I used this book with my daughter Victoria during her summer vacation 2002. She has been diagnosed ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). After having a tough year in kindergarten I wanted to make sure she had a head start on all the learning requirements for 1st grade. As her first week of 1st grade came to a close we received many comments on her reading skills and other skills. I enjoyed using this book as a 1 on 1 tool with Victoria and her self-confidence has been boosted because she does see that all the hard work this summer has paid off. She completed 200 pages of the 440 + pages of work and will hopefully complete the book on weekends and vacations so that she can start the next level next summer. Highly recommended. Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills, Grade 1
This book allows children to learn new school skills as well as polish up on already known skills. The pages are jam packed with colorful drawings and characters that make children using the book want to continue doing and learning more. This book can be used as a home-schooling book, or a a tool to give children a "Jump-start" on their next year of school. I reccomend this book to anyone with a child in the house. It strengthens reading and writing skills tremendously. Don't miss out on giving your child that extra edge in school!
-Cynthia Vail. Paso Robles, C
I bought two copies of this book in July to use in homeschooling my first grade twins. This is our first year homeschooling, and choosing the right curriculum was daunting, to say the least. When I found this book, the pages reminded me a lot of the Saxon Math and Saxon Phonics worksheets my kids had brought home from kindergarten in public school, except that they are far more colorful. I decided that I couldn't really beat the price, so I gave the book a try.
As of this week, we are halfway through the book and moving right along. Based on my conversations with parents of first graders in the local public school system, my kids are actually ahead of their peers. The best thing is, they are EXCITED to do their school work each day. They often ask for more work in the evenings! If that is not a good review of this book, I don't know what is.
My one and only complaint with the book is that there are often not enough pages dedicated to a particular concept. However, I have found that it is easy and fun to supplement the worksheets with games that we make up on our own. For instance, when learning beginning or ending consonant sounds, we would have races to find objects in the house that began or ended with the target letter that I would call out. This helped to really cement in the concept that had been studied in the book and present the same lesson in a different form.
If you are teaching multiple children at home, I HIGHLY recommend getting each child his or her own copy of the book. I considered buying one book and photocopying the pages for each of my children, but the cost of the book is likely less than I would have spent on paper and ink. I also DEFINITELY recommend buying a 2 inch binder and tearing out each page as you work on it. The book is very thick and does not bend open easily... tearing out the pages allows for much better handwriting form and it allows you to skip back and forth easily from the math to the reading sections.
A few things we didn't like: There are way too many coloring sheets for us since ds hates to color. There are plenty of other valuable worksheets though. I wish the parent guide was a little more informative. Some of the directions are very long and confusing for a first grader. The math sections are kindergarten level at best. In all it was worth the few bucks I paid for it.
We home school and I have used a few different levels of this book for review purposes. The exercises range from review of the end of grade before to mid-level exercises of the current year. Rather than going thru the book from beginning to end, I tear out the pages which I fell my daughter needs a review on. We probably only use 40% of the book because the exercises seem pretty simple. We find nothing too challenging. Using this book helps me fell that we covered all this grade's material sufficiently.
The full-color entertaining graphics are refreshing and make otherwise potentially dull material refreshing. I was happy that reading, reading comprehension, english, spelling, and math subjects are covered. The answer section in the back is always appreciated just to confirm that I am understanding what they want.
I was a little disappointed to discover that the spelling section is EXACTLY the same as the material from another School Specialty Publishing publication, "Master Skills Spelling & Writing". I would say 80% of the material from Master Skills is in this book as well. What is missing is the entertaining crossword, fill-in, and word finds. These "fun" exercises were my daughter's favorite part of the Master Skills book. I have run into this before when purchasing School Specialty Publishing books. FYI and buyer beware.
Although I would not recommend this book for Home-schoolers to use as their primary curriculum, this book is great for extra practice or to use as a review. For the Price, this book is a combination of workbooks put together adding a little flavor of history and science
It's a little simplistic when it comes to some pages but this depends on your childs skill level. We use this for homeschooling and enjoy it as an easy alternative to printing out worksheets to do. The pages are colorfull with nice pictures (even the answer key in the back is in color). Worksheets have printed directions at the top of each so children can do them independantly. I feel like this is a good quality book for the price.
This book is a summer review book before going into the [...]. I have twin girls that just finished kindergarten. Everything that is in this book was covered in their kindergarten class. Last year, I purchased the kindergarten Curriculum Book and that was also much review but it also had some challenging concepts that they had not learned previously in preschool. I would not use this Grade 1 book as a companion for their [...] learning but I think it is a wonderful source for continued summer learning and review before children enter the [...]. - Curriculum - Homeschool - Preschool Activity Book - Preschool'
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