What Your Third Grader Needs to Know ─ Fundamentals of a Good Third-Grade Education

Give your child a smart start with the revised and updated
What Your Third Grader Needs to Know

What should your child learn in the third grade? How can you help him or her at home? This book answers these important questions and more, offering the specific shared knowledge that thousands of parents and teachers across the nation have agreed upon for American third graders. Featuring sixteen pages of full-color illustrations, a bolder, easier-to-follow format, and a thoroughly updated curriculum,What Your Third Grader Needs to Know is designed for parents and teachers to enjoy with children. Hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from the Core Knowledge Series. This edition, featuring a new Introduction, gives today’s generation of third graders the advantage they need to make progress in school and to establish an approach to learning that will last a lifetime. In this book you’ll discover

‧ Favorite poems—old and new, from the traditional rhyme “For Want of Nail” to Lewis Carroll’s whimsical poem “The Crocodile”
‧ Literature—including Native American stories, African folktales, European fairy tales, classic myths from ancient Greece, stories from ancient Rome, and more
‧ Learning about language—the basics of written English, including sentence structure, parts of speech, and a first look at writing a report or letter
‧ World and American history and geography—journey down the great rivers of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, visit ancient Rome, and experience the earliest days of America with the Pilgrims and Native Americans
‧ Visual arts—an introduction to masterworks by Rembrandt, Henri Matisse, Mary Cassatt, and others, with full-color reproductions and fun, do-it-yourself activities
‧ Music—the fundamentals of appreciating, reading, and making music, plus great composers, instruments, and sing-along lyrics for songs such as “Bicycle Built for Two” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”
‧ Math—stimulating lessons ranging from counting money to solving division problems, numbers through 100,000, graphs, and the metric system
‧ Science—fascinating discussions on the natural world, the cycles of life, the human body and its systems, and the environment, with accompanying activities and stories about famous scientists such as Copernicus and Alexander Graham Bell

E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia and the author ofThe Knowledge Deficit, The Schools We Need, and the bestselling Cultural Literacyand the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. He and his wife, Polly, live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they raised their three children.