This is one of the more controversial text choices. People expect science books to be really recently printed, but it unless your fourth grader is learning cutting age genetics, not much has changed in the last 20 years on the 5th grade level. The glory of this series of books is that they are so age-appropriate. Not just in content, but in presentation. They are unique in that way. Any book will tell you about metamorphic rocks, but children of this age are just starting to be able to “pull the main idea” from a paragraph. This text works that skill every day while giving them a thorough scientific vocabulary. Every lesson is a two page spread ONLY. This is important! It’s brief enough to hold the child’s attention, and if he doesn’t remember the answers, he can check the text without any page flipping! (Every day, the child answers the blue questions in complete sentences and completes one or two other sections on the page. I went through and highlighted my book so that I didn’t have to write anything more than the lesson number on his assignment page. )
The first week, this was a hated subject, but I heard that it quickly becomes a favorite. And it did. Favorite subject!
