Five In A Row

   I said last week I'd do a quick post about this so here ya go.  We LOVE FIAR.  You can check it out here.  It basically takes great children's stories and you read them... five days in a row.  Hence the name.  Then each day you take a different subject and learn about it in context with the story.  So for example you'll read The Story About Ping and on the day you learn about geography it will give you all sorts of ideas of how to explore the Yangtze River in Asia.  It covers Geography, Social Studies, some math, Science, Art... on and on it goes but the great part is it's up to you to decide which subject you want to do which day and even within each subject there are several ideas.  My kids LOVED these and still have great memories of them.  They have Before Five In A Row for 2-4 year olds which we've done at times as well.  All the volumes are full of great books I may have never heard of without FIAR. Let's face it we all know young kids love the same story over and over again!  This is just adding purpose to it!  You add your own math and phonics/language to it and you're done.  They do have Beyond Five In A Row for ages 8-12 and I've looked into but for some reason never did it, I'm not sure why since we loved FIAR so much.  For me it feels like home.  Whenever schooling is going bad or I feel overwhelmed we pull out FIAR and breathe again.  You can use it as your whole curriculum or just bring it in when you feel like it as a unit study.  Looking through it this week I always marked the initials of the child I did it with and the date by each activity, I forget how little they were just a few years ago!  They have one volume for even older kids but that must not have been very popular because that's all they've had since way back when I started with Caleb.

  Like I said earlier, if you are thinking of homeschooling and are just starting, you're working with little ones before they start school or you want to continue learning while they're off for summer break, Five In A Row is a great tool.  It was the first thing recommended to me when I started homeschooling and I'm so glad it was.  They also have a holiday addition with books and ideas for holidays, a cookbook for recipes to go with various books and a Bible supplement to go with some (all?) volumes.  They have message boards online to help you and they'll ask you which volume you're "rowing" ;0)  Cute.

  There you have it... my glowing review of FIAR.  Check it out if you're looking for something that allows you to snuggle up with your kids and learn together.  We loved it and I think you will too.