Kindergarten history and social studies

Kindergarten social studies in Texas is close to home: who I am, who my family is, what a rule is, what a flag means, and the difference between yesterday and tomorrow. There is no need for a history curriculum this year. Read-alouds, a picture map of your own yard, and a walk to look at a historical marker cover almost all of it. Our /know room handles continents; nothing on this site covers the civics or community strand, and a five-year-old does not need a program to get there.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

By the end of kindergarten, a child working at grade level can usually do these.

• Names the country and the state he lives in, and picks the United States and Texas flags out of a group on sight.
• Recites the Pledge of Allegiance and knows that 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is the national anthem.
• Says why we mark Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Presidents' Day, and Constitution Day.
• Sorts events into past, present, and future, and puts three events from his own life in the right order.
• Names jobs that family members and neighbors do, and tells a good you can buy from a service someone performs.
• Follows a household or classroom rule and explains why the rule exists.
• Gives an example of good citizenship: telling the truth, taking a turn, cleaning up what he used.
• Reads a simple picture map of a room or a yard and follows a direction on it.
• Names community helpers such as a firefighter, a mail carrier, a nurse, and a police officer.
• Recognizes George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as presidents who lived long ago.

Free, and legal to use

Every one of these costs nothing. The license tag says what you may actually do with it, which is not the same question as whether it is free to read.

• National Park Service Junior Ranger Free Free to use

  Activity booklets tied to individual parks and to national themes such as caves, night skies, and fossils. A child works through puzzles, drawings, and observation tasks, then gets sworn in and given a badge. The online themed booklets work from the kitchen table when a park visit is not happening. The page is a gateway, so follow its links to the booklet you want.

  License: United States government work, free to download and print. Individual photographs inside a booklet can carry their own credit line, so check an image before republishing it anywhere public.

• Core Knowledge History and Geography, Kindergarten units Free Creative Commons

  Full teacher guides and student read-alouds on topics including Native American groups, Columbus and the Pilgrims, kings and queens, presidents and American symbols, and seasons and weather. Written for classrooms, but the read-aloud scripts work without changes at a kitchen table.

  License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Verified in the license page printed inside the PDFs. Three conditions, and the third one matters most: you must attribute Core Knowledge in the wording they specify, you may not use it commercially, and anything you build on it must be released under the same or a similar license. That ShareAlike term travels to your derivative work. Core Knowledge also asks that you not extract images out of the PDFs for other uses, because those images are licensed to them separately.

• Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse sets Free See terms

  Batches of images the Library has grouped by theme, such as baseball, dogs, travel posters, and presidential portraits. Good for a five-year-old looking at real photographs of the past instead of drawings of it. The set on display rotates.

  License: Selected because the Library knows of no copyright restrictions on them, and the page carries a United States Government Work rights tag. Read the rights statement on an individual item before reusing it publicly, since the Library states rights per item.

• Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government, Apprentice level Free Public domain

  The Government Publishing Office's children's site. The Apprentice tier is built for ages 4 to 8 and covers national symbols, what a citizen is, and who is responsible for what, in language a kindergartner follows while you read it aloud.

  License: United States government work, public domain.

• Bluebonnet Learning K-5 reading materials (Texas Education Agency) Free Creative Commons

  Texas built its own reading curriculum, and the read-aloud strands carry a large amount of history and geography knowledge inside them. It is a reading program and not a social studies course, but the knowledge-building domains cover a good deal of the same ground at no cost. Spanish versions exist for the K-5 subjects.

  License: State open educational resource. Digital access is free to educators, campuses, and individuals, and TEA describes the materials as OER. It is not a Creative Commons license you will already recognize, so read the portal's own terms before reproducing anything.

Paid programs, honestly

Nothing here is required. These are the programs families most often ask about, with the real drawback of each one named rather than skipped.

• The Story of the World, Volume 1: Ancient Times (Well-Trained Mind Press) Paid The text is the cheaper half and the activity book costs noticeably more than the text. Publisher pricing could not be confirmed for this page, so check the current figure before budgeting.

