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Rating: 
Summary: Here's what readers are saying about How to Teach Your Child
Review: "Includes much info parallel to E.D. Hirsch's CORE (Knowledge) Curriculum." --Sherri Naff, Director, the Country Day School, Madison Alabama"This is a comprehensive little book that should be of value to both teachers and parents."--Larry Muschamp, Principal, Darlington Lower School, Rome, Georgia "Very readable. The illustrations are good."--Sr. Rose Galligan, Principal, Notre Dame Academy Elementary, Staten Island, New York "My child is in public school and we use this book as a guide to help her. It is in sync with her curriculum..."--Jo P. Stanley, Parent, Taneytown, Maryland "Everyone picks it up and looks at it, saying, 'What a great book!' One out of four or five so far has bought it." Frank D. Hoban, Hoban's Parent/Teacher Store, Dunmore, Pennsylvania
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Summary: Who says you can't teach your child?
Review: How to Teach Your Child is a parent's curriculum guide, a textbook, and a teaching aid combined into one. Compact, authoritative, and charmingly illustrated, this book is chock-full of information on how you can teach your child at home--whether to supplement classroom education or to do your own homeschooling. Frank D. Hoban, Hoban's Parent/Teacher Store in Dunmore, Pennsylvania says: "Everyone picks it up and looks at it, saying 'What a great book!' One out of four or five so far has bought it."
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Summary: An Alternate Monthly Selection of Homeschooling Book Club
Review: How to Teach Your Child, a manual for homeschoolers and parents with children in school, is the recipient of a Benjamin Franklin Award from the Publishers Marketing Association. It also has been an Alternate Monthly Selection of the Homeschooling Book Club. This is the only book that guides parents in teaching their children from kindergarten through Grade 6. Here's a comment from a school director:
"...it includes much info parallel to E.D. Hirsch's CORE (Knowledge) Curriculum."--Sherri Naff, Director, The Country Day School, Madison, Alabama
Rating: 
Summary: A fair start, but I probably won't use it to teach my son.
Review: I too found the constant references to the Gulf War tiresome. I also found some factual errors (koalas are not bears) and a few words that were spelled wrong. I will use the book as a reference, but will find other books to use, also.
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Summary: some good tips
Review: Just finished scanning this book. As a home schooler, it seems to have a very good list of phonics facts. I did find however the continuous references to war and violence when the author was illustrating a point-a bit - no, very tiresome. Perhaps the gulf war was of special interest to the author or perhaps it was a conscious effort to make the book appear timely. In my humble opinion it was just plain annoying. As a Canadian, I found bits and pieces of useful information. I will NOT use this book as my only resource - but will keep it for reference.
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Summary: A grade-by-grade guide to teaching kids at home.
Review: The author, Veltisezar B. Bautista, an "average" student during his elementary, high school, and college years, became an honor student when he went back to college, while raising a family and holding a full-time job. Bautista attributes his success to the use of effective studying and test-taking techniques. He taught his kids study methods when he taught his children at home to supplement classroom education. As a result, his children became honor students in school. Stella Bicogno, Principal, Our Lady of Sorrows School, South Orange, New Jersey, comments: "Interesting concept--a handy, concise resource for parents."
Rating: 
Summary: not recommended
Review: This book is clearly intended for the home schooling market, which is part of why this book is so dangerous. Dangerous, I say, because it represents the worse kind of old-fashioned teaching, which equates the knowledge of labels, categories, and descriptions with education. For example, it lists the basic types of clouds (stratus, cumulus, and cirrus), but gives only the briefest discussion of the water cycle, or weather patterns, or meteorology and weather prediction, etc. In other words, your child would be taught *what* things are called, but may never understand the proces or mechanisms involved. The study of history is similar, if not worse -- consisting mostly of names and dates, presents a naively heroic and linear progression of events, and focuses entirely on American history. Your child may know what Paul Revere was famous for, but will have little understanding of the historical processes which were at play in the American revolution. For the author, it is sufficient that the child learn that "the colonies had a dream to be free!" I think even a 5th grader deserves a better explanation than that (worse, if an adult believes it, too). The title itself is misleading, since there is very little on "how" to teach; it mostly tells about "things to know." The section on critical reasoning and thinking is particularly disappointing, devoting about one paragraph to "evaluation," which is the single most important step. Not suprisingly, a lot more pages are devoted to "describing," "classifying," "summarizing," etc. It's as if this book is stuck in the Middle Ages, trying to rediscover Aristotle's natural philosophy. In my opinion, this book could serve well only as a basic primer for a parent whose own schooling was rather lacking. But if that is the case, the parent is probably a lot better off entrusting the education of his/her children to someone with some knowledge and professional expertise. As a final comment, I should note that this book takes the effort to point out that humans are the "highest" form of animal, and are primates only because humans have "flexible hands and feet." Not only is this wrong, it also stinks of a religious agenda.
Rating:
Summary: not recommended
Review: This book is clearly intended for the home schooling market, which is part of why this book is so dangerous. Dangerous, I say, because it represents the worse kind of old-fashioned teaching, which equates the knowledge of labels, categories, and descriptions with education. For example, it lists the basic types of clouds (stratus, cumulus, and cirrus), but gives only the briefest discussion of the water cycle, or weather patterns, or meteorology and weather prediction, etc. In other words, your child would be taught *what* things are called, but may never understand the proces or mechanisms involved. The study of history is similar, if not worse -- consisting mostly of names and dates, presents a naively heroic and linear progression of events, and focuses entirely on American history. Your child may know what Paul Revere was famous for, but will have little understanding of the historical processes which were at play in the American revolution. For the author, it is sufficient that the child learn that "the colonies had a dream to be free!" I think even a 5th grader deserves a better explanation than that (worse, if an adult believes it, too). The title itself is misleading, since there is very little on "how" to teach; it mostly tells about "things to know." The section on critical reasoning and thinking is particularly disappointing, devoting about one paragraph to "evaluation," which is the single most important step. Not suprisingly, a lot more pages are devoted to "describing," "classifying," "summarizing," etc. It's as if this book is stuck in the Middle Ages, trying to rediscover Aristotle's natural philosophy. In my opinion, this book could serve well only as a basic primer for a parent whose own schooling was rather lacking. But if that is the case, the parent is probably a lot better off entrusting the education of his/her children to someone with some knowledge and professional expertise. As a final comment, I should note that this book takes the effort to point out that humans are the "highest" form of animal, and are primates only because humans have "flexible hands and feet." Not only is this wrong, it also stinks of a religious agenda.
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