A Gentle Beginning

When starting out on this adventure of homeschooling I read many books about homeschooling. I subscribed to various catalogs and message boards and consumed all the wonderful  bits of advice that came from those pioneering families before me. Junebug started reading on her own at age 3.5. As a master's degree holding English major, this was a delight to me. We could read together and while away many a happy hour in the library or on the couch. Given our shared love of reading, I wanted a literature-based curriculum to begin our journey. I don't remember how I came across Five in a Row (FIAR), but it fit the bill perfectly.  We used FIAR for her pre-K year. It was fun and easy to do with her and a new baby in the house.

Five in a Row is a unit study type curriculum. Each week I would prepare a list of five activities from the FIAR book that we would do based on a classic children's story, one from each category: Social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Math and Science. There are several activities under each category, so it is easy to choose which would be most appealing for you and your child. I also made notes of the keywords for each topic. (I think there was an online chart/file that listed the subjects for each book along with a corresponding character study. If I still have the file, it would be on a computer back-up disc...somewhere!) I would then look up these keywords on the online card catalog and make a list of "go along" books to supplement our lessons. Armed with my notebook and lists, we would go to the library, walking if the weather were nice, enjoy some stories and social time with other families, gather our bag of books for the week and head home to snuggle on the couch, do crafts projects (usually during nap time) and explore the world.

Sample FIAR page from the notebook

In addition to library books, I extensively utilized Enchanted Learning for supplementing our lessons with printable books, diagrams and maps for each story. In addition to these maps, we used the story discs from the back of the  FIAR book. The story discs are pictures related to the story that you can copy, color, laminate and cut out for map work. We used velcro dots to adhere the disc to the proper location on a U.S. or World Map. Each day of the week, I would hand Junebug the story disc and she would have to locate the proper location for the story. The maps were hung up in her room so she had plenty of opportunity to look at them. Every once in a while we would remove the discs from the map and test ourselves to remember where each story disc should be placed.

One of the first books we read was Lentil by Robert McCloskey, a delightful story about a boy who loves music, but couldn't sing or whistle. He saves his money to buy a harmonica, teaches himself to play and ends up saving the day when the town sourpuss tries to ruin the homecoming of a local hero in a scheme that involves lemons. This is what we did:

Social Studies: Lentil is set in a small town in Ohio. We found Ohio on the map and placed the Lentil story disc there. I also helped her write the name OHIO for writing practice. She colored a picture of the state flag of Ohio from Enchanted Learning.

Language Arts: We talked about what makes for a good story: introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, resolution. (Yes, I realize she was four, but didn't I mention that I have a Master's in English?!) We then "wrote" a story together.

Art: I bought a cheap harmonica at a toy store and we listened to various music played on the harmonica, especially "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" which is featured in the book. The harmonica is actually a good musical "toy". It makes a pleasing sound and all of the children have enjoyed playing it.

Math: We made circles out of pla-doh and cut the circles into fractions.

Science: We read The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses by Joanna Cole and made a model of the mouth out of paper that I found online. We also tasted lemons and made lemonade.

While we used this curriculum for Junebug's PreK and later, very loosely, for Legoboy's K year, there are FIAR books that extend all the way to middle school appropriate chapter books. Many families use the books with a variety of age ranges and repeat the stories doing different activities each time. Many of the families who do FIAR also make lapbooks for each story that they read. This was another new concept to me. I liked the idea and we did a few of these. Here is the one from Lentil:

Lentil lapbook closed

Lentil lapbook opened

While I liked these, I found them to be too much "busy" work for us and they were quickly set aside. Instead I kept our work in a three-ringed binder with a section for each of the five topics. Looking back through the binder, I'm amazed at all that we did (and how organized I was.)

 

Overall, I really enjoyed the stories that we read using the FIAR curriculum. They introduced me to some wonderful children's authors who I had never heard of or had forgotten.  FIAR provided some structure to our days, gave us new experiences and ways of looking at other picture books. Junebug says that she remembers doing some of the books like Make Way for Ducklings and Peter Rabbit,and she recognized some of the crafts that she had done, but her memory of them was very vague. "It was six years ago!" she said as she turned back to her computer game.   I still recommend this curriculum to new homeschoolers, especially those who love to read and whose children love books. It is a gentle curriculum that is easy to use.