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Planning your school year? Start with the Sequence and build with confidence.
The Core Knowledge Sequence is a free, grade-by-grade map of exactly what your child will learn across every subject. No guessing if you`re covering enough. No building a plan from scratch.
Whether you`re using CKLA, CKHG, or building your own approach, the Sequence is the framework that ties it all together.
You don`t need forty tabs open to plan a school year. You need one document that`s already done for you.
Tap the link in our bio to see your grade`s full scope and sequence.
No schedule. No worksheets. Just fifteen minutes and a good story. 📖
Meet Amy, part of the Core Knowledge team, and her kids Coleson (11) and Kayla (7). This summer they`ve been reading together most days, no plan required, just titles from the Core Knowledge Free Library.
One favorite moment: after visiting an old mining town in Georgia, the family picked up "The Gold Rush" from our Adventures in History series and the trip suddenly meant a whole lot more.
You don`t need a plan or a schedule, just fifteen minutes and a device. The Core Knowledge Free Library is free, always open, and full of stories worth reading, whether your child curls up with a tablet in a reading fort or settles in at the kitchen table with an older sibling.
✨ Tap the link in our bio to read Amy`s full story and find your own family`s next read.
Back-to-school is around the corner. If fall planning is starting to creep into your thoughts, here`s the shortcut.
Whether you`re a teacher setting up your classroom or a homeschool mom mapping the year, you don`t have to build it from scratch.
Core Knowledge offers free, ready-to-go K-8 curriculum for every subject:
🔹 CKLA: knowledge-building literacy grounded in the Science of Reading (ELA)
🔹 CKHG: coherent, cumulative history and geography
🔹 CKSci: hands-on science with digital engagements
🔹 CKVA + CKMusic: free arts programs that take five minutes and zero prep
👉 The Core Knowledge Sequence: the grade-by-grade framework that ties it all together, K-8.
A whole year of learning that actually builds.
The planning you do this month is the reason September feels ready instead of rushed.
Start planning at the link in bio.
Dr. Hirsch wrote this for the CK Core Classics edition of The Iliad and the Odyssey, years before Christopher Nolan turned it into the biggest movie of the summer.
The story is 3,000 years old and still landing.
Hospitality as a moral code. The cost of getting home. What it means to live a life worth remembering. These aren`t just plot points. They`re ideas young readers carry with them.
Use this moment to explore the everlasting themes of the Odyssey with your kid.
👉 Download the Core Classics edition, written for young readers, at the link in bio.
Homeschool summer reading: 3 free read-alouds that take your kids on an adventure. Where will they go? 🌎
Reading takes you somewhere. This summer, let it.
📖 K–3: Harriet Tubman: The Day of Jubilee
Where will you go? The Underground Railroad. A story of courage that starts in the fields of Maryland and doesn`t stop until everyone is free.
📖 4–5: Leonardo da Vinci: The Genius of Wonder
Where will you go? Renaissance Italy. From Florence to Milan, one relentlessly curious mind inventing the future.
📖 6–8: Marie Curie: The Invention of Knowledge
Where will you go? A Paris laboratory. From Warsaw to two Nobel Prizes, chasing what no one else could see.
Every title is a free Voices in History biography in the Core Knowledge Free Library. Keep kids hooked on the plot this summer while building the background knowledge they`ll carry into the fall.
Find their next favorite read 👉 link in bio.
You probably won’t watch Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with your kid, but you can still go on an epic adventure to meet Odysseus, outsmart the Cyclops, and escape Circe’s island on their own.
Our free CKLA Core Classics edition of The Iliad and the Odyssey is written for young readers and faithful to Homer. Three ideas from the story they’ll carry with them long after the movie hype fades.
As Dr. E.D. Hirsch says in the Introduction, “In some ways the Iliad and the Odyssey may seem as familiar as today’s blockbuster movies, but in other ways they are strange and unfamiliar.”
📚 Tap the link in our bio to start reading tonight. Find the free download on the Core Classics link.
Mapping out 7th-grade CKLA for homeschool? Here are 5 read-alouds your middle schooler will actually finish 📚
These are the fiction, drama, and biography titles from the Core Knowledge Sequence, and every one is a free digital read:
Core Classics Series:
📖 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
📖 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
📖 The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Voices in History biography available on the CK Free Library:
📖 Benjamin Franklin: Let the Experiment Be Made
📖 Helen Keller: A New Doorway for the Human Spirit
Classic literature like this builds the background knowledge that makes every other subject click, and gives your 7th grader books actually worth talking about.
📌 Save this for your planning week.
Ever notice how a kid can sound out every word perfectly and still have no idea what they just read?
Cognitive scientist Dr. Daniel Willingham (also a Core Knowledge board member!) digs into why on a new podcast episode: comprehension depends heavily on what a reader already knows about the world, not just their phonics skills.
