The Magic School Bus carries the class through the path water takes into and through a waterworks. By traveling with the water, readers connect the natural water cycle to the engineered collection, treatment, storage, and delivery systems behind a household tap.

