An abundance of lesson plans for many second grade math topics are available online. Parents and teachers can also find instructional websites offering free second grade instruction. Plans include topics of real-world interest to children, including sorting and graphing data about favorite foods. Free online lessons offer drills and games about subjects such as telling time and finding unknowns in equations.

Gathering and Graphing Data
"Girl Scout Cookies Graph" is among the many second grade math lesson plans offered by the A to Z Teacher Stuff website. The lesson helps students to gather, sort and graph data, then draw conclusions about which cookies the class likes least and most. Another A to Z lesson plan that focuses on the same skills is "Apple Graphing." Similar to the cookie lesson, the students must graph their preferences among a variety of choices. In both lessons, this requires first sampling the foods. When learning any math skill, students need repeated experiences.

Fractions
Another math topic that lends itself to a focus on food is fractions. A to Z Teachers uses various kinds of apples again in the lesson "Apple Fractions." Although the lesson doesn't require tasting the food, this would be a good activity before a healthy snack break. The lesson involves counting the total number of apples (the denominator), then grouping and counting the different varieties (the numerators for fractional parts of the group). Online games provide reinforcement of fraction ideas such as fraction number and equivalencies, both of which students can practice through "Fraction Monkeys" at the SumsOnline website.

Telling Time
Due to pressures related to preparing students for standardized testing that looms in third grade and years beyond, teachers often have little time to reinforce lessons about reading and computing time. But telling time builds a second grader's independence, self esteem and logical problem solving. The Interactivate website offers a moving clock that helps students visualize the idea of "elapsed time" and gives them the ability to answer questions such as how many hours the little hand has to move to get from 12 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab website provides an activity that helps students match spoken time words to written numerical time. Although designed for those learning English as a second language, it helps all students with proper terms and pronunciation.

Finding Unknowns
Unknowns in math problems (8 + ? = 12) are also called missing terms and are part of the algebraic thinking skills that students begin building in kindergarten. Many second graders are familiar with in-class activities that use manipulatives to help solve unknown parts of equations. Working in pairs, one student shows another how many linking cubes she has. Then she hides them behind her back, snaps off a few and shows only those to the partner who must identify how many cubes remain behind her back. The AAAMath website offers the interactive game "What Number Would Complete the Equation" for practicing solutions of unknowns. Click on Start and the page poses a question such as "6 + blank = 14."