Kindy/ 1st grade Social Studies?

[Shelsi]

I'm not really finding any curriculums for this area? I found one but it was religious and I'm definitely looking for a secular based one. We're just next week starting HSing my kindergartner - I know we can read books and such about different historic events and things like that but I personally do much better when I have more structure than that, kwim? I've got our language arts, math, and science curriculums already but I'm stuck on social studies/history.

[lach]

A lot of people use Story of the World.

I'm not sure if there are many social studies curricula out there for that age. You can always buy a textbook, like they would use in a classroom, and work from there. Most would be about "my neighborhood" or "my family," which is what most public school social studies classes study at those grades. Pearson has one designed around the Core Knowledge curriculum. I haven't seen the book, so I can't recommend it, but I am a big fan of the Core Knowledge Foundation.

I know that there are a few Williamson Kids Can about the US and geography, maybe you could try to find stuff like that?

[zjande]

We're Story of the World users here.

I'm curious what science curriculum you decided on?

[meetoo]

We use Five in a Row for social studies/geography. We also use it for science (beefed up) and art.

[elizawill]

when my dd was in kindergarten, we used the free lessons from www.coreknowledge.org i specifically like the baltimore curriculum project lessons (under free lessons and scroll to the bottom). hth.

[Shelsi]

Originally Posted by zjande

We're Story of the World users here.

I'm curious what science curriculum you decided on?

I ended up choosing Real Science 4 Kids. Their pre-chemistry and physics is available much cheaper as downloadable e-books now so I did those 2 electronically and then bought pre-biology. I plan on using them over the course of the next 2-3 years. I science so we may go through science stuff a bit faster just because I love doing it and teaching it.

[Collinsky]

We have SOTW: Ancient Times and also the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History. The Usborne book has lots of great illustrations, which draw in my preschooler as well, and it complements the SOTW well IMO.

Any public school curriculum that I've seen for the younger grades is something like "My Neighborhood," as lach said. Which is not a bad thing, FWIW - there are many ideas about where to start, and many are of the school of thought that it's best to start learning about history and social studies by learning about the immediate world around the child, and expanding on that. Others, like me, decide to start with Ancient History and work our way forward chronologically, covering geography, cultures, religion, stories, etc as we go. I don't think that there is any right or wrong place to start with it - you could start with American history/geography quite successfully, IMO.

If you wanted to start with Ancient History, and want a planned curriculum, you could check out the Mosaic curriculum - it's available free online and uses SOTW and the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History.

[oceanbaby]

I found SOTW way too advanced for my kids. The level of detail was overwhelming and boring for them.

You could get What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know and just use the social studies/history section from there. However, I found that a lot of the K level social studies stuff was pretty basic stuff that my kids learned on their own - community, family, etc.

As far as history, I would be talking with my 8yo about an event, and my 5yo would say something like "You mean like Superman?" of "I know! They could just build a rocket ship and fly around the world!" So I think a lot of it was lost on him.