Customer Reviews

What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Activity Book 1 for Ages 3-4

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This activity book is truly comprehensive, as well as being a great compliment to Core Knowledge's "What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Get Ready for Kindergarten". The book is unique in its scope as it includes activities to prepare kids for early reading and math, but also has many activities designed to build early language and vocabulary skills through topics such as science, art,and history. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with preschool aged kids.

I was looking for some ideas of things that we could do at home that they also do at preschool. My 3 year old daughter doesn't go to school yet and I was hoping we could do some school type activities at home. This has a lot of really fun activities that don't require any real prep. We do a page or two at night after the one year old goes to sleep. It comes with stickers and cardboard pop-outs which are a lot of fun. I am going to buy the next age up book as well and I think you really need the companion storybook.

This companion activity book to "What Your Preschooler Needs to Know" is exciting and educational for young children. My 3 and a half year old truly enjoys learning with this book. She is advanced for her age, but this book still intrigues her. She especially enjoys the pages where she learns with the cut-outs and the stickers. She also loves the pages where she gets to color. The pages with the guessing games are also favorites. This full color activity book covers many subjects: math, science, reading, etc. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, my children ask to do activity books. That is how well put together this book is.

This activity book (as well as the activity book volume 2) is the best activity book for this age group on the market. It is thorough, exciting and educational. BrainQuest has activity books that are pretty good, but this one is by far the best book.

I would recommend this book for any young child and parent.

Before purchasing this activity book and the "textbook" that goes with it, I went to the core knowledge website & read all about it. Their website spends a great amount of space talking about their curriculum & how everything is sequential. So, when I got these books I was expecting both books to be organized by week. They were not. The activity book is organized by week. The textbook is not.

The activity book has a section in the front that tells the parents what they should do each week. Ex. Read this poem, read this story, sing this song, read these history & science sections & do these activities. The activities for the week are grouped together in the activity book. The poems, stories, songs, history & science sections are not grouped together by week. Each of these things is its own section in the textbook. The poems & songs are not even in the order you are supposed to do them. So far, the history section & science section seem to be in order. I really dislike the organization of the textbook. It makes it really hard to work with. Last night my husband was doing an activity with my son in the activity book. Next to the activity is recommended that parents read "Head, shoulders, knees, & toes". My husband looked in the textbook for the song/poem & could not find it. After about 5 minutes of looking he gave up. We happen to know this song, so we could sing it anyway, but if we didn't know it, then we would have lost out on that learning opportunity. The five minutes of searching bored my toddler & my hubby was able to finish the one activity, but then my son was no longer interested in the book.
My 3 & 1/2 year old enjoys both books. Especially the cut outs & stickers in the activity book. Those are really nice. The cut outs pop right out of the book, so no need for scissors. Which is great for me. My son loved acting out the story of goldilocks with the cut outs. He has done it multiple times for us. The stickers are nice, b/c if you stick them to the wrong spot on the page you can peel them off & restick them.
The cons of the activity book...what they say will take a week we finish in about 15 minutes. And the activities within one week do not all relate to each other. They do build skills in subsequent activities, however; things within one week are loosely related or not related at all. In the grand scheme of things this isn't too important, but from my research I got the impression that the history, science, poem, song & story within a week would relate. I realize this is a difficult thing to do, but that is why I was buying these books. In their defense they did not claim that activities within a week would relate to each other. Their claim is that they teach preschoolers everything they need to know.
So, how useful are these books....I suspect that for most people, only one or two sections of the textbook will be useful. If you've read your kids nursery rhymes, then the poem section of the book is mostly useless. If you have a kid song & fingerplay CD, then the song section is pretty useless. Half the story section are stories most people could repeat without reading (goldilocks, three pigs) the other half were stories from other lands (ones I've never heard of before). For me the history section was really nice. It was divided in to small sections about Native Americans, George Washington, Betsy Ross, Abe Lincoln, & Martin Luther King Jr. They were very simple & short. A good introduction, but again, what they say should take a week we finished in about 10 minutes. It did give me an idea where to start my history instruction for my son. The science section is ok. Most of the stuff we had already done with my son & in more detail. (We often get science themed books (animals, dinosaurs, volcanoes, etc) from the library). But, he likes listening to me read it. So, I guess that doesn't matter.
I think the activity book is more useful than the textbook. If I only had to buy one I would buy the activity book & supplement with stuff I had at home.
Overall, I think the books are good, but not great. When we finish this activity book I will probably buy the next one to give it a try. I'm not sure if I will buy the next "textbook".

