FIAR - How Much Preperation Required?

[Lady Lulu]

Hello all!

 

I am thinking of buying FIAR and going through some lessons this summer with my soon-to-be-kindergartener. Any ideas on the amount of time and money it takes to prepare for each week? Also, is there a list of basic materials that I would need to have on hand?

 

Thanks!

Leslie

[DawnL]

It depends on how much you intend to do with the program. Are you going to be lapbooking along with it? Are you going to be doing every activity and supplementing more? If that is true, you may want to have a little planning ahead, such as some tentative planning on which books/lessons for which week, and a list of what you will need for that book/lesson. That way, the Friday before, you can gather everything easily.

 

But if you are planning on just working from the book and doing some of the activities in it, it doesn't normally take a lot of planning. Just make sure your circles discs are ready, that you have a map somewhere you can put them on as you go, and make sure the books are accessible. Such as, if you are checking them out from the library, make sure your library system has each book before you plan out a week with that book.

[kolamum]

I agree with Dawn. It depends on how much you want out of it, and what kind of homeschooling you do.

 

There are many FIAR people who open the books and go. I was never amongst them. I always found myself taking an entire weekend to round up notebook/lapbook stuffs, additional books {if desired} and such. That said, I also became apt at preplanning and then just pulling it out as I needed it.

 

I'll also admit that when my children were younger it took very little prep work, but as they got older I felt the need to beef it up a pinch. ;)

[morosophe]

Here and here are some wonderful free online resources for Five in a Row. I would usually sit down the Saturday before, look through the book and make my selections for what I wanted to study with my son (what was age appropriate and likely to be interesting to him), and then see what lapbooking materials and/or supplemental printouts would appeal to him. Not all the lapbooking stuff actually made it into a lapbook, but my son still had fun putting it together.

 

If you do want to do something like that, you'll need: paper and a printer (I got a color printer and would find neat images on Google images to make the lapbooks I did make more appealing for my son); glue (I used rubber cement); and file folders (colored are great) for lapbooks.

 

Also, the book recommends art supplies for the art lessons, which is kind of obvious, but I thought I'd put that out there anyway.

[Tracy]

You can take as much or as little time as you want. I am one that really needs things to be simple. I would typically read over the lesson options over the weekend and choose the lessons largely based on simplicity. So for social studies, we just put a circle on the map. For language arts, we discussed vocabulary and literary devices. I rarely did anything that required more preparation than that. But for us, FIAR was a supplement. If it is your main curriculum, then you might spend more time on preparation and activities.