Fredericks presents hundreds of hands-on, minds-on projects that actively engage students in positive learning experiences. Each of the units offers book summaries, social studies topic areas, critical thinking questions, classroom resources, and lots of easy-to-do activities for every grade level. The author also provides practical guidelines for collaborative ventures with school librarians, tips for integrating literature across the curriculum, lists of relevant web sites useful in social studies curriculum. Everything is linked to the social studies standards.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, k, p, e, i, t.

Graded, annotated bibliography of children's books organized according to the NCSS's ten thematic strands of social studies: culture; time continuity, and change; people, places, and environments; individual development and identity; individuals, groups, and institutions; power, authority, and governance; production, distribution, and consumption; science, technology, and society; global connections; civic ideals and practices.

Allow students to step back in time to experience the thoughts, feelings, dilemmas, and actions of people from history. For each history topic, Miller suggests two titles-one for use with the entire class and one for use with small reading groups. Summaries of the books, author information, activities, and topics for discussion are supplemented with vocabulary lists and ideas for research topics and further reading. This integrated approach makes history meaningful to students and helps them retain historical details and facts.

This integrated teacher resource provides lesson ideas for the instruction of social studies and history concepts within the context of quality multicultural children's books and picture books. Each chapter focuses on three picture books related to various multicultural themes in American history. Chapters are organized chronologically, and by theme, and include book summaries, materials lists, student-centered activities, related books and poetry, and links to national history standards. Multicultural themes include: Old West American Revolution Slavery Civil War World War II and the Holocaust Vietnam Native Americans

These dynamic literature-based activities will help you energize the social studies curriculum and implement national (and many of state) standards. Fredericks presents hundreds of hands-on, minds-on projects to stimulate actively and engage students in positive learning. Each of these 33 units offers book summaries, social studies topic areas, critical thinking questions, and dozens of easy-to-do activities for every grade level. The author also gives practical guidelines for integrating literature across the curriculum, lists of web sites useful in social studies classes, and annotated bibliographies of related resources.

Use this activity-centered, literature-based approach to get students excited about social studies. These 32 units have summaries of books, social studies topic areas, lists of content-related words, curricular perspectives, and critical-thinking questions, as well as myriad activities. Fredericks also gives you an excellent annotated bibliography of children's literature and a list of social studies resources.

Young children are naturally interested in their world. They are learning to understand who they are, who their family members are, and what it means to have friends. They are curious about their communities, who lives and works there, how things are made, and what they cost. They are beginning to ask questions about their environment and the greater world. With Social Studies and Me! teachers can support children's curiosity by using storybooks to engage them in social studies and literacy learning and deepen their understanding of skills and concepts. Themes include: I Am a Person; Families, Friends, Communities; and The Big World.

This book is an invaluable resource for enabling teachers, religious educators, and families to learn about religious diversity themselves and to teach children about both their own religion as well as the beliefs of others. The traditions featured include indigenous beliefs throughout the world, Native American spirituality, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity (Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism), Islam, Sikhism, and other beliefs such as Bahá'í, Unitarian Universalism, Humanism, and Atheism. Each chapter highlights a specific religion or spiritual tradition with a brief discussion about major beliefs, misconceptions, sacred texts, and holy days or celebrations. This summary of each tradition is followed by extensive annotated recommendations for children’s and adolescent literature as well as suggested teaching strategies. The recommended literature includes informational books, traditional religious stories, and fiction with religious themes. Teachers, religious educators, and family members will find the literature from these genres to be invaluable tools for bridging the religious experience of the child with that of the global society in which they live.

A new, interactive approach to storytime, The Whole Book Approach was developed in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and expert author Megan Dowd Lambert's graduate work in children's literature at Simmons College, offering a practical guide for reshaping storytime and getting kids to think with their eyes. Traditional storytime often offers a passive experience for kids, but the Whole Book approach asks the youngest of readers to ponder all aspects of a picture book and to use their critical thinking skills. Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.