What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good First-Grade Education (The Core Knowledge Series)

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...


What Your First Grader Needs to Know   February 2, 2000
Mrs. Tiffany Regan (Parker, CO USA)
60 out of 63 found this review helpful

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.


This series is a MUST HAVE!   August 9, 2002
billangela (Ohio, USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

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.


The series of "what your first (2nd, 3rd...)" are excellent   February 25, 1999
25 out of 28 found this review helpful

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!


Outstanding   August 6, 2005
Mary Leo (CA)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

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.