This page offers out-of-the-box, creative options for inspiring right-brained children to learn about social studies and current events. Click on the image for a link to the product. Longer reviews will have its own tab. I would love to hear yourrecommendations by using the comments section at the bottom of the page!
Who Was…? series
By various authors
We’re really enjoying the, “Who was …” series of biographies. They are really well written – flows more like a short chapter book than a non-fiction, with short side-bars about important figures. My older son reads them independently and my daughter and I read them together (he loves reading non-fiction and she finds it intimidating). My daughter actually asks me to please read her more and my son has read each one many times! We’ve read Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and will do Martin Luther King Jr. next. I think this series is going to be the backbone of our social studies this year! ~Marian
Time for Kids
You may want to investigate Time for Kids. ~Caren
The Christian Science Monitor
We also read The Christian Science Monitor as it is a bit more objective (despite its name, it is not focused on religious themes). It’s free online and I prescreen everything. We read the articles together that are of interest. ~Caren
The New York Times Upfront
By Scholastic
My electronics/gaming son also enjoys Scholastic’s Upfront magazine. ~Michele
The World and I magazine
If anyone is looking for an online magazine/news source, “The World and I” is awesome. They also have a “World and I Kids” section. Current events, but also a lot of cultural studies, with a large focus on Native Americans. There is a subscription fee, but they have a lot you can access without subscribing. I am having my oldest daughter (12) pick one article a week to read and tell me about. I wanted her to start getting into a habit of reading the news, but can’t stand all the celebrity gossip of the main news sites. It is “clean” but not “sheltered” if you know what I mean. One of the first articles she went for was about how they are using theater in Africa to promote HIV awareness … (haha, what a RB story!). ~Robyn
ValueTales
by various authors
Almost all of my children went through a stage of reading (and re-reading) these books about famous people (highly visual) in the 8 to 10 year learning stage. ~Cindy
