another FIAR question

[lorrainejmc]

I would love to hear how those using FIAR are implementing it.

 

I think we are going to go back to it with my 5+7yr olds but I don't want it to turn into the stress inducing thing it was when I used it with my oldest. I placed too much emphasis on producing impressive looking lapbooks and spend so much time searching, printing, cutting etc.

 

One day, my ds5 brought one of the books to me as a random choice for storytime and I remembered the lessons and just went with it orally. It was an "a-ha" moment when I thought "so that's what I'm supposed to be doing." It felt so natural and he asked questions and wanted to find Japan on the globe. He remembered the story months later when the earthquake struck.

 

So, I would love to hear from those who have used it mostly conversationally. Please share your wisdom, I want this to work for my boys while we focus on the 3r's:001_smile:

[blondeviolin]

Uhmmm... I write down on a piece of paper M-F. Then I pick a lesson per day and place it on the day it corresponds with. If we have lots planned on a certain day, the lighter lesson goes there. Though, we do always do social studies on Monday because we make sure we place it on our map. Anyway... we talk about whatever the lesson says. If they're interested or I want to add more, we do...but only if I have time and patience. If I don't have time, we let it slide and just cover it orally.

 

We did Peter Rabbit back in March, I think, and just this week we opened up our sand toys to find a plastic sieve and Abby exclaimed, "Look at this! This is supposed to separate the big things from the little things. Though, Mr. McGregor used one to try and catch Peter!" That was all from us orally pointing out the story.

 

At first I thought we'd pull copywork from the book, but you know what? My kids are little and they just want to rush through the copywork which defeats the purpose. So now we do fun things. Next week we are going to row Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car and I thought we could make rain-makers as our fun activity. We also do our fun thing on Saturday when Daddy is home. He likes to participate too.

 

My kids are kind of notebooking with FIAR, but it's mostly just observation or review pieces. And if they don't want to, okay fine. LOL

[Rivka]

We never, ever do lapbooks. I know some people love them, but I just couldn't face having to drag my daughter through all that cutting, pasting, coloring, and writing. We also don't do cute crafts, like making a little Eiffel Tower when studying France or, I don't know, making ducks out of foam balls or something.

 

One of the things I like best about FIAR is that it isn't focused on having the child make "products." It feels so much more natural to just talk, and read, and explore. We usually wind up with a couple of pages for her portfolio every week, but more often then not it's some photos of our activities, with a caption.

 

I've also noticed that some of our simplest activities turn out the best. Like taking a tulip apart to learn about the parts of a flower, or exploring sinking vs. floating in the wading pool, or watching what happens when you add yeast to sugar water. I am really trying to steer away from complicated experiments, and more towards simple open-ended exploration and observation.

 

I blog about FIAR a lot (see my sig), but some general ideas of how we implement:

- We usually just do four days, skipping the applied math lesson.

- We always find the location on the map and look through the book after the first reading to find clues about what it's like to live in that time and place.

- We always look closely at the pictures and talk about them on our art day. That's really training my daughter's observational skills. Then we either try working with the medium or achieving some kind of effect from the illustrations (e.g., night pictures or perspective).

- We do a lot of drama: acting out parts of the story, pretending to be characters, making up extensions of the story, acting out vocabulary words, etc.

- We do a lot of field trips, usually not-organized ones. For example, going to an Asian market when we studied Japan, going to a public garden when studying flowers.

 

Edited to add: Hey! I just became a Queen Bee! :party:

[Tracy]

For 2 years, I have been reading posts that say that FIAR was too much work, and I was always very :confused:. Now I am starting to understand. I am just too lazy. . . um, I mean . . . practical, to do that much work. :tongue_smilie: Here is what I did with my dd:

 

• Vocabulary: During our first reading, we looked for vocabulary words that dd did not know. I defined the words orally and wrote them down. If there were a lot, I would pare down the list to about 5 words. Each subsequent day, would then look for those words as we read the book. I did not originally keep track of the words that we learned from week to week, but after the first volume, dd was wanting to go back to review them, so I started keeping a running list in our binder.
  
• Copywork: Every weekend, I created copywork using phrases and sentences from that week's FIAR book. Dd really enjoyed that she recognized her copywork.
  
• Social studies: We always did geography. Read the book. Put the story circle on the map. Lesson done.
  
• Language Arts: I always did these orally. Dd was just learning how to write, and I wanted writing practice to be limited to copywork. These lessons typically did not take more than a couple of minutes of discussion either during or after reading the book. I really loved that dd quickly began identifying writing techniques in our non-FIAR books.
  
