Feeling Guilty - A Before FIAR question

[Nart]

So I am feeling guilty because last night my husband went on about how much time I am spending with our 4 year since I began teaching short reading and math lessons (100 EZ lessons and MEP Reception with RS A) while leaving out our 2 1/2 year old. I tend to give little brother to dad in the evening or weekends for 30 minutes and then big brother and I go into another room to do the lessons. Big brother is so excited and then tells little brother what fun he had just with mom.

 

So my husband is pleased about big brother's progress but asked me to find some "little lessons" I could do with little brother to make him feel special since little brother asks to do lessons too (he yells, my turn momma! I want to do reading too!). I know I could read to him or play trains with him alone but it sometimes doesn't get done. I thought a program like Before Five In A Row might be nice but I am a little confused about the program. I tried to look up information but there is almost too much information and a lot of it might make more sense if I understood the program.

 

I plan on buying the Before FIAR book, looking to see what books we have at home, what books the library has, and what books might be nice to buy? Do you have to do the books in order? What else should I buy if I am not crafty or super imaginative? I see that there are lap books? I saw some picture of some on-line and see that FIAR sells Fold and Learn material for some of the before FIAR books and other websites have other ideas. Does this mean the Before FIAR book doesn't have all the ideas that you need in it? Do you need to supplement? If there are some cool things to buy I want to do it now while my husband is encouraging me to get something for our little one. Any advice would be appreciated.

Jen

[blondeviolin]

I just got B4FIAR and haven't actually used it. But, I can say A LOT of it can be done conversationally. Glyph can add as much or as little as you like. With a 2.5yo, you could also just do some special crafts and call it "school". My 3yo loves to do his own "lessons" where we are incorporating learning the letters. You might also check out tot school posts as well.

 

B4 is very gentle and simple. In some ways it seems almost something you could have thought up on your own, if you just had the time...

[Sherry in OH]

I have BFIAR. You select a title, read the book to your child/children, then do one or more of the activities. You put as much effort/resources into the activities as you desire. For example, you might read Blueberries for Sal in the summertime. You could drop beads into a bucket as an activity, go to a U-pick-it place and pick blueberries, or buy blueberries at a store to sample. If you are so inclined, you could freeze some of the berries (discuss food preservation) or make jam. It is up to you.

 

The lap books are extras. Some people really enjoy them. I bought one of them. I did not think it was worth the money. I rarely used the materials at Homeschoolshare.com.

 

My children love the BFIAR titles. We are rowing FIAR now, but the BFIAR titles are frequently selected for bedtime reading.

 

Since you are doing MEP Reception, why not include your younger son in some of the lessons? My younger son was 2.5 when I started Reception with my older son. DS2 enjoyed playing the games (DS1 did the math for him), building with craft sticks, and playing with play-doh. Sometimes I made an extra copy of his brother's worksheet and let him scribble while big brother did math.

[momto3innc]

The very basic idea of it is that you read the same book for 5 days in a row and you do some basic activities to go with the book that cover all the different subjects. For example: counting all the ducks on the page for math, coloring a picture like the illustration for art, doing some physical activity they do in the book for P.E., etc... It is very basic and honestly for the most part are things you could think of yourself if you had time. It's a nice guide if you don't. Your older child would enjoy it too.

[EJCMom]

I've been doing BFIAR with my 3-year-old for the exact same reason you are considering it. She's so excited to, "Do 'coo mommy!" So I pulled out BFIAR and we've been doing that for the last couple of weeks. If you go onto Homeschool Share's website they have a whole section of activities and lapbooks for BFIAR. We've been doing those. I'll print everything off and then do one or two of the lapbook activities a day with her, so by the end of the week we have everything ready to put the lapbook together. I would check Homeschool Share before buying the Fold 'n Learns from the FIAR website because HS Is free. She's been loving it.

[KeriJ]

We used both FIAR and Before FIAR. It worked the best for us when I didn't over-think it. Like a previous poster said: read the book and do whatever activities appeal to you. Don't worry about doing everything in there. Pick what works for you and leave the rest. There are ideas there that you definitely could think of on your own, but some days I just don't feel creative. Lapbooks for littles tended to be more work than they were worth in my opinion. I think I got a bigger kick out of them than they did in the end, but eventually I got burned out.

 

I really enjoyed our years with FIAR and BeforeFIAR, and hope to repeat them with my next two little ones. But I'm not one that stressed about doing everything there. We just kept it light and natural.

[buram]

We did Before Fiar the summer before my daughter turned 5 and we both really loved it. My almost 2yr old really got into it too. I was able to check it out at our library to see exactly what it was and if it worked for us or not. Check your library and see if they have it. Many of the books used are very popular children's books so they should be easy to find at a decent size library. We already had many of them in our home collection. I added lapbooks for my daughter but she was able to cut and write on her own so it made it easy. I plan on starting it with my dd2 this summer but I won't do lapbooks, she is not ready yet.

[Nart]

Thanks for all the advice I am going just put Before FIAR into my cart at Rainbow Resource. I am going to buy 3 or 4 of the cheaper books to start. Anything else I should buy right now? I don't have a lot of art supplies beside crayons and paint.

 

Since you are doing MEP Reception, why not include your younger son in some of the lessons? My younger son was 2.5 when I started Reception with my older son. DS2 enjoyed playing the games (DS1 did the math for him), building with craft sticks, and playing with play-doh. Sometimes I made an extra copy of his brother's worksheet and let him scribble while big brother did math.

 

I am loving MEP Reception almost more for a fine motor and language program than for an actual math program. Our situation is a bit unique in that my older son has had bouts of temporary hearing loss due to so many ear infections. He is on his second set of ear tubes and yesterday we went to the ENT because his ear was hurting. His left ear tube had fallen out and he has another ear infection with fluid which means he is loses about 30 percent of the hearing in that ear until the fluid goes away which takes weeks or he has surgery again to put in another ear tube. Ordinarily I would try to include little brother, but when doing any formal math or reading lessons I insist on working in a quiet room to make sure he is really hearing everything well.

[lindsrae]

Our situation is a bit unique in that my older son has had bouts of temporary hearing loss due to so many ear infections. He is on his second set of ear tubes and yesterday we went to the ENT because his ear was hurting. His left ear tube had fallen out and he has another ear infection with fluid which means he is loses about 30 percent of the hearing in that ear until the fluid goes away which takes weeks or he has surgery again to put in another ear tube. Ordinarily I would try to include little brother, but when doing any formal math or reading lessons I insist on working in a quiet room to make sure he is really hearing everything well.

 

Poor little one! Do you have a good chiropractor nearby? Our chiropractor adjusts me as well as my daughters (all of them). My eldest had recurring ear infections until I found our chiropractor, and the other two have been adjusted since birth and have never had one.

[Tracy]

I don't know if this is an option in your situation, but is there any way that you can include little brother in your lessons with big brother. My ds3 would not have tolerated B4FIAR at 2yo--too structured. But he loves sitting at the table while I do lessons with dd6. I have a special school box that has crayons, lacing beads, lacing cards, dry erase materials, sequencing cards, scissors, etc. He also gets to play with the math manipulatives sometimes. He does get in the way a little, but I figure that I am teaching dd that ds belongs with us and deserves our attention, and that is just as important as the academics. Now, I couldn't do this if ds were a particularly rambunctious child, but this has worked well for all of us.