Learning to Row
Monday, July 5, 2010 at 8:42AM 
I'm so excited to start using Five in a Row this Fall with my five year old. This list of books for Volume 1 is very impressive:
The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
Lentil by Robert McCloskey
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno
The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills
Who Owns the Sun? by Stacy Chbosky
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
The Glorious Flight by Alice and Martin Provensen
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say
Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk
Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley
Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews
The Clown of God by Tomie DePaola
Storm in the Night by Mary Stoltz
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
(with illustrations by Susan Jeffers)
With Five in a Row you read your child the book for the week (in its entirety) each day, hence "five in a row". The teacher's manual offers lessons for language arts, science, history, geography, and math. I've read through the first few titles and their lessons and it just looks like so much fun. The creators of Five in a Row have a suggested lesson plan in the back of each manual, or you can just choose to do the books on your own time frame. I think we will stick with the suggested time frame since this is one of the largest parts of our curriculum this year.
One of my favorite features are the story discs you can copy and laminate from the back of the book and use these discs (one for each book) to affix to your world map. Or, you can purchase them already in color and laminated from Five in a Row. Many of the homeschool sites offer free lapbook templates for FIAR stories. So, maybe I will be able to pull additional activities from the web. At first, however, I will stick pretty close to the teacher's manual just to keep it simple.
One of the very first books is "The Story About Ping" by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese.
It takes place in China along the Yangtze river. Rowing this book will be especially meaningful for our family because we are close friends with a family who will be returning to China in August to adopt their second child. We have followed their first adoption journey to China and I can't wait to meet baby #2, and also for my children to learn through our FIAR story and my friend's blogging while she is in China!
It is my hope to post while we row and share our journey with these beautiful books!
Reader Comments (2)
I used 5 in a Row Volumes 1,2, and 3 with my boys over a two year period, and we LOVED it! www.homeschoolshare.com has a ton of different activities to go along with each story and is a great resource to use. Have fun!
I will have to agree! I hope you enjoy your next couple of years with FIAR as much as we have. Just finished up our second year w/it and it has been awesome. We did volumes 1-3 as well and I love the homeschoolshare.com site as well. As you go on a little bit do try some of their lapbooks that go along w/the FIAR books. They are so easy to do and add such another great level of learning. My only small complaint with FIAR is how weak the math component is in there. We added on Math U See (MUS) and have loved that tremedously as well. Looking back over the list of titles from that vol 1 is bringing back some VERY fond memories of our first year of homeschooling. Those are some great books and will pray for God's blessings on you all as you start this exciting new adventure and have some wonderful times learning together about this homeschool journey you all are on! Congrats and best wishes.
Yours and His,
Alison Staggs