Reviews for Language and Thinking for Young Children

The average rating for Language and Thinking for Young Children based on 4 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-05-16 00:00:00 Sheree Abernathy 2.5 stars This book is fairly dated, but I'd say we still found it about 50% useful as a supplement to kindergarten language arts. We enjoyed the "stories" unit, as it included some well-known stories but also a particularly funny one we hadn't heard before. The poetry unit had some good poems in it as well (though it would probably have been redundant with some of what we were already doing). Overall, I think it's a case where you can take what works for you and leave the rest. There were plenty of good ideas here to help remind parents of what kinds of things children should know and learn, especially for pre-reading skills, and a lot of them were things that could be integrated into everyday life. One of our favorites was the idea of going to the grocery store and letting your child pick one fruit they have never tried before (and then repeat it with a vegetable the next week). That was fun, and I think helped us appreciate the variety of food we have access to. There are other ideas that help give children awareness about the world around them, and some that remind parents what kinds of things are useful for children to memorize (parents' names, address, phone number, etc.). This isn't really something to read straight through, at least for me, but it was helpful to page through everything over the course of a year to glean the best ideas, though we skipped plenty too -- I thought the manners unit was a bit too focused on gender roles for my tastes, and there are other fairly dated aspects. Overall a nice resource, though I'm curious what else is out there along this vein that's a bit more modern.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-27 00:00:00 Patty Poticha More useful as a reference guide to skills and topics that you may not have discussed with your children yet than as a book that you sit and read through. Manners, phone etiquette, who to call in an emergency, fables. . . etc.

Review # 3 was written on 2018-05-16 00:00:00 David Lomax 2.5 stars This book is fairly dated, but I'd say we still found it about 50% useful as a supplement to kindergarten language arts. We enjoyed the "stories" unit, as it included some well-known stories but also a particularly funny one we hadn't heard before. The poetry unit had some good poems in it as well (though it would probably have been redundant with some of what we were already doing). Overall, I think it's a case where you can take what works for you and leave the rest. There were plenty of good ideas here to help remind parents of what kinds of things children should know and learn, especially for pre-reading skills, and a lot of them were things that could be integrated into everyday life. One of our favorites was the idea of going to the grocery store and letting your child pick one fruit they have never tried before (and then repeat it with a vegetable the next week). That was fun, and I think helped us appreciate the variety of food we have access to. There are other ideas that help give children awareness about the world around them, and some that remind parents what kinds of things are useful for children to memorize (parents' names, address, phone number, etc.). This isn't really something to read straight through, at least for me, but it was helpful to page through everything over the course of a year to glean the best ideas, though we skipped plenty too -- I thought the manners unit was a bit too focused on gender roles for my tastes, and there are other fairly dated aspects. Overall a nice resource, though I'm curious what else is out there along this vein that's a bit more modern.

Review # 4 was written on 2014-09-27 00:00:00 Lisa Kravetsky More useful as a reference guide to skills and topics that you may not have discussed with your children yet than as a book that you sit and read through. Manners, phone etiquette, who to call in an emergency, fables. . . etc.