Tell me about FIAR

[sweetpea3829]

Hi everyone! I've posted a couple of threads, but I think I still technically qualify as "new here."

 

We're also new to homeschooling....or somewhat new to homeschooling...new to the formal aspect of it anyways.

 

In my reading, I came across Five in a Row and I have to admit, I love the idea behind it. I'm just not sure I love the way FIAR is laid out. I read some criticisms of it on Amazon and I'm not sure I could make it work.

 

But if I understand correctly...the concept behind FIAR is that you read a piece of literature and for five days, you revolve your history, science, etc around concepts from that piece of literature.

 

Is that correct? So basically, it's a unit study approach.

 

I love the idea behind that...today we were reading a Paddington Bear book and it mentioned several things that I could have used for geography, history, science, etc.

 

Are there other curriculums out there that are like FIAR?

 

What else can those of you that use FIAR tell me about it? How much teacher prep is needed (because this year, I just don't have much time). Is it something we could pick up in a year or two?

[mystika1]

Fiar is wonderful. My kids love it. You read the weeks chosen book five days in a row and you chose a Social Study topic from the manual to discuss/work through on Monday...Tuesday would be LA..Wednesday would be art..and so on. Planning is not hard at all and it is actually quite a meaty program. It is the one thing we do that really sticks. You must add a phonics and math program as stated in the manual for it to be complete. You can use the library for a super affordable option. I have never had any trouble getting the book titles.

 

You may also like http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Level2.php They have free lapbooks that go along with the FIAR titles and a lot of others.

 

HTH,

 

Penny

[sweetpea3829]

Penny, one of the criticisms on Amazon was that the titles were out of print or otherwise difficult to obtain.

 

Where we live, our library system allows us to check out books from libraries all over the country, but it's an incredibly slow process. As our library itself is quite small, I'm concerned that I might not be able to get the titles.

 

Could you give me an idea of what titles they use in the K-2 levels?

 

Thanks again!

[Sue G in PA]

If you go to the FIAR website, I think they have a list of the book titles for each volume. I was able to find 'most' of the books for Vol. 1 and you might find some of the OOP books here at the WTM. Lots of members use FIAR. Also join the FIAR board. I'm sure you could find some OOP books from those members...many would even let you "borrow" I'm sure. :D I keep coming back to FIAR b/c I LOVE the approach. I use HOD now and like that, too. BUT...my brain just keeps going back to FIAR. I just can't get past the whole doubt thing...what will my kids miss if we don't do chronological history or follow a science curriculum, etc.? I just need to stop with all the doubts and just do it. LOL. Good luck...I think you will find FIAR very enjoyable. And I, like you, find lots of "rabbit trails" to follow when reading books to me kids.

[kubiac]

Here's the booklist, and yes it's a unit study (based on the idea that you read the book five days in a row with five different activities to go with), and yes you could probably just do it yourself, but the second link below is a beautiful example of what FIAR can be.

 

http://www.fiarhq.com/FIAR/FIARBL.html

http://delightfullearning.blogspot.com/

[Guest]

I suggest you go to the FIAR forums, as well. Those ladies are awesome at explaining and answering all things FIAR. I Rowed 1 book with mine and they remember what personification is to this day. I just could not keep up with it. SO I went with with Memoria Press K as it has a similar FIARish lit selection each week under enrichment. It is easier for me because someone else planned it out but we still get the benefits.

[AdventureMoms]

I haven't used it as a program (yet) but I can speak to availability. My 3yo is asking for more "big girl books" for Christmas, so I put all the books from FIAR Vol 1 on her Amazon wishlist. All but maybe 2 of them were readily available on Amazon. It makes a very nice kids book collection, too! We may do FIAR next year when she's 4, but even if we don't they make a nice collection of good kids books.

[KristenR]

I highly recommend FIAR. We loved it here. It really requires as much additional work as you want to put into it. I would read each section before we read the book in order to pick out which activities we wanted to do. Sometimes I would look online to see what other people had done and expand from that. Here are some blog posts I did with my 4 and 2 year old on FIAR. You can see it in action, so to speak.

