Kindergarten Readiness

There's a bit of a surprise to this book, which may or may not serve your purposes. If your kids might benefit from knowing that not just kids, but teachers, too, get nervous about starting school, then this is your book. The illustrations are lively.

This story, which follows Pete as he discovers the varied parts of his school, has a similar message to other Pete the Cat books: No matter what comes your way, keep grooving on "because it's all good."

Both the praise and complaints for these early Kumon workbooks seems to run in the same vein: They offer lots of repetition. I found this one about numbers to be just right for teaching my 6-year-olds to form the numerals. Most of our number-sense learning was done with manipulatives, as it should be at this age, but the workbook also helped by reinforcing ordering and counting skills.