  Good at: One short chapter a week, written to be read aloud, and the audiobook holds up in the car. Starting it in kindergarten as a listening habit costs very little and builds a chronological frame early.

  Drawback: Written for roughly grades one through four. A five-year-old gets nothing from the activity book, and the volume covers the ancient world only, so there is no American and no Texas content this year.

  Suits: A family that wants a read-aloud habit rather than a subject, and is willing to skip the activity book until next year.

• Blossom & Root Level 0 (Kindergarten) Paid Sold as digital levels through their store. Current pricing was not confirmed here, and they run periodic sales, so check before you buy.

  Good at: A gentle arts-and-nature year that a five-year-old enjoys, heavy on picture books and hands-on work rather than seatwork. The publisher describes itself plainly as secular, and samples are available to download before you spend anything.

  Drawback: Thin on civics, government, and formal geography, and it does not follow the Texas sequence. You will still teach flags, symbols, and Texas separately.

  Suits: A secular family that wants a warm, low-pressure kindergarten and is content to add the civics strand themselves.

• Torchlight Level PreK and K Paid Sold as digital levels. Current pricing not confirmed; check the publisher.

  Good at: Literature-driven, secular, and deliberately global in what it puts in front of a child. Strong on world cultures and on introducing people a standard American sequence leaves out.

  Drawback: It carries a clear progressive point of view and says so openly. The book list is long and library-dependent, and some titles are hard to get hold of. No alignment with the Texas sequence.

  Suits: A secular family that wants a wide view of the world early and has a strong library or a book budget.

• Core Knowledge History and Geography printed sets Paid Varies by unit and by whether you buy a single student book or a full grade-level set. Check current pricing at the source.

  Good at: The same content as the free PDFs above, bound and printed. Core Knowledge sells student books, teacher guides, and grade-level sets. If you have run the numbers on printing several hundred pages at home, buying the books often wins on both cost and durability.

  Drawback: You are paying for paper, since the content is free to download. Written for classrooms, so a teacher guide assumes a group and you will ignore parts of it.

  Suits: A parent who wants Core Knowledge but does not want to run a home print shop.

• Little Passports, World Adventures Paid About $25 to $32 a month depending on plan length, plus optional book add-ons. Verified from the publisher, but subscription pricing changes often.

  Good at: A package arrives in the mail with the child's name on it, and at that age the arrival matters more than the contents. It gets a globe out and a country talked about every month with no planning from you.

  Drawback: Two things worth knowing before you subscribe. It is built for ages 6 to 10, so a kindergartner sits below the target age and will need you alongside him for most of it. And it costs more than the ads suggest: the month-to-month plan runs about $32 a month, the six-month plan about $27, and the twelve-month plan about $25. A year of it costs more than most complete curricula and teaches less. The product has also been renamed from World Edition to World Adventures, so older reviews describe a different package.

  Suits: Honestly, not kindergarten. Hold it until six or seven, when the child is inside the intended age band and can work the journal himself.

Prices are approximate and change often. Check with the publisher before you buy. We describe and link to these programs; none of their material is hosted here.

What a week looks like

1. Two read-alouds a week from a Core Knowledge kindergarten unit, ten minutes each.
2. One walk with a purpose: a historical marker, the post office, the fire station, a cemetery. Talk about who was here before.
3. One map activity. Draw the yard, draw the route to the store, find Texas on a globe.
4. Flag, pledge, and one symbol or holiday, a few minutes at a time rather than a lesson.
5. One Junior Ranger page or one Ben's Guide Apprentice activity, only if he is enjoying it.

Practice it here, free

These rooms on this site cover part of the year's work. No sign-up, and they work offline.

• know — The continents topic covers the K geography strand. Seasons and day and night support the time-and-change strand.
• map — Map reading and directions, which supports the K map skills the TEKS ask for.
• order — Sequencing, which is the same skill as putting past, present, and future in order.
• stories — Read-along stamina, which is what a history read-aloud year actually runs on.

The rest of kindergarten