[sweetpea3829]

Thanks so much for the replies everyone! So there's a FIAR forum? Is there a forum here for FIAR?

 

The concept of FIAR is exciting for me...I've always thought this is the best way to approach effective learning, especially when it comes to history topics. But the application can be a bit more daunting, kwim?

 

ETA: Can FIAR be used in conjunction with other curriculums? Specifically, I've already purchased Real Science 4 Kids and would probably want to continue to use that alongside FIAR.

Edited October 21, 2011 by Sweetpea3829

[caedmyn]

I think you could use it with other curriculums easily. We are. I use it as an open-and-go thing. I've started spending 5 minutes looking over the guide for the next book and picking which activities we want to do, and I'm using a character book too (Child's Book of Character Building) so I spent a little time figuring which book would go best with each virtue, but that's all I've done for prep work.

 

Although I must admit, I don't love FIAR so far, though I can't put my finger on why. Hopefully picking out the activities in advance vs. doing it as we go through it for the day will help, and I dropped the Bible supplement that goes with it...I didn't like the lay-out.

[sweetpea3829]

Hey, where is everyone buying FIAR? The purchase link on their webpage doesn't work...lol.

[blondeviolin]

We love FIAR. To prep, I read the book, pick an activity/lesson per subject, then I look on HSS to see if there are some lapbook-type components for what I've chosen. I print out whatever goes and off we go. It seems light, but Abby really does remember a lot. We don't do it with much else, but only because we are only doing K and my plate is already pretty full. I'm planning on keeping it up next year, when my son does his K-ish year (he will turn 5 in Oct. of 2012), I'm sure Abby will still want to sit in even though she will have more schoolwork. (Next year we will add in more formal LA, history and science.)

[sweetpea3829]

What is HSS and the lapbook stuff?

 

LOL, still very new to all of this...have a lot to learn, including the abbreviations.

 

Your kiddos, btw, are aged much like mine...right in a row. Ours are 5, 4, 3, and 2.

[morosophe]

Well, I bought the first two volumes of Five in a Row used. I think one was from E-bay and one was from Amazon. The only thing that was missing was that one of the story circles (I think Ping, the first one) had been cut out of the first book. I may go ahead and pay the extra money for the colored, laminated story circles from FIAR themselves for when my next son gets to kindergarten, though--it was way too much trouble for me to do them myself. (I'm so lazy.)

 

I loved this curriculum for my son's kindergarten, but I think it would be way too puny for elementary. I know, I know, there's "Beyond Five in a Row" for that...but still! In my strange mind, unit studies work great for kindergarten and maybe for junior high/high school, but in elementary they should be getting more of a comprehensive grounding and understanding of things like the timeline.

 

I would second the recommendation for homeschoolshare.com's folders. I found TheHomeSchoolMom a better place to start, though, as it gave links to lots of places, including each homeschoolshare.com page. I also went to Google Images each week and searched for pretty pictures to print out on a color printer. My son had fun cutting those out and arranging them with the various minibooks, wheels, etc., from Homeschool Share to be glued into his lapbooks.

 

As for availability--the only book I had trouble getting hold of was the Babar one, which, truth to tell, was not the best book in the world, anyhow. I may buy one of their one-off books to replace it next time I go through. Though if you feel like skipping books for movies one week, the Babar episode it is based on is available for free on youtube. And that way you get to hear the music, which is a large part of the story, anyhow.

 

I skipped The Clown of God entirely because, much though I may love DePaola's Strega Nona and The Cloud Book, that story is just way, way, way too Catholic for me. I didn't want to try explaining it to my five-year-old, so I just skipped it. (Oddly enough, I wasn't trying to keep it secular at all. We're reformed Christians. So, in this case, by Catholic I apparently mean idolatrous. Wow. Let's just say, this is apparently a sticky subject for me, and move on.)

[sweetpea3829]

LOL, I love DePaulo's work too...but I've not heard of the Clown of God.

