Amazon Customer Reviews

I was disappointed when I looked through this book. We are great fans of the Core Knowledge Series books and have collected up through 6th grade even though our son is only 3! So, I was very excited to get the activity books.

Unfortunately, it was too elementary for my son. The activities were great ideas and would have been good about a year ago. So, I have just ordered the age 4-5 book to see if that will suit him better and I'll use the other for my second son, when he's about 2 or 2 1/2.

Also, some of the activities are things you could do just in every day living rather than having a structured activity for it.

Well, just my two cents...good book and ideas, but use it earlier than the ages advised (at least for our family :)

This is a review for Activity Book 1 and 2 and the Core Knowledge Book "What your Preschooler needs to know".
I am using all of three with my son. He really enjoys working with them. I had previously tried other activity books but they didn't seem to interest him much. They focused much more on writing numbers and letters. And he found it frustrating because his fine motor skills aren't quite that developed. These books are more like preschool at home. You do songs, read stories and poems, learn colors, shapes, compare items. Learn some easy science, history, and look at famous art. The exercises start off very easy and get progressively harder. By the end your child will know numbers, letters, poems, stories, songs and much, much more.
In the first Book, there are 25 weeks and in the second book there are another 25 weeks planed out. They give you five worksheets per week and additional suggestions on what to do during the week. Each week is summarized at the beginning of each activity book. First they explain what you are teaching with the worksheets and then they suggest which songs you could sing, which poems to read, what stories to read and what games to play. They give you ideas for little games every week, some are games or activities you probably already do others are games that are either new or you might not think of at the time (that's how it was for me anyways...).
The activity books are very colorful, well made and the pages can be torn our or left in. There are stickers and cutouts in the back of the book that go with the worksheets. The cutouts you can use over and over again and there is an envelope to store them in the back of the activity book.
The book "What your Preschooler needs to know" goes hand-in-hand with the activity books. They suggest poems, stories, songs out of the book. When you do activities about the body (arm stickers, leg stickers, etc.) they tell you to read out of the science section about the human body.
The Core Book has poems, songs, stories, history, science, art (not crafts more art appreciation) and other helpful topics for parents. The activity books do not use all of the core book, history for example is used only the second activity book and only once in there (don't quote me on this, I just scanned through the second one looking for history stuff). So if you have all three books you can do more with your child by just reading sections from the book and talking about them. Looking at the art section, learning about animals, plants, the 5 senses and much more.
The only thing I do not like about the Core Book is that it doesn't have the music notes with the songs. I do not know all the songs and that would allow me to sing them anyway. I realize that Core Knowledge sells a Songbook with all the music notes in it on their website (it has a lot more songs in it from PreK through 6th Grade) but I didn't really want to buy that too.
I usually add more to the program, we sing the ABC-Song every time we do "school", we count, do art activities, and read even more books and stories.
My son really likes the books; he enjoys listening to songs and poems (the songs I don't know I make up the tune...). His older brother reads to him too out of the book. The pictures are very cute in the core book.
I highly recommend all three books!

I love this. It's just perfect for preparing my 3 year old for kindergarden, as well as fun activities for us to share. The product arrived quickly and in excellent condition. I will definitely purchase more products from them as my child ages.

I have probably 20 different activity books in out craft cupboard. My 4yo daughter has always hated doing anything in them because it was to "boring". All of the other books we have are just pretty much tracing letters, numbers, shapes, etc. I love how these Core Knowledge books come with the stickers and cut outs and you can and should also purchase the "What Your Preschooler Needs to Know" book that goes along with them. I also love that these teach writing, history, science and math. None of our other activity books have science or history in them.

My 4yo now loves to have "activity time"!

We've only had this book for a few weeks, but both, my son and I, love this book. Can't wait to buy book #2.