The Parent Backpack for Kindergarten through Grade 5: How to Support Your Child's Education, End Homework Meltdowns, and Build Parent-Teacher Connections
Parents who can wade through the repetitive first part of Nichols’ how-to will unearth commonsense guidance about ways they can support their children’s education through respectful communication with their teachers and schools. Nichols, a self-styled parent educational consultant and blogger, endorses and provides a good overview of the new, more rigorous Common Core State Standards that most states have adopted for their public schools. This description is complemented by easy-to-digest explanations of developmental milestones, children’s varying learning styles, the matrix of cognitive processes involved in learning to read, write, and organize work, and the intricacies of academic interventions. But perhaps Nichols’ most important and oft-repeated advice is the most obvious: read to your young children every day, and say thank you to their hardworking, dedicated, and skilled teachers. --Carolyn Saper