Harper Collins Educational Books

In this review, we look at educational books for Key Stages 1-3 from Harper Collins. Can they make them fun enough to engage kids to learn outside of school? The Brats put them to the test...

In this day and age, and certainly in the area we previously lived in, learning outside of school was big business, and you were considered weird of you didn't have a Tutor for at least 3 days a week, even for Reception kids.

However, I'm more of a fan of the let kids be kids approach, so outside of school, and once home work is done, I prefer my children to pick up educational resources because they want to, not because they have been forced to. Thus far, this has worked wonderfully, and bot did very well in their statutory tests.

So, Harper Collins range of books and resources are just the thing that I like to have in the toy cupboard to engage their brains and let them take in knowledge without realising it.

Mini, especially, loves any form of book whatsoever, but hates being made to sit at a desk and study. Yet, put a kid friendly atlas in front of, her filled with information and images on places around the world, and she is happy to travel the world via its pages, picking up education as she goes without realising it.

We also loved the kid friendly dictionary and Thesaurus too, which are available depending on your child's age.  Rather than being like my trusty old dictionary, the print is big enough for little learners, and there are great illustrations which add to the ease of use.

Littlest, who is currently Home Educated, often has to go on train rides into London for hospital check ups, so this made the ideal time for him to listen to his French and Spanish CDs, which come with work books too. He isn't a fan of traditional reading to learn, preferring tech of any kind, even a basic old CD walkman. Afterwards, he was very happy to come home and show off the words he knew in a different language.



Harper Collins have certainly made "learning without lecturing" simple, and there is an ever growing range of resources for every Key Stage you can think of.

We certainly love them here!

You can find more from Harper Collins at their website, and the books are available online and offline at most retailers.