As discussed in my posts on preschool and kindergarten materials, Core Knowledge offers an enormous amount of educational materials for preschool through eighth grade.
I’m going to provide fewer links for the material for grades 1–8 than I did for preschool and kindergarten. I’ll still walk you through the material and link to the student readers that I find valuable.
If you go to the main Core Knowledge download page, you’ll find that you can view all of the materials (on fifteen screens) or sort by subject or grade.
I have also collected 108 Core Knowledge student books and readers for all levels, including a preschool compilation, not including workbooks and other materials. (These are all Creative Commons.) I’ve put a zipped file of this content on DropBox; you’re welcome to download it.
Grade 1
The “Ancillary Materials” and “Domain” segments offer lengthy teachers’ guides along with “flip books” and “image cards.” The idea is for the teacher to read or explain material as children look at their own printed images. This is a rather clunky system for homeschool use.
The “skills” sections offer some student readers that you might be interested in. Although these readers mesh tightly with Core Knowledge’s approach to reading, I didn’t find some of the stories very compelling. But I do quite like these:
The “skills” sections also provide student workbooks. I’m not sure yet if I’ll use these in the future (my child is just now kindergarten age). Although I really like the kindergarten workbooks, the first-grade workbooks seem a little basic and boring to me. But I’ll see. I’ll link to them here (pdf files) for those interested in downloading them.
- Workbook Unit 1
- Workbook Unit 2
- Workbook Unit 3
- Workbook Unit 4
- Workbook Unit 5
- Workbook Unit 6
- Workbook Unit 7
Finally we get into the informative readers (or “student books”). These I like a lot (overall).
- Continents, Countries, and Maps
- Mesopotamia
- Ancient Egypt
- Three World Religions
- Early Civilizations of the Americas
- The Culture of Mexico
- Early Explorers and Settlers
- From Colonies to Independence
- Exploring the West
- Sun, Moon, and Stars
- Plant and Animal Survival
- Exploring Light and Sound
Also, if you like, you can buy or borrow E. D. Hirsch’s What your First Grader Needs to Know (paid link).
Grade 2
I’m again skipping past the “Ancillary” and “Domain” materials. I’m also skipping the workbooks at this point. I’m pretty skeptical of their value. They contain, for example, multiple-choice questions about essays, which I think are stupid. (But if you want to try them be my guest.)
I wasn’t too impressed with most of the language arts readers for this year, but these look interesting:
I’m including all of the readers for History & Geography and Science:
- Ancient India
- Ancient China
- The Culture of Japan
- Ancient Greece
- Geography of the Americas
- Making the Constitution
- The War of 1812
- Americans Move West
- The Civil War
- Immigration and Citizenship
- Civil Rights Leaders
- Properties of Matter
- Organisms and Their Habitats
- Exploring Land and Water
You can also pick up What Your Second Grader needs to Know (paid link).
Grade 3
Skipping the “Ancillary” and “Domain” materials. . . I’ll include all the readers in Language Arts, History & Geography, and Science.
- Classic Tales
- Rattenborough’s Guide to Animals
- How Does Your Body Work?
- Stories of Ancient Rome
- Adventures in Light and Sound
- Gods, Giants, and Dwarves
- What’s In Our Universe?
- Native American Stories
- The Age of Exploration
- Living in Colonial America
- Introduction to Ecology
- World Rivers
- Ancient Rome
- The Vikings
- The Earliest Americans
- Explorations of North America
- The Thirteen Colonies
- Investigating Forces
- Life Cycles, Traits, and Variations
- Habitats and Change
- Weather and Climate
You can also pick up What Your Third Grader Needs to Know (paid link).
Grade 4
This is interesting: Core Knowledge offers “Core Classics Teacher Guides” filled with discussion and questions about various great works of literature: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Quixote, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Gulliver’s Travels, King Arthur, Sleepy Hollow, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, and Treasure Island. This is for grades 4–8.
Here are the readers (note that some units do not have readers and some units share readers):
- The Middle Ages
- Geology
- American Revolution: The Road to Independence
- Treasure Island
- Exploring Maps and World Mountains
- Medieval Europe
- Early and Medieval African Kingdoms
- Dynasties of China
- The American Revolution
- The United States Constitution
- Early Presidents and Social Reformers
- Energy Transfer and Transformation
- Investigating Waves
- Structures and Functions of Living Things
- Processes That Shape Earth
- Using Natural Resources for Energy
You can also pick up What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know (paid link).
Grade 5
Here are the readers for this year:
- Early American Civilizations
- The Renaissance
- The Reformation
- Native Americans
- World Lakes
- Maya, Aztec, and Inca Civilizations
- The Age of Exploration
- The Renaissance
- Early Russia and Feudal Japan
- The Geography of the United States
- Westward Expansion Before the Civil War
- The Civil War
- Native Americans and Westward Expansion
- Investigating Matter
- Energy and Matter in Ecosystems
- Modeling Earth’s Systems
- Protecting Earth’s Resources
- Astronomy
You can also pick up What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know (paid link).
Grades 6–8
- World Deserts
- Ancient Greece and Rome
- The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Romanticism
- The Industrial Revolution
- Independence for Latin America
- The Making of America
You can also pick up the final What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know (paid link).