This is a review for Activity Book 1 and 2 and the Core Knowledge Book "What your Preschooler needs to know".
I am using all of three with my son. He really enjoys working with them. I had previously tried other activity books but they didn't seem to interest him much. They focused much more on writing numbers and letters. And he found it frustrating because his fine motor skills aren't quite that developed. These books are more like preschool at home. You do songs, read stories and poems, learn colors, shapes, compare items. Learn some easy science, history, and look at famous art. The exercises start off very easy and get progressively harder. By the end your child will know numbers, letters, poems, stories, songs and much, much more.
In the first Book, there are 25 weeks and in the second book there are another 25 weeks planed out. They give you five worksheets per week and additional suggestions on what to do during the week. Each week is summarized at the beginning of each activity book. First they explain what you are teaching with the worksheets and then they suggest which songs you could sing, which poems to read, what stories to read and what games to play. They give you ideas for little games every week, some are games or activities you probably already do others are games that are either new or you might not think of at the time (that's how it was for me anyways...).
The activity books are very colorful, well made and the pages can be torn our or left in. There are stickers and cutouts in the back of the book that go with the worksheets. The cutouts you can use over and over again and there is an envelope to store them in the back of the activity book.
The book "What your Preschooler needs to know" goes hand-in-hand with the activity books. They suggest poems, stories, songs out of the book. When you do activities about the body (arm stickers, leg stickers, etc.) they tell you to read out of the science section about the human body.
The Core Book has poems, songs, stories, history, science, art (not crafts more art appreciation) and other helpful topics for parents. The activity books do not use all of the core book, history for example is used only the second activity book and only once in there (don't quote me on this, I just scanned through the second one looking for history stuff). So if you have all three books you can do more with your child by just reading sections from the book and talking about them. Looking at the art section, learning about animals, plants, the 5 senses and much more.
The only thing I do not like about the Core Book is that it doesn't have the music notes with the songs. I do not know all the songs and that would allow me to sing them anyway. I realize that Core Knowledge sells a Songbook with all the music notes in it on their website (it has a lot more songs in it from PreK through 6th Grade) but I didn't really want to buy that too.
I usually add more to the program, we sing the ABC-Song every time we do "school", we count, do art activities, and read even more books and stories.
My son really likes the books; he enjoys listening to songs and poems (the songs I don't know I make up the tune...). His older brother reads to him too out of the book. The pictures are very cute in the core book.
I highly recommend all three books!

My 3.5 yr. old daughter LOVES these books. Each activity book is outlined to be done in 10 weeks. My daughter did one of them in just 5. Everyday after dinner she looks forward to "play with stickers."

These books are designed so you can interact with your toddler. They can place stickers in the appropriate boxes or put cards in a sequential order after reading a story (from the What Your Preschooler Needs to Know book). The other thing that I liked is that the book gives you ideas of what you can do with your child outside of the book. For example, making gingerbread man cookies after reading the Gingerbread Man story. The books also introduce Science concepts in the early weeks and add onto them as the weeks go along. For example, with the human body, in the beginning the book introduced facial features and in following weeks they did other parts of the body like legs, arms and even introduced ankle and wrist. I was really impressed with introducing preschool children to important monuments, like location of the Great Wall of China, and even Presidents (besides Abe and George). I highly recommend these books and I intend to continue with this curricula when I begin to officially homeschool my children.

When I first received this activity book, I was disappointed because I thought it would be too easy for my daughter (not 3 yet). She knows most of her colors, shapes, and has no trouble with matching/sorting so I thought much of it was a waste. As I flipped through the pages, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the skills. In Week 1, there is a listening activity where the child has to listen to a description of pictures and pick out the picture. I don't know about you, but my daughter is not the best listener so we need lots of practice with these activities! By Week 3, the prereading skills begin. After reading Goldilocks, you use the cut outs in the back of the books to re-enact the story. There are notes in the margin to talk about "first, next, then, and last". Again, since listening isn't her strong point this will get her in the habit of really listening to whats happening in the stories we read. The Weekly Overviews at the beginning of the book are helpful because it has a list of engaging activities to do throughout the week with things around your house. For example, Week 2 says to play "Stamp It" by letting your child do all the address labels and stamps for you that week.

I didn't give it 5 stars because there are minimal alphabet activities (the ones in the book are recognizing the letters in the child's name) and no counting activities. Those are in Book 2. If I follow the Core Knowledge weekly schedule, my daughter would be closer to 4 before starting alphabet and numbers. They will cover that in her preschool long before that.

I like that some of the activities will be very easy for her to build confidence and some will be challenging that we will have to come back to for review. Overall, this book has well-thought out activities.

I purchased this book after buying What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Get Ready for Kindergarten (Core Knowledge). I didn't realize, initially, that the book I had purchased needed the activity books and was a little annoyed. After using this activity book for a few weeks with my daughter, I was happy it had more to it.

The activities in this book correlate directly with the above mentioned book. You cannot use one without the other. There is also a second activity book What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Activity Book 2 for Ages 4-5 that I will purchase when we finish this one. The activities are pretty basic but teach decent core learning techniques like; memorization, pattern recognition, shape and color recognition and imagination. My daughter and I have even created new activities off of the ones in the book to further the "game".

I love that when I ask her if she wants to do an activity, she's excited. That's not always the case when we practice letters and numbers or basic math. This is a good book set for early, core learning.

My son really likes the stickers and I like that this book can teach so many things, like colors, numbers and names of different object.

Very good book.
I am enjoying the different skills together with my 4 year old.
A worthwhile investment.Success to all preschoolers.