Our Latest Five In Row: Mrs. Katz & Tush

We haven't rowed a book in a while.  

I don't consider us experts on Five in a Row, but we have rowed quite a few of the books. 

My oldest (11) seems to not appreciate it as much anymore, and I let that stop us from rowing books last semester.

Over the Christmas break I asked my 8 year old what HE wanted to do in school in 2013.   He said "I miss Five in a Row".  

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Beyond Five In A Row: Thomas Edison

We love Five in a Row.   Have you seen all of the books we have rowed so far?  I have had Beyond Five In a Row sitting on my shelf for the past year and decided we would delve into this summer.   I had plans of doing all of the activities and lapbooking elements, but with the way our summer is working out, I decided to just READ the book we had chosen aloud and pull out a few good activities from the manual.    That was a GOOD DECISION, especially since I was doing this with a six and nine year old.  

The book we chose was Thomas Edison, Young Inventor.   As we read through each chapter (usually at lunch each day) I would read a little bit from the teacher's guide as well.  Some of the things we learned:
 

 Thomas Edison was homeschooled from a young age... his mother set up a laboratory for him in their basement.

Tom's questioning was essential - my children learned that asking questions is good!

Thomas Edison published a newspaper at a young age and worked with the telegraph.  He was a Morse Code expert.

Thomas Edison is so much MORE than the inventor of the light bulb!  

I would highly recommend purchasing (or obtaining from the library) the FIAR manual!  It has so many valuable cross curricular ideas and bits of information I had not even thought about.   I cannot tell you how much I learned about Edison in this study!  

Homeschool Share has some wonderful lapbook pieces for this if you are going to spend a lot of time on Thomas Edison.   Our goal this summer was just to expose the children to good books and lots of reading -- I tried to keep things simple so we eliminated paper and projects!  

Next up for us in Beyond FIAR:  Betsy Ross, Designer of our Flag! 

What Will Summer Schooling REALLY Look Like?

Looks like the summer has started in earnest.   I took some time recently to sit down and REALISTICALLY plan for our summer schooling... I want to school through the summer (so we can take more breaks during the year!), but I don't want my children to miss the summer activities they love so much.  

Each year my children have taken swimming lessons and this year is no exception.  Our swimming teacher is so good that we schedule our summer around the lessons.  GMan takes a general swim class, and Miss B participates in a synchronized swimming team - very cool!    The lessons are twice each week (smack dab in the middle of the day), so that's a total of four hours a week... spread that out over the week and include drive time, etc... that's a time commitment, but SO WORTH IT in my book.   I love this picture from last year's finale - the kids with their teacher. 

 
The benefits of these lessons include:

• discipline
• exercise
• listening skills (LOTS of them for synchronized swimming teams!)
• friendships and team work
• the HUGE sense of accomplishment that comes through perfecting a skill

We are helping coordinate a small Bible School through our church, which consists of five Wednesday mornings - each day being a different journey of the Apostle Paul.   This is something I definitely don't want my children to miss!   Miss B is attending a Vacation Bible School with a friend one week, and all of us will be participating in a Fine Arts camp for a week in July, so I need to stay flexible and we'll accomplish what is possible.   This is the first summer I've homeschooled, so we'll see how everything goes.  

I know we will try to get in Math and Grammar on a daily basis, and I've been debating if we should keep going with Story of The World, but I think we will break from history until August rolls around.  Our history studies can get quite involved, and I just don't think we'd have the time to devote to them throughout the summer.  




I've decided instead to use all of the Five in a Row resources we have here at home.  A friend of mine gave me several teacher's guides and books and the material is just wonderful.    For GMan we will finish up a few books in Volume 1 of Five in a Row, and for Miss B we are working through Beyond Five in a Row.    I'm printing the lapbooking components for each study from Homeschool Share and think this will be a great way to keep us reading and learning and having FUN this summer.  

Of course we'll also continue read-alouds... first off are The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright and  On My Way by Tomie DePaola. 


Do you school during the summer?  What does your schedule look like?