five in a row

one book. five days. several projects. countless memories. this is five in a row.


but what is five in a row, you ask? it's easy. we read one book five days in a row and do some sort of activity relating to the book. my children love the repetitition. by the end of the week, they can basically read the book to me. and the activities we do are so simple, yet so engaging. they really make the book come alive to the kids. caroline often wakes up asking, "what project are we doing today?"


there are five subject areas that are meant to be taught each week: social studies, language, art, applied math, and science.... one per day. (there is also a supplemental bible study/character guide that i LOVE as well.) the teacher's guide offers plenty of activities to choose from for each subject area, and i have found that the online five in a row (FIAR) forums provide even more ideas. the age range for FIAR is listed as 4-8 years old, so my kiddos are obviously on the low end of that spectrum. because of that, sometimes the activities are not on their level... but never fear! i have had fun coming up with some of my own activities or i will simplify the suggested project. these books are meant to be revisited as the children grow older, so when i skip over an activity, i get excited thinking about coming back around to it in the years to come. now... my default is to complicate. (brian just shouted "amen" over here!) keeping things simple is something that does not come naturally to me (think birthday parties...). BUT i am working on it. and FIAR is a great, great arena in which i can practice this skill. there are 1001 activities i could come up with relating to a single book.... but the founder of FIAR stresses over and over again to keep it simple. so i'm doing my best. :)


(waiting for the next round in our taste test!)
i chose to start FIAR in the summer because our schedule was less hectic, and i thought this would be a wonderful way to keep a little bit of structure to our summer before delving in to kindergarten (and phonics and math!) with ethan in the fall. there is so much flexibility with FIAR, yet it provides just enough structure to keep us keepin' on. if that makes any sense. but because it is the summer, we have beach days and pool days and trips out of town and various and asundry things that could stress me out about getting in our five days in a row! but we just roll with it. some weeks we do four days, or our fifth day may be on saturday. or we may carry one book over to the next week and begin our new book on a tuesday. it's tempting to stretch out a book to two weeks when the kids are having so much fun with it, but i try to stick to my plan-- and i remind myself that we'll come back to that book again!

the kids get so excited when they know we're about to start a new book. of course, i build it up and make it a big surprise. i usually will hint to what the book is about, and they just can't wait to find out what it is. the first thing we do after reading our book for the first time is talk about where the book takes place. our kitchen is now the home of two gigantic maps-- a world and united states map-- and each book has a laminated story disc. we place the story disc on the location of the book, and then each day after that, the kids take turns putting the story disc in the right place on the map. in the case of the picture below, the kids put ping on china (on the yangtze river) every day that week. by friday, they absolutely knew where ping lived!


because ethan is really into maps, i have them color the focus country on an identical world map each week. this is probably not something i would force upon a five year old who was not interested in it, but ethan looks forward to the map every week. we talk about where the character lives in relation to where we live and how we could get to their country. for the books based in the united states, we figure out how we would drive to get to their state. since we have started this, caroline is very interested in where we are going in the car. almost every time the car turns, i hear, "which way are we going now?!"


so we are having a ball. i plan to write a little post about each book we are doing, for memory's sake, but also to share the love. i've enjoyed reading other FIAR moms' blogs, and i've come away with some cute ideas for the various books that we will be reading. perhaps i can return the favor at some point with my FIAR posts. we just finished our third book last week, so i am hoping to blog about those first few books before i get too far behind.

FIAR is precious to me because my children are learning to treasure books in a new way. for five days, we snuggle up on the couch together and we soak in the story. for five days, we notice more details in the artwork, we learn words we did not know before, and we gain a greater understanding of God's truths through these characters. and at the end of those five days, ethan and caroline have a new favorite book. sounds like we'll be hanging onto this idea for awhile.

be back soon from china with the story about ping!