> culture. :)  I also got a Sesame Street numbers video
 > from the library and have been counting that as math. :)
How about the Clifford the Big Red Dog video series? There's one on the 
alphabet, one on numbers - those are entertaining as well as educational. 
There's also one on sounds - kindergartners and first graders love the word 
"onamatopeia" (and I don't think I spelled that right!). Anyway, it's about 
those words for sounds, like BAM, BOOM, ring-a-ding-ding, CRASH!, etc. These 
videos should be in your library - check under Clifford the Big Red Dog.
 > I think this /widening circles/ curriculum is a good
 > idea.  It also gives many
 > opportunities for interesting field trips in nearby
Yup, and it makes sense, because the child's interests get wider as they get 
older.
 > BTW, why is it that you don't like the social studies
 > textbooks?  I looked at
They try so hard to be unbiased that they are biased in a totally different 
way. They also tend to be really unbalanced when it comes to famous people. 
For instance, in one textbook that I looked at (5th grade), they gave 
Franklin D. Roosevelt (a man who was President for over 12 years) a small 
two-paragraph box. They gave Martin Luther King Jr a full page. Another book 
had a whole chapter on "famous" women, yet gave some of our more illustrious 
US Presidents about a paragraph each, and practically ignored some of the 
biggest laws and doctrines that ever went thru in favor of the propositions 
that lost.
 > I thought the first and
 > second grade level books were far too simplistic to be
Another reason, especially in the younger grades.
                                 -donna
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