Agree, acs. That's why I am considering partial homeschooling for one year for DD5. By second grade the seemed to have a lot more interesting things going on for the kids.
Let me see if I can remember what they focused on for the "gen-pop" in second:
Descriptive writing, for sure. They want to see "voice"- but don't ask me what that is.
They wanted the kids to create a graph to represent something they wanted to measure and to write a verbal description of it.
Big on math facts. they wanted to know all those single digit addition and subtraction facts QUICKLY.
Yes, time and money, but they are learning it, so he doesn't have to know all of it going in.
Maybe work on reading comprehension, I think they start testing the kids to see if they are getting what they are reading.
That's all I can think of for now, hope that helps.
