Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful series!!!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: I love this series!
Review: This is the stuff we want our children to know! I use this book for History and Geography lesson starters. It gives FABULOUS introductory information. My students enjoy listening to the short paragraph, then ask questions till they "get" the bigger picture. The other subject areas are well done also, I wish curriculum authors would take note!
Rating:
Summary: Very Useful!
Review: When I bought this book, I expected to see more of a checklist of what my child needed to know for Kindergarten and what my child would learn in Kindergarten. As a former Kindergarten teacher, I have an idea of what is needed, but I wanted it in writing. What I got was different, but not bad. This book is devided into sections: reading, writing, art, etc.
There are whole stories, poems, songs, and lessons for a kindergartener. While I don't expect that it will be enough for teaching a whole year of Kindergarten at home, I think it will be a great start. The emphasis is placed on reading (rightly so I think). I would like to see more in the math section though. I find that the art section is lacking, while the Social Studies section has much more than I would expect a Kindergartener to know. I hope I'm pleasantly suprised in that area. For information purpose it is not in a themematic form. It does cover many of the things that you would expect to see in a classical education (artists, authors, paintings etc). But it is lacking if you want a fully classical education. While there a few resources, there are not near as many as I would like to see. I'd also like to see a comprehensive, overall list of what a child is expected to know before and after Kindergarten. While it seems that I have discussed many of the points I see that need improvement, I think this book is great. It is probably the most comprehensive one book you can find for helping your child in Kindergarten. This would be a great start for homeschooling parents who don't want to spend a lot of money. It is a great book for parents who want to help their child learn prior to and during kindergarten but aren't really sure what to do. I would buy this book. Just be aware of the limitations and be prepared to suppliment those areas.
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