
Fifth Grade
Fifth grade is the last year before middle school, and the best year to find out what your child can do alone. The workbooks on this shelf carry the basics; the novels are where the year actually happens. A fifth grader who reads Hatchet and then goes looking for Brian's Winter on their own has told you everything you need to know about next year.
How to use it: thirty minutes of math, thirty of language arts, science and social studies on alternate days, four days a week. Use the fifth day for a project or a long read. Pick one math book and finish it.
The whole year in one place: The Whole Year: 5th Grade.
Shop our Fifth Grade products below
Ant Story: A Graphic Novel
- Life Science
- Environment & Ecology
- Comics / Graphic Narrative
Why it works: Ant Story follows Rubi through a graphic-novel journey that uncovers the mystery and wonder of an ant-sized world. Colony behavior, insect scale, and environmental hazards determine what Rubi can notice and survive, so the ant science is embedded in panel-by-panel discovery.
The Way of the Hive: A Honey Bee's Story, a Graphic Novel
- Life Science
- Environment & Ecology
- Comics / Graphic Narrative
Why it works: The Way of the Hive gives newly emerged honeybee Nyuki questions about metamorphosis, queens, honey, work, predators, and the inner drive to leave the colony. Her lifelong coming-of-age journey makes each age-linked hive role and risky flight a stage in becoming an experienced worker bee.
Super Space Encyclopedia: The Furthest, Largest, Most Spectacular Features of Our Universe
Knowledge Encyclopedia Plants and Fungi!: Our Growing World as You've Never Seen It Before
Knowledge Encyclopedia Animal!: The Animal Kingdom as You've Never Seen It Before
Science Comics: Rocks and Minerals: Geology from Caverns to the Cosmos
- Earth Science
- Comics / Graphic Narrative
Why it works: Science Comics: Rocks and Minerals pairs a crystal-obsessed fan with a famous rock hunter for a journey from a volcano summit into Earth's interior and out to meteorites in space. Their expedition turns composition, crystal properties, and planet-shaping processes into clues about where each specimen came from.
Science Comics: Spiders: Worldwide Webs
- Life Science
- Environment & Ecology
- Comics / Graphic Narrative
Why it works: Science Comics: Spiders recruits a sister and brother to help a talking spider find her missing child across habitats from a backyard to the Australian Outback. Each encounter uses a new spider's body, web, behavior, and ecological job to overturn the travelers' fear and move the global search forward.