 

I started a thread asking folks that did not like FIAR to expound on why. And the one response so far is a concern I have had...the program does seem quite disjointed and unorganized as far as it relates to staying on a subject long enough for that subject material to sink in. In other words...I'd rather spend more than a week on a particular geographical time or science concept but I'd rather not stay in one book for longer than a week. Meaning, it would be great if they had organized this program so that there were two or three books per "subject" area for further exploration and to expound further on the topic at hand.

 

I mentioned the Paddington book we were reading yesterday...it talked about how Paddington came from Peru. Well, I could definitely work with that, but I'd love to see other books that also talk about Peru so we could learn more about it than in just a week's worth of time.

[sweetpea3829]

Those of you that like it, how easy do you think it would be to add more meat to this curriculum? Obviously, it would involve more legwork on my part, but it doesn't look to be difficult to choose to row for two weeks, using additional books that supplement the first book.

 

Love the idea behind this curriculum...just not yet convinced that FIAR itself is organized well enough for me to use it, knowing that this year, I don't have the time for lots of legwork.

 

Are there similar curriculums?

[Mergath]

Those of you that like it, how easy do you think it would be to add more meat to this curriculum? Obviously, it would involve more legwork on my part, but it doesn't look to be difficult to choose to row for two weeks, using additional books that supplement the first book.

 

Love the idea behind this curriculum...just not yet convinced that FIAR itself is organized well enough for me to use it, knowing that this year, I don't have the time for lots of legwork.

 

Are there similar curriculums?

 

Peak with Books is sort of similar, in that it's a big list of books with activities to do for each. One of my friends who has an early ed degree has a copy that I've flipped through, and it looks like fun. Other than that, I don't know of any programs like FIAR.

[Susie in MS]

Those of you that like it, how easy do you think it would be to add more meat to this curriculum? Obviously, it would involve more legwork on my part, but it doesn't look to be difficult to choose to row for two weeks, using additional books that supplement the first book.

 

Love the idea behind this curriculum...just not yet convinced that FIAR itself is organized well enough for me to use it, knowing that this year, I don't have the time for lots of legwork.

 

Are there similar curriculums?

 

We LOVE FIAR here. My dd is in the 1st and we will use vol 4 in the 2nd grade as it is more meatier than the first 3 vols.

 

Personally I don't find FIAR weak or disjointed. I think that some people expect it to be something it is not nor claims to be. In early elem most kids won't remember a whole lot of highly structured lessons and that is why they have to be taught over and over and over. So why not wait till they are older to begin with to get to the harder stuff. Anyway that is me.

 

That being said:

We started with FIAR when dd was 4 yo. We have rowed most books twice and are now on our third rowing. This time around, due to her age and our enjoyment, we do add to it more. Where in K we just added a few topical books that expanded the lessons (such as How People Live or Let's Read and Find Out) now we also add more of the expansion ideas from the FIAR archives (on the FIAR board) and some print outs from Homeschoolshare.

 

I have found that the lessons in FIAR really stick for my dd. They are presented in a way that a young child can understand and relate to.

 

As far as finding books. There are fewer oop ones thanks to Purple House Press bringing them back in print. Most of the oop books (the few there are) can be found here or at vegsource or abebooks, or amazon marketplace or ebay or even at your thrift stores. Two (The Giraffe that Walked to Paris and Andy and the Circus) have super high prices on them. For Giraffe I substituted Zarafa (same story) and we skipped Andy. For Babar we watched the cartoon posted on the FIAR forum. I agree it is not a great story, but then I am not a Babar fan either. I agree with the poster that has qualms with Clown of God, but other than that I have not found any books that we have issues with like that.

 

Back to prep and how easy it is to add:

This is what I do. I take a few days and go to hss and the FIAR archives. I read thru all of the lessons for all of the vols (cuz I have them all-if you just have one vol then do this for just that one) and print up every lesson expansion print out or activity that I think we may use. I place those in file folders that are labeled with the titles of each book. So all of the Wild Horses of Sweetbriar printouts will go in a folder labeled as such. So now when I get ready to row a book all I do is get out the manual and the file and plug in what I want to do on a lesson sheet. During the week I just refer to the lesson sheet each day. Since my prep work is already done it takes no time at all to get ready for a row.

