?'s about What Your X Grader Needs to Know

[momto2Cs]

I have been eying this series of books for a while, and had a few questions for anyone that might use it. My dd is entering third grade. We did not use What Your Kindergartener/First Grader/Second Grader Needs to Know, so I am bit reluctant to jump into the third volume since apparently they build on themselves. I am wondering if anyone has used simply the literature, history, and science readings from these, meaning, could I read through those subjects in the lower grade books with her, and eventually in a couple of years) we would "catch up" to the appropriate grade level?

 

I hope this makes sense. :tongue_smilie:

[2_girls_mommy]

I love these books, but don't use them as a spine. We just use them for good reading to go along with other things we are studying.

 

I have used the art and music sections as our spine for those subjects only for a couple of years in the past (and now as supplements) and don't see any reason why you couldn't for the other subjects as well.

 

They are lovely books. It is so nice to have so much information in a tiny little book. I love to take these when we travel. There is so much to read, and I only have to take 1 little book as opposed to something from every subject!

[Lori D.]

We used the grades 2-6 of the "What Your ... Grader Needs to Know" books, reading through the literature, poetry, music, art and history sections as supplement.

 

Literature/Poetry

We spent 5-10 min/day, 3x/week to read the lit/poetry as part of our morning "together time"; that took us about 2 years to go through the 2nd grade through 6th grade books. It didn't seem to matter whether we were below grade level, at grade level, or above grade level to our boys -- they enjoyed all the selections.

 

The Sayings/Adages

We spent 5/10 min./day, 2x a week to do 2 sayings/adages as a game ("Wheel of Fortune style). They'd take turns and roll a die (which equaled their "money value"); and fill in the blanks to the saying ("Hangman" style). Then we'd read what the book said/discuss. They loved doing that! Side note: this was one of THE most valuable things out of this series of books -- you don't always get exposure to this type of knowledge, except as it comes up in literature, or an older adult uses one of the sayings.

 

Art/Music

Just read for 10-15 minutes, a few pages at a time, as we did art/music.

 

History

Just read for 10-15 minutes, a few pages at a time, synching it up with whatever history we were studying -- treated it like an additional history resource.

 

 

We always supplemented math with additional math resources, and we did a lot of science already, so I never felt we needed to read through those sections. However, it would have been easy to just add it in, like we did for the history.

 

 

We really enjoyed the 5 books we covered; it took us about 3 years to add in all the information we wanted to cover from those 5 books, doing it in little snippets here and there as it fit in with what we were studying. We did the books altogether and ignored trying to match up grade levels of the books with our DSs, and it never seemed to matter.

 

BEST of luck, whatever you decide! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[momto2Cs]

Thank you for the replies! I'm going to go ahead and start with the 1st grader one, just reading through history, etc., and use it as a jumping off point. I just like the organization of topics! I figure we'll get through two or three books in a year's space.

[mcconnellboys]

Yes, and I did that with my older son when I started hsing him in second grade because I was afraid of the awful G word (gaps).... I didn't use them as my sole program (there's not enough for that), but I did use them to supplement.

[kalanamak]

I'd get the younger ones from the library and read them yourself. That way you can be joggled to bring in anything you (smack forehead) forgot!