Teach Class 2 Maths at home, one chapter at a time

Class 2 starts by counting big piles the smart way: in groups. Your child packs things into tens and counts the leftover ones, so 43 becomes “4 tens and 3 ones”. This is the idea every chapter after it uses.

• group of ten
• tens
• ones
• loose
• bundle
• hundred

Your child learns the names of solid shapes (cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, sphere) and starts counting their faces, edges and corners. A matchbox, a ball and a party cap are all you need.

• face
• edge
• corner
• flat
• curved
• cube
• cuboid
• cylinder
• cone
• sphere

Now that your child knows tens and ones, this chapter moves numbers onto a number line and a 1 to 100 chart. They jump forward and back, skip count in 2s, 5s and 10s, and guess mystery numbers.

• forward
• backward
• skip count
• more than
• less than
• between
• 10 more

Flat shapes come from solid ones: trace round a bottle cap and you get a circle; trace a matchbox and you get a rectangle. Your child learns to name, draw and find circles, triangles, squares and rectangles, and to count their corners and sides.

• circle
• triangle
• square
• rectangle
• side
• corner
• trace
• shadow

Children learn that lines have directions: standing (vertical), sleeping (horizontal), slanting and curved. Yoga poses, drawing and paper folding make it physical, and it prepares them for writing letters and numbers neatly.

• straight
• curved
• standing (vertical)
• sleeping (horizontal)
• slanting

The biggest chapter of the year. Your child adds and subtracts two-digit numbers by thinking in tens and ones, first with bundles and a bead string, then on a number line, then in columns. When the ones make more than 10, ten ones become a new ten.

• tens and ones
• add the ones
• add the tens
• make a new ten
• take away
• difference
• jump on

A king’s bed comes out the wrong size because the king and the carpenter used different handspans. That story is the whole lesson: we need a unit everyone agrees on. Your child measures with a book, blocks or a pencil, compares paths, and compares weights on a home-made balance.

• longer
• shorter
• longest
• heavier
• lighter
• heaviest
• balance
• estimate

Your child moves from adding the same number again and again to writing it as multiplication: 4 + 4 + 4 is 3 × 4. They build the tables of 2, 3, 5 and 10, see that 3 × 4 and 4 × 3 give the same answer, and start sharing things equally, the first idea of division.

• groups of
• times
• ×
• equal groups
• share equally
• each
• table of

Time gets real in Class 2: seasons and the festivals in them, reading a calendar (months, days, weeks), and reading a clock at the hour and at simple times. Your child learns time by using the family calendar and the kitchen clock.

• season
• month
• week
• day
• o’clock
• hour hand
• minute hand
• calendar

With ₹50 at a fair, your child works out what they can buy, how much they spent and how much is left. They meet the ₹100, ₹200 and ₹500 notes and older paise coins, and make the same amount in different ways.

• rupees
• paise
• spent
• left
• change
• total
• cost

Your child collects answers from people, records them in a table, and draws a picture graph with one face for each person. Then they read the graph: which is most, least, more than, less than.

• table
• count
• most
• least
• more than
• less than
• equal
• graph

The Class 2 book ends with puzzles: joining shapes without crossing lines, a think-of-a-number trick, finding paths home, number names hidden in a word grid, and matchstick squares. NCERT says children should enjoy them, not be marked on them.

• try another way
• check it
• how many ways
• why does it work