 

Oh I do buy any go-along books from our thrift stores (books like one on owls or one on apples, etc) so I have these on hand. Others with good libraries just make sure to secure the books the need each week or two.

 

I do now use Old Fashioned Education in addition to FIAR, because my dd loves more and more school time. But I will be honest and say that there is NO need to any other curriculum (other than math phonics/grammar(if you are of the mindset that kids that age need grammar)). This is something we do just out of enjoyment.

[Ummto4]

You can buy FIAR from Rainbow Resource. I bought mine from ebay though. WTM Sale Board or Homeschool Classified are other two places you can buy FIAR from.

 

The books used in FIAR 1 and 2 books are the easiest and cheapest to obtain because they're so common. I ordered them from ebay or abe books. FIAR 3 contains more OOP books and some reprint books which are not widely available used.

 

You can start off FIAR conversationally, adding in either library books or children encyclopedias if needed. Nowadays, you can even incorporate youtube videos into your lesson.

 

I would not do any lapbook/notebook activities with pre-K/K crowds as you'll end up doing most of the things. This will burn you out, unless you have a student who is very into cutting, pasting, etc.

 

You can add more and more as your child grows up. Things you can add to make it meatier: writing summary, making vocab cards, copywork/dictation, listing facts, mapping, reading more advanced reference books, and of course notebooking/lapbooking.

 

Some topics in FIAR are repeated, so it makes many concepts stick. Children also remember the facts because they remember the picture book.

[Susie in MS]

I agree with lapbooks being too much for youngers, We only do parts of lapbooks or notebooking.

[sweetpea3829]

What are lapbooks?

[morosophe]

 

Here's an example from HomeschoolShare.com of a lapbook for Ping, the first book "rowed" in Volume One of Five in a Row.

[sweetpea3829]

Here's an example from HomeschoolShare.com of a lapbook for Ping, the first book "rowed" in Volume One of Five in a Row.

 

Thanks!

 

And thanks everyone for your input. Very helpful!

[fruitofthewomb]

I have to add my two cents...

 

I love FIAR for my K'er. I think it is an excellent way to introduce concepts and ideas. The manual doesn't cover each topic in depth but if it is something your child is interested in-then you can run with it.

 

We stick very close to the manual at my house. I am amazed at what my DD is learning. So far we have rowed Ping, When I was Young in the Mountains, Another Celebrated Dancing Bear, How to Make an Apple Pie, Lentil, and Papa Piccolo. So my DD has had an introduction to China, Italy, and Russia and their culture and language. We have gone back in time with Lentil and When I Was Young. We have learned about watercolors, charcoal, etchings, colored pencils, Russian architecture, street scenes, details in art, etc for art (art is amazing in my opinion with this curriculum). The math is fairly simple but we have had an introduction to telling time, calendars, weight, symmetry, etc. Science has included taste buds, ducks (how they float and stay dry), freezing and boiling points, and color mixing in milk. For language arts we have learned a lot of vocabulary and different styles of writing like repetition, and some drama too. We have cooked some new foods too.

 

It has been a rich curriculum for us so far and we really haven't dug that deep to get a lot out of it. I like how it jumps from one place to another and one time period to another. It keeps things interesting. We have rowed a few books over 2 or 3 weeks and I hated it. I like to do one a week. It keeps us in that frame of mind.

 

The FIAR boards are great. Read Jane Claire's note to newcomers. I love delightful learning too! Here is my blog where I have some of our activities laid out.

 

http://fruitofthewombpsalm1273.blogspot.com/

 

I bought all my FIAR stuff from ebay. I get most books from the library but did buy a few too from Amazon.

 

I use FIAR for the fun but use Abeka Phonics, Singapore math, and A reason for handwriting to round out our curriculum. Even though I stick to the manual, I almost always add in a science experiment on Fridays so if you have other things that you really like-keep them and add on FIAR. If you row conversationally it takes 15-30 minutes.

 

Hope this helps you get a better feel for FIAR!