Core Knowledge Foundation

WANTED: More Sir Gus Stories. ⚔️

Micah, this is for you.

While there aren't new Sir Gus stories (yet), this is the perfect excuse to make sure every second grader who hasn't met him gets the chance.

New to Sir Gus? Micah highly recommends it. Download for free: https://www.coreknowledge.org/free-resource/ckla-unit-5-second-grade-skills-sir-gus/

School Spotlight 🌟 Liberty Common School, Fort Collins, CO

For more than 25 years, Liberty Common has been showing what’s possible when a school commits, really commits, to a coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum from kindergarten on up.

As a Core Knowledge School of Distinction, Liberty Common builds its K–12 instruction around the Core Knowledge Sequence. The result?

One of Colorado’s top-performing charter schools, year after year, with graduates heading off to college genuinely prepared.

Their secret isn’t a secret at all: students at every grade level share content, vocabulary, and expectations. Knowledge compounds.

Confidence grows. Curiosity follows.

Read more about Liberty Common and what knowledge-building looks like in practice: https://www.coreknowledge.org/liberty-common-school/

Juneteenth is a chance to teach freedom not as a date, but as a story full of remarkable people.

Three Voices in History biographies your kids can read this week:

🔹 Harriet Tubman: The woman who returned to slavery, again and again, to lead others to freedom

🔹 Booker T. Washington: He was born enslaved but left a legacy by building the Tuskegee Institute

🔹 Elizabeth Freeman: Her 1781 lawsuit helped end slavery in Massachusetts decades before the Civil War

These are story-driven, beautifully written biographies that build the kind of empathy and understanding that lasts long after June 19.

All three are free on the CK Free Library. Grab the link in the comments below.

Greek mythology is having a moment, and your kids are surrounded by it.

Percy Jackson. Hadestown. Disney's Hercules. Video games. The names of every planet. Books they haven't even read yet.

The kids who know the original myths are the ones who catch every reference, get every joke, and understand why these stories keep coming back across generations. Knowing the Odyssey is like having a master key to so much of the storytelling kids encounter every day.

This summer, give your child the original story behind 3,000 years of retellings with the Core Classics adaptation of The Iliad and the Odyssey, written for K–8 readers.

Sea monsters. Sirens. A 10-year journey home. All the adventure, all the heroes, all the myths — in language kids can actually read.

Grab Core Classics The Iliad and the Odyssey and keep the learning going this summer: https://www.coreknowledge.org/free-resource/core-classics-series/

Five summer reads for upper elementary that build knowledge AND keep kids genuinely hooked. 📚

Hand-picked from Core Classics and the Core Knowledge Free Library, perfect for 4th and 5th graders:

📖 The Iliad and the Odyssey (Core Classics): Homer’s epic, beautifully adapted

📖 Trail of Tears: Walking the Narrow Path, a story-driven historical narrative

📖 Marie Curie: The Invention of Knowledge, the woman who reshaped science

📖 Booker T. Washington: Turning Nothing Good into Something Fine, courage and resilience

📖 From Latin America and the Caribbean: A Collection of Tales, global folktales kids will reread

All five are free, knowledge-rich, and the kind of books that quietly build the background knowledge they’ll bring into next year.

Build your 4th and 5th grader’s summer reading list at coreknowledgefreelibrary.org

Middle schoolers don’t need a summer reading slump. They need a summer reading list. 📚

Five free titles to throw on the summer pile, hand-picked from the Core Classics series and Core Knowledge Free Library:

📖 Thomas Edison: How a Boy Who Learned Differently Changed the World

📖 Treasure Island: pirates, mutiny, buried gold

📖 The Gilded Age: Stone by Stone

📖 A Midsummer Night’s Dream

📖 The Tang Dynasty: The Prophecy of Empress Wu

Cultural literacy. Genuine page-turners. Zero cost.

Build your middle schooler’s summer list at coreknowledge.org/free-resource/core-classics-series and coreknowledgefreelibrary.org

Dr. Looney's words point to something every Core Knowledge teacher already knows: a shared body of knowledge changes what's possible in a classroom, and the teachers are the ones who make it real.

The Core Knowledge vision lives, not on a page, but in the hands of the educators who teach it every day.

Teachers using Core Knowledge are giving their students more than content. They're giving them:

🔹 The vocabulary to understand what they read

🔹 The historical context to make sense of the world

🔹 The cultural touchstones that open doors to deeper learning

🔹 The confidence that comes from knowing things

That's a vision that lives one classroom and one student at a time.

“After spending over $5,000 on a curriculum that just didn’t work for us, this curriculum is a total lifesaver. 💛”

We received this message from a homeschool mom recently, and we wanted to share what she had to say:

“I’m teaching a child with autism, and it’s incredibly helpful to have both the struggling learners and advanced choices when teaching. The teacher resources make it seamless to explain and help him meet his needs where he’s at.

Everything is incredibly easy to understand even without a teaching degree. This curriculum means the absolute world to us right now. Thank you immensely!”

This is exactly why we make our curriculum free, so every family, every teacher, every kid can access knowledge-rich learning, no matter their circumstances.

To this family and every homeschool parent doing the work: thank you for trusting us.

Explore the free Core Knowledge curriculum: coreknowledge.org

The countdown is on. Just over a month until the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Whether you’re prepping classroom lessons or planning a hands-on July 4th week with your kids at home, our free Declaration of Independence activities are made to make this moment unforgettable.

Inside each grade-band unit:

🇺🇸 Grades K–2: Design a birthday card for America that honors the Declaration as a key symbol

🇺🇸 Grades 3–6: Try the “spaghetti tension” activity to feel the historical breaking point, then turn the Declaration’s words into blackout poetry

🇺🇸 Grades 7–8: Trace how the Declaration’s ideals inspired movements in France, Haiti, and Vietnam

Zero prep. Full lesson plans included.

Download all the free activities and start planning: https://www.coreknowledge.org/declaration-of-independence-activities/

"Federico was spying for the Union army. But he wasn't perched on a tree limb or lying flat on a hilltop. He was balancing inside a wicker basket hundreds of feet in the air."

Meet Federico Fernández Cavada, a true testament to Caribbean American Heritage Month. Born in Cuba and raised in Philadelphia, Federico's artistic talents led to his assignment to the Hot Air Balloon Unit of the Union Army to sketch enemy movements.

But his fight for freedom didn't end there. Federico later returned to Cuba as a general in the fight for independence from Spain.

One incredible life. A whole world of history packed into one unforgettable story: "Federico Fernández Cavada: The Spy in the Hot-Air Balloon," a Voices in History biography.

📌 Save this read-aloud for your next history lesson. Grab the link in the comments below.