Parents want their kids to do well in school, and Workman’s Big Fat Notebooks can give kids a hand in earning good grades. They’re a great add-on for middle schoolers who have textbooks, and a fantastic substitution if your kid doesn’t have textbooks.
I don’t know how it is in your local schools, but my daughters, in 1st and 7th grades, don’t have any textbooks. It’s not that they’ve switched to digital books on tablet computers. There are no textbooks…period.
If you already have kids in school who are in that situation, you know what this means. Schools have gotten rid of textbooks to cut costs, but at what cost to each student’s education?
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What’s the Problem With Not Having Textbooks?
Your children are entirely dependent on notes, handouts, and homework as learning materials. I’ve never minded taking notes at all. I took lots of notes when I was in school. But what about kids who hate to take notes or have trouble with note taking for some reason? It’s no wonder research shows that textbooks are important to a child’s education.
I never realized how hard it is for lefties to take notes until I had a left-handed child. Her hand wipes across the page where she’s writing, smearing the ink or pencil and getting it all over her hand. There’s no avoiding it.
What about kids who have trouble with note-taking due to physical or learning disabilities? I’m sure there are many other reasons that kids have trouble depending on handwritten notes for studying. Fortunately, Big Fat Notebooks provide the middle school textbooks your kids probably don’t have.
Big Fat Notebooks are marketed as the discarded notebooks of the smartest kid in class. They hit all the most likely topics from your child’s middle school curriculum in English language arts, world history, American history, math, and science. I’m not sure if Workman Publishing intends for Big Fat Notebooks to replace those missing middle school textbooks, but they sure seem to serve that purpose.
Better Than Textbooks
Your kids will benefit from Big Fat Notebooks even if they have regular textbooks. Rather than the dry, small-print paragraphs you’ll find in most school textbooks, Big Fat Notebooks are broken up with lots of callouts, headings, highlights, and graphics.
The authors even include mnemonics for help in remembering certain points. Each chapter ends with a quiz to help reinforce what your child just learned.
Kids will find engaging, fascinating information in each book. The material is well organized, with vibrant colors to highlight the most important points. I love the illustrations, which often look like something a tween might doodle in his or her book.
Powerful Resources for Parents
I’m so impressed with the Big Fat Notebooks that I’ve started reading them myself. They’ll be a great resource for me, since I haven’t been in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade for many years. I’m hoping these books will help me to help my daughter when she needs a hand with her homework or studying.
Subjects are taught very differently nowadays than they were back then, especially math. I’m totally lost when it comes to helping my daughter with math problems.
I did well in math classes when I was in school, but I’ve forgotten a lot, since I don’t use complex math on a day-to-day basis. Plus, the homework and school materials look absolutely nothing like what I had in school. I haven’t a clue what they’re trying to accomplish.
Sometimes, my daughter and I both know the answer, but we don’t know how to show the work in the right fashion, to satisfy the homework requirements. The Big Fat Notebook for math seems like it’ll give me a leg up on understanding these new ways of teaching math.
The Big Fat Notebooks
Everything You Need to Ace Science goes through biology, ecology, astronomy, chemistry, and physics. You’ll find notes on the solar system and outer space, the periodic table, and much more..
Everything You Need to Ace Math takes you through all the middle school math points, including multiplying and dividing decimals, fractions, ratios, percentages, proportions, statistics, probability, and geometry (including coordinating planes and functions).
Everything You Need to Ace Language Arts gets into all the nitty gritty of middle school English – analyzing text, sentence and paragraph structure, different types of writing, word origins, grammar, and parts of speech.
Everything You Need to Ace American History starts with the very first humans on the continent of North America and describes Native Americans, Colonial times, the Revolutionary War, westward expansion, the Civil War, the World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and all of the big events of our nation’s history, including the Iraq War.
Everything You Need to Ace World History is the one book I didn’t request a sample of (my mistake, since my daughter has world history again this year and American history next year). This book covers everything from the Paleolithic Era onward, including the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece, India, China, Rome, and Africa, plus the middle ages, the Renaissance, empire building, exploration, wars, and more.
As my daughter starts 7th grade, I’m really excited about the Big Fat Notebooks. I’m so glad to have them as part of her back to school toolkit.
I received sample Big Fat Notebooks in English language arts, math, science, and American history for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
How About You?
Do your kids have textbooks at school? How do you feel about schools getting rid of textbooks to save money?
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