• Art: I usually picked an art lesson that needed no preparation. For example, I remember drawing "speed lines," which needed just a pencil and paper. After that lesson, dd began using the concept in many of her drawings that she did for fun--even in the bathtub with bathtub crayons. I know it is tempting to choose that lesson on painting, sculpting or color mixing. But I did not find the easier lessons to be inferior in the least.
  
• Math: Most of the math lessons are counting. Dd could already count fluently, so when there was no math lesson other than counting, I would either choose a lesson from another subject (usually social studies) that I wanted to do, or I would skip that day altogether. It was nice to be able to have a day that we didn't have to do school if we didn't want to.
  
• Science: This is a day that it worth it to do a little more. Many of the science lessons lend themselves well to nature studies and just being outside. But it is not necessary to do a lot of planning ahead. We did a lot of looking things up on the internet to look for pictures and other information. I didn't bother to do it in advance. We just did it together. And I thought that it was good for her to see how I found things and that sometimes, I didn't find what we were looking for.
  

If you want, you could easily add in WTM-style narrations, especially for your older child. You could also have them do a FIAR journal, if they are into that sort of thing. They could write or draw things that they remember and liked from the book.

 

I hope that helps you out a bit.

[Koerarmoca]

I just kinda thumb through and pick things of interest I never cover all the different things but I figure when my 2 year old is ready for it I might pull my 5 year old back in a little. I always cover the basic geography/culture and try to do a little art. I will touch on the math/science if its introducing something new or corresponds with what we are already doing. I have only been using it for 4 weeks we have done just one lapbook. I am not much into them and it generally ends up being more work on my part than hers. I have a huge stack of printables to go with the lessons the mama I bought it from included like 500 printables but I really don't use them unless she is begging to "do more school" then I dig out something just to keep her happy.

[yucabird]

We never, ever do lapbooks. I know some people love them, but I just couldn't face having to drag my daughter through all that cutting, pasting, coloring, and writing. We also don't do cute crafts, like making a little Eiffel Tower when studying France or, I don't know, making ducks out of foam balls or something.

 

One of the things I like best about FIAR is that it isn't focused on having the child make "products." It feels so much more natural to just talk, and read, and explore.

 

:iagree:

[joyfulhomeschooler]

For 2 years, I have been reading posts that say that FIAR was too much work, and I was always very :confused:. Now I am starting to understand. I am just too lazy. . . um, I mean . . . practical, to do that much work. :tongue_smilie: Here is what I did with my dd:.

 

:iagree: LOL I was thinking the same thing! It was always easy, gentle, and fun for us.... very natural learning. I never added extra to the program. I picked one activity per day and walla! We LOVED it and may do some more this summer.

[BetterthanIdeserve]

I did FIAR with my Ker this year. She was always so excited to sit down and read the FIAR books. We rowed each book for two weeks as part of a co-op class I taught, so we did it a little differently. We read the story and then did 1-2 Social Studies lessons and usually a L.A. lesson the first week at co-op and the second week we read the story again and did 1-2 lessons (S.S., L.A., or science usually - whatever I thought would work well in a group setting). I read the book at home as well (1-3 times more during those 2 weeks) and we would cover a subject(s) that we didn't get to in co-op.

 

We did 2 lapbooks (just us, not the co-op).While I like the idea and I love scrapbooking it just wasn't a good fit because she needed so much help (she was a young 5yo when we did them) and I had a baby and toddler who wanted my attention. Looking back I should have tried it again during the boys' naptime, but I didn't. I am impressed with how much DD (and the co-op students) remembered from mainly a conversational approach. While we often did a hands on activity with each book, sometimes it was a simple as drawing a picture about the story. This week we played a review game at the co-op that I put together and they remembered so much (and most of those kids just heard the story twice). It was such a fun way to do geography and I love to hear my DD say something like "I know what buoyance means - we learned that from a FIAR book!"

 

While I plan on doing some FIAR next year (I couldn't resist when I found an inexpensive used copy of another vol. 3), I don't think we'll do it every week. I think I would prefer a more systematic approach to L.A., history, and science ala WTM recommendations, but we've got so much out of FIAR I am not ready to give it up completely. My DH who really wasn't involved in our hs work picked up just enough of what we were doing and is a great fan of FIAR.

Edited May 5, 2011 by BetterthanIdeserve
FYI: The FIAR forums have great additional ideas!

[lorrainejmc]

Thanks ladies. I am soooo guilty of making FIAR hard work, and I have been made feel inadequate by all the bloggers. What I thought I would like would be an activity cd of printables for FIAR to use as we feel like, then I realised that many of the FIAR books are listed in the GTG manual that I already have. So I have a cd of suitable printables already, as well as all the DWN books. What am I like??:lol: