Customer Reviews

What Your First Grader Needs to Know (Core Knowledge Series)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an outstanding story book that's fun to read and excellent at educating young children. We read something from this book almost every evening. Both my seven-year old and four-year old love something from this book.

This book gives a good selection of classic children's stories, fun poems, singable songs, wise fables, and other works that are fun to read. It also gives great introductions to American history, world history, science, art and much more. What you see in this book is what your child should be learning at an ideal school.

Since no school is perfect and can cover everything, use this book as a great way of ensuring that your chilren receive an outstanding education.

This book tells you what you need to teach your first grader, and it's good reading. Next year we will buy the volumes for second grade and kindergarten.

It's interesting that one review made a claim that this book is a little too liberal. The fact is that the editor has been closely associated with forger Education Secretary William Bennett, a social conservative. In fact, the information in this book is neither liberal nor conservative. It's just excellent and enjoyable education for you kids, based on solid empirical research...

Great springboard book to help if you're a homeschooler or trying to supplement your child outside of the classroom.

Language and Literature: Plenty of stories and poetry to read to your child and get them started. Weak in the phonics area. I would recommend a good phonics primer - Phonics Pathways by Dolories Hiskes (awesome and inexpensive resource and it will get your child reading fast).

Mathematics: Simple progression in math skills. I like the suggestions on manipulatives and games to do with your child, they make the learning process more fun for the child.

Science: Braod overview of many sciences. Good things to start talking about with your child before a trip to the local zoo or library to pick up more in depth information.

This book is not meant to be a complete curriculum for teaching your child, but is a nice supplement. I like the stories, poems and music. It's a great portable all in one book. The notes to parents are helpful in finding ways to teach each subject.

This is an excellent resource to supplement a child's education. The topics are presented in an interesting, child-friendly manner. My daughter enjoys working from this book. As for the literature section, I found it to have a balanced mixture of traditional tales and multicultural folktales. Even though many traditional fairy tales are no longer politically correct, I feel that is important for my child to be exposed to literature that has endured for hundreds of years. When a poem or novel makes a literary allusion to Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, I want my child to understand. As for the multicultural stories, there are Hispanic, Japanese, English, Dutch, West African, German, Jewish, African American, Italian, and Iroquois selections. My daughter enjoyed reading stories from so many different cultures. I was also pleased with the math and art sections. This is a wonderful tool to use for following your child's education. Comparing the work that my daughter brings home from school to the curriculum in this book helps me know if she is on track or not.

You just can't beat this book. Not only does it tell you what your child should be learning, it's right there for you. This isn't just a list of topics - it has the actual stories, biographies, math games, etc. right there for you. One of my favorite parts is the literature section. It has the basic stories, poems, fables, and sayings every well-rounded child should now. And the science and history sections have great introductions/overviews of topice - great for unit studies. We use this book for homeschooling, and every homeschooler should have it. Note: to help you buy the right grade - for most books, you often have to buy a grade level higher for a homeschooled child, but the grade levels of these books are very accurate.

As an immigrant from a non-English speaking country, I found this is the best series of the knowledge book for my daughter and myself. As the contents showed, the book covers every aspect a grader student needs to know (solid and advanced). My daughter is in her 3rd grader and we read together all most every evening from book one to three. Not only she knows a lot from these books and superisingly answer "wild" questions in her class, I learnt a lot from these books regarding to the western (American) history which I missed during my grader education. Very enjoyable books to read with!!!! It worths every penny spent!

This is an outstanding book. I read many passages for my son. He likes them very much. They enrich him like nothing else. My son's school does not provide this much content. We would miss a lot literature, history, and geography without this book. Thanks to the authors. I do see the math part is too easy for first graders. For math, we use Beestar (a nice web site www.beestar.org). Its free weekly exercises are about right and very helpful. Overall, this is an outstanding book loaded with fine content. I highly recommend it.

This book is great if you homeschool or want to help your child during the summer. If you want to use it for homeschool, Hirsch has made a teacher handbook. The Teacher Handbooks provide background about language arts, history and geography, visual arts, music, mathematics, and science. Each handbook has been written to look like the Core Knowledge Sequence. For each section in the Sequence, there is a matching section in the handbooks

'What your first grader needs to know' is by far the best book that I have purchased for homeschooling. I believe it's a must have for every homeschooling family wondering if they are covering what they should. Along with non-homeschooling families curious if their child is where he or he should be at in the school system.

It goes over everything your child needs to know in the first grade, breaking it up into sections by subject. It not only explains to you what your child should know, but gives you pointers on how you can help your child learn and achieve the first grade goals.

Many thanks to the author of this great book for putting everything I need to know to teach my child, under one cover.

I didn't have time to read this book and I was going to return it but before I put it in the package I started thumbing through it. It wasn't at all what I expected--another dry instructional book--instead it turned out to be a spark for my childs imagination. I read a few passages aloud and he couldn't stop asking me questions. I was amazed how interested he was in the content. I'm very glad I didn't return this book it is a good supplement to his curriculum and it is fun to read it to your child it sparks many interesting fancifull conversations.

I love this book! I have my degree in Elementary Education and spent 3 years teaching - 2 of those in Kindergarten. I have seen how many times even the best intentions do not allow the time for covering EVERYTHING you would love to expose the children with when they are in your classroom.

When my own child started Kindergarten "What Your Kindergartner Need to Know" was recommended to me by a friend. I would spend the nights reading to her out of this book. It was a great chance for me to introduce concepts to her that she either had a basic knowledge or no knowledge. She looked forward to our evening readings together and learned a great deal from this book. We used it solely as a "night read" and did not do the experiments it showed. However, we would look at the experiments and talk about them. They looked very age appropriate and fun.

We have just begun "What Your First Grader Needs to Know" and all 3 of my children love it (ages 6, 4, and 3). This is an excellent way to add onto any child's education!