The classic example: give two readers the same passage about a baseball game. The one who knows the sport understands it. The one who doesn`t can pronounce every word and still couldn’t tell you what happened on the field. That`s the difference background knowledge makes. That’s why we do what we do at Core Knowledge.
Full conversation linked in bio. 🎧
Free homeschool music curriculum — no instruments, no lesson plans, just 5 minutes of listening a day.
You`ve probably already built a daily reading habit. Music works the same way.
Play one piece during your morning startup. Ask: what do you notice? That`s it. No prep, no special tools. Just listen.
Over time, your child starts recognizing patterns, placing pieces in history, and building a vocabulary for something they`ll carry their whole life.
Core Knowledge Music (CKMusic) is a free K–8 program with listening guides and grade-by-grade lessons that turn those five minutes into something cumulative.
This summer, add it to the morning. It`s the lowest-effort enrichment habit you`ll ever start, and it compounds the same way reading does.
Explore the free music guides and start tomorrow. 👉 Link in bio.
Four states, four completely different stories. Homeschool moms, take a field trip across 4 states without leaving home with free state history curricula from Core Knowledge.
You don`t have to live in Arizona to learn from its history. Every state tells a different chapter of the American story, and exploring what makes each one different is exactly the point.
CK In Your State History units tell the story of what makes America unique and how it connects to the bigger picture. Every unit is a complete, all-in-one package with no extra research.
Now available:
🌵 Arizona: Grade 3
🏔️ Colorado: Grade 4
🌊 Minnesota: Grade 6
✈️ North Carolina: Grades 4 & 8
The diversity of each state`s history is the field trip. A chance to explore the real breadth of our nation`s history, from anywhere.
Share this with a homeschool friend and choose a state to discover together.
Historical fiction for kids hits different when the main character is a kid, too. 📚
Adventures in History is full of young protagonists who walked through some of history`s most pivotal moments. Your kids won`t just read about these events. They`ll meet someone who lived them.
Eleven titles. Eleven fictional heroes. And as always: completely free at the Core Knowledge Free Library.
When kids see history through the eyes of someone who lived it, they don`t just remember the event; they feel why it mattered. That empathy is the foundation of deep, lasting knowledge.
✨ Tap the link in our bio to meet them all and pick tonight`s read-aloud.
It`s the middle of the afternoon. Summer break. Your kids are checked out, and the screen time is winning. Reset the day with a zero-prep art lesson.
Try this: pull up one painting. Just one. Ask one question: "What do you notice first?"
Then wait.
Someone spots the colors. Someone else notices a face in the background. Suddenly, they`re talking, pointing, and disagreeing about what`s happening in the scene. The tension breaks. Nobody planned this. Nobody prepped it. It just worked.
That`s Core Knowledge Visual Arts — a free K–8 curriculum where every painting comes with a ready-made prompt, so you never have to figure out what to ask. Just open, pick an artwork, and let the conversation happen.
Art isn`t an extra subject to squeeze in. It`s the fastest attention reset in your day.
📌 Save this for this week`s afternoon reset.
Dr. Hirsch wrote this for the CK Core Classics edition of The Iliad and the Odyssey, years before Christopher Nolan turned it into the biggest movie of the summer.
The story is 3,000 years old and still landing.
Hospitality as a moral code. The cost of getting home. What it means to live a life worth remembering. These aren't just plot points. They're ideas young readers carry with them.
Use this moment to explore the everlasting themes of the Odyssey with your kid
👉 Download the Core Classics edition, written for young readers: www.coreknowledge.org/free-resource/ckla-unit-4-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey-and-other-greek-stories/
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Ever notice how a kid can sound out every word perfectly and still have no idea what they just read?
Cognitive scientist Dr. Daniel Willingham (also a Core Knowledge board member!) digs into why on a new podcast episode: comprehension depends heavily on what a reader already knows about the world, not just their phonics skills.
The classic example: give two readers the same passage about a baseball game. The one who knows the sport understands it. The one who doesn't can pronounce every word and still couldn’t tell you what happened on the field.
That's the difference background knowledge makes. That’s why we do what we do at Core Knowledge.
0 CommentsComment on Facebook
History isn’t a stack of dates. It’s a story told through specific people doing specific things at specific moments.
Take Elizabeth Freeman. In 1781, she sued for her freedom in a Massachusetts courtroom and won.
Her case helped end slavery in the state decades before the Civil War.
Or the War of 1812, a conflict most adults vaguely remember, but one that shaped American sovereignty, the national anthem, and the country that emerged from it.
When kids study these specific stories, through the Voices in History biographies and the CKHG curriculum, they don’t just memorize.
They understand.
That’s what knowledge-building actually looks like.
Explore the CKHG history curriculum and Voices in History biographies: www.coreknowledge.org/download-free-curriculum/
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