I mentioned awhile ago that during the holidays, certain children requested to return to Five in a Row! I might have been a little ecstatic about that, because my heart belongs to FIAR! So I'm finally getting around to sharing.
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We started back with Lentil by Robert McCloskey. I felt like it would be a fun row to get us back into FIAR and back into the swing of things after the holidays. It kind of turned into a Robert McCloskey author study, but it was really fun! In fact, one day Emory said he never knew school could be this fun! **be still my heart**
Lentil
Lentil, published in 1940, is about a boy (Lentil) who lives in Alto, Ohio. He can't sing or whistle, but wants to play music. What's a boy to do?
Social Studies
Geography - Ohio
Having moved to a small town in Ohio, we decided to learn a bit more about the state. I just wanted to stick to basic facts for now, so we printed an Ohio page from NotebookingPages.com. They colored Ohio while I read some fun facts, and then they picked something "new" to add to their pages. We're going to do a comprehensive state study down the road, so that is enough for us for now. {Don't Know Much About The 50 States.}
Science
Human Anatomy - Taste Buds
This was more for fun than anything, but we tasted sweet, sour, bitter and salty items and talked a bout the tongue and taste buds.
As you can tell, my boys, especially Emory, love lemons!
Eleanor . . . not so much!
Sound/Acoustics
If you have a really young one, I think Lentil would be a great book to use for the five senses. We're past that point, but we did discuss the acoustics lesson one evening. Elliott went and played the harmonica in the bathtub after I discussed the lesson in the manual. I didn't follow (so no pictures), but he talked about the differences he heard.
Language Arts
Elements of a Good Story
We discussed the elements of a story from the manual, and then I gave them Notebooking Pages to sketch out the beginning of their own stories.
Mathematics & Music
The lesson in the manual was related to fractions and music. The boys are just being exposed to musical notes in this context, so it was interesting!
Fine Arts
Charcoal Drawings
We've never used charcoal before, but I happened to have a sketch set that had some charcoal and charcoal pencils in it, so when I saw this lesson, I pulled that set out for the boys.
Musical Talent and the Harmonica!
The local music store sells harmonicas, so the kids got a fun surprise!
Food Fun
We made lemonade, and I made the lemon bars from the cookbook.
Supplemental Books
Instead of filling the book basket with go-along books for the various social studies and science topics, which is what I would normally do, I used it as a literature expansion opportunity/author study.
Robert McCloskey (Children's Illustrators) by Jill Wheeler
Make Way for Ducklings
Burt Dow, Deep Water Man
Time of Wonder
Blueberries for Sal
One Morning in Maine
Homer Price
Homer Price was our longer read-aloud, and I definitely suggest this book for boys! Elliott enjoyed it so much that I pulled out Beyond Five in a Row Volume 1 and we did a pseudo-row of it following Lentil. We used the lesson plans as talking points and even did a few activities from the manual. I'll try to share more about it soon!
We didn't really progress with the attempt at rowing Madeline. So I revamped our history schedule and chose some FIAR books that would tie into history and some upcoming group field trips, and our next official row was Paul Revere's Ride (last week and this week) to go along with the American Revolution portion of the Beautiful Feet Book study. Next week we're rowing Warm as Wool!
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