Preschool and Elementary Age Child Development Texts

August 3, 2014 8:24 PM

I need preschooler and elementary-student child development texts for the lay reader/parent. Help me, MetaFilter!

I have a lot of great books about infant and toddler care and development, but as my kids have grown a little bit more into the preschool and elementary school years, I find I understand far less about their development as I have run out of books. What are really great books to read about kids' development in the preschool and elementary school years?

posted by Eyebrows McGee to Education (7 answers total)

The best ones I knew of when my girls were series by Louise Bates Ames and Frances L. Ilg- Your Four Year Old, etc. They were a bit outdated even when my girls were little, but the overall concepts hold true. NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is a good, more recent one as is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck- those last two I read for the work I do as a school librarian, but they have good info for parents too.
posted by momochan at 8:30 PM on August 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Whole Brain Child covers isn't age specific but is particularly good for elementary school ages in my opinion. It's fantastic.
posted by medusa at 8:54 PM on August 3, 2014

This isn't a book so I apologize if it isn't what you're looking for, but the Child Development guide from PBS has a pretty interesting year by year guide to development, through age 9. It focuses on cognitive/academic development, but it covers some physical and emotional milestones as well.
posted by MadamM at 9:38 PM on August 3, 2014

Response by poster: Not-books are also fine!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:29 PM on August 3, 2014

If you liked the Vygotsky stuff in Nurtureshock, I thought Tools of the Mind was a good book for some practical approaches for implementing some of the concepts.
posted by mgogol at 7:25 AM on August 4, 2014

I have been enjoying reading What Kids Want Us to Know which is a blog by a child psychologist. My kid is still a crawler, so I'm not to the stage of implementing any of those ideas yet, but the blog posts are pretty good food for thought.
posted by jillithd at 7:35 AM on August 4, 2014

Here's a link to that blog's posts tagged for Preschool/Nursery School here.
posted by jillithd at 7:36 AM on August 4, 2014