My 3rd grader is reading a lot of fiction,how do you introduce them to non fiction?We have friend who has a gifted son and one not so gifted.But she swears you can ask him anything about the civil war and he knows the answer.He also got the awards for reading the most books every year at school.

The easy way is to figure out what it is the child is interested in, then find them some material on that. You want to make sure the material is at their level, and interesting. Some top-notch illustration at this age is also quite helpful.

It also doesn't hurt if your DC sees you reading nonfiction, and if you can discuss what you're reading with them in an age-appropriate way.

She is almost 9 and reads every Rick Riordan book that's in Barnes and Noble.One being Percy Jackson's Greek Gods.She pointed out a passage in it to me,which just plain seemed to be for older kids.Her gifted teacher played a Percy Jackson movie in class.If that says anything about how she got interest in it.She recently asked about Harry Potter.She reads fast and is going to be through them in no time.There are numerous other titles laying around here she consumes in a day or so.She prefers them to be long as to keep her busier,she says.So far all I have done is ask her why doesn't she read nonfiction,instead of showing her.When do they ever start the history,government,and geography classes in gifted,for some nonfiction reading?

Atticcat, my DD10 is also a Percy Jackson addict. If you don't have it already, it's not nonfiction, but D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths is gorgeous and would probably appeal. It seems like a short step from there on to history.

Hi,thanks for the quick reply.That sounds like the author of the Greek Mythology book she has.We got it from amazon last year.I.heard someone today on PBS telling how their young gifted child was interested in Ancient Greek civilization.Not quite the same thing but had me going for a second there.

I leave nonfiction on the couch. We don't really have television, so anything there gets read.

We had it on the stairs, but that wasn't such a good idea. The breakfast table is another good spot to have an attractive book. Sometimes it's more about a book being there and interesting for a kid that's already a reader than it is to find the perfect book and put it on the shelf.

My DD's daily G/T English class has been doing historical fiction. Off the top of my head, I can recall they did one novel set in the 18th-century South Pacific (pirate/explorer/native exploitation themes), one in Nazi-occupied Denmark, and one in 1960s rural America. They also did a block on Greek mythology, where everyone had to choose a god and do a report. This has all been going on since around 1st grade. While discussing the literature, they get some historical context.

Her social studies is outside of the G/T offering, and it's a dog's breakfast. That's not a local problem, that's a national one. Depending on where you live in the US, your child might not see a social studies class worthy of the name until high school AP.

Some good stuff here:

http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

We liked "Monster Trucks" by Susan Goodman a lot and she is a contributor to INK I think.

Probably it depends on the school, but my kids always had to read age-appropriate nonfiction books at school, starting in K.
Your public library must have a huge selection of nonfiction books for different ages, you can choose whatever your DD likes.
Personally, I am a big fan of the following series
http://www.salariya.com/wouldnt/pages/wouldnt.html

Oooh, I like the ideas of leaving the books around on the couch and breakfast table. My DS7 will read nonfiction, but he doesn't go out of his way to seek it out.

Tangent question--do you limit fiction books based on content due to age? Specifically, I read aloud the first three Harry Potter books to him this summer. I refused to keep going to do darker themes and content, saying he would have to wait until he was at least 8 before reading book 4. But DS *desperately* wants me to keep reading. He really relates to Harry on a personal level. But I still worry about the fear factor, even though in some ways he is mature beyond his years.

What do you all think?
Siren

We had been "rationing" the Harry Potter books for maturity, but now DD10 has lost interest in reading them anyway. So I'm not sure that worked out very well overall.

Siren14: I think it depends entirely on the kid. My DD does not internalize fantastic violence. The more disconnected from reality the material is, the less it affects her. Other kids can't handle the drama of a Disney film.

ETA: At 4 years old, you're probably still trying to figure out how he's likely to react. It might not be a bad approach to keep going, and keep an eye on your DC is handling it, with occasional reinforcements that it's all make-believe.

In our home, we look to enforce controls on various media due to sexual content. So, for example, Harry Potter is fine, but the Dresden Files (basically, Harry Dresden is Harry Potter grown up and living in Chicago) are not. I found a Carl Hiassen book called "Hoot" written for children and bought it for DD, but she does not get to explore my collection of his other works.

I was going to ration HP, as well, but having just finished the last book myself, I've changed my mind and intend to discuss intensively as my DC go, instead. DS8 is in book 4 with no discomfort so far (& he's the sensitive one).

My DC love D'Aulaire's and it makes for a nice springboard into non-fiction about ancient Greece. Strewing the house with books on themes, like the ocean and space, has worked on my fiction fan, while historical fiction has had the same effect on my non-fiction fan.

Thank you for the feedback. I do think since I'm reading it aloud, that allows me to discuss anything difficult with him. I think I'll keep going with the series next summer (he'll be 7 1/2). I think it's good to "strike while the iron is hot" as far as interest in books. Right now we're reading Peter and the Starcatchers and both really enjoying that.

DS9 mostly reads fiction books (HP, Percy Jackson, and a lot of "Diary of a Middle School Dork" type books). I let him get whatever he wants from the library, but *I* get a lot of non-fiction from the library and leave it out. On the couch, on the floor of the den, sometimes just leaving it in the library bag to be discovered works. (My kids are too messy to read at the table, unfortunately.) I'd say he reads, or at least looks at, maybe a quarter of what I bring home. But even if it's only a single book a week, that's a win. Since we homeschool, I will occasionally ask him to read a specific non-fiction book related to what we are currently studying (e.g. a book about Mercury when we were doing a unit study on the Solar System). He is usually quite happy to do this, even if he wouldn't have picked up the book otherwise.

Our bright spot for non-fiction has really been magazines. The kids have subscriptions to several Cricket magazines (Appleseeds, Ask, and Odyssey), Boys Life, and Ranger Rick. We parents get a number of quality magazines, including American Scientist, Smithsonian, and Science News. Mostly DS doesn't read the parent magazines, but he devours the kid magazines. And he does see me and DH reading and talking about the parent magazines, which sets a good example.

DD read the first 5 Harry Potter books at home when she was 5 and 6, but I told her she'd have to wait until she was older before I'd let her have the rest. That lasted until she realized she could just check them out from the school library.

Anyhow, non-fiction -- we have a bunch of magazines as well as biographies, histories, science-related books, and... well, anything that seems interesting. DD will read pretty much anything that's left laying around. (When we moved, I put all the books not appropriate for <8 year olds in my bedroom to keep a closer eye on them.) You can start with things related to current interests: for Percy Jackson, I'd think anything about Greek mythology would be of interest.

The drama of many Disney films is IMO completely inappropriate for young children. I remember being devastated by the ending of Cap and Capper. I know adults my age who admit to still being traumatized by Bambi. And when I showed our kids their first Disney film ever, the lion king, I carefully edited out the whole wildebeest stampede and Mufasa's death - the scene where Simba finds his dead father and tries to wake him up I did not even want to look at myself. I told the kids roughly what happened, that I did not want them to watch the scenes because they were too intense and frightening and started up the video wat the point Pumbaa ant Timon come in. They enjoyed Hakuna Matata and did not ask for the missing scenes.

My brother and I were carried screaming out of our first movie-in-the-theater, because Cruella DeVille was going to make a coat out of puppies!