A Slight Change

If you've read this blog for any amount of time you know I don't use curriculum in our homeschooling.

A few weeks ago I made a slight change to my approach and bought a curriculum package. In my opinion, calling it curriculum is somewhat misleading because it isn't curriculum in the true sense of the word.

I was talking to a fellow homeschooling mom who recommended the Five in a Row series because it's so unlike curriculum.

After reading all about it on the website, I knew it was for us. You can buy the manuals together or individually. I decided to buy only the first volume to see how we liked it. Needless to say, I will be buying all the subsequent volumes because it's right up our alley.

Five in a Row focuses on classic and well-written children's literature. The concept is quite simple. For five days in a row the parent reads the book aloud. Then you discuss elements of the story, the pictures and anything related to history, math or science. All of the discussion items are laid out for you in the package. Of course, you could do it all in one or two days if you wanted. We took four days for the first book on the list. We're doing the full five for the second book because almost everything listed I want to cover for this book.

I must say, these first two weeks have been wonderful. Jack is sitting still while I read. He's so interested in the pictures. By the third or fourth day, he knows the story well and looks forward to hearing it again.

Best of all, it has art projects for each session. Jack loves art and even told me last week that he might be an artist when he grows up!

Here is China's Yangtze River with a duck named Ping and some of his family members. This illustration goes along with the first book on the list, "The Story About Ping."

I like Five in a Row because it is a reading and discussion-based curriculum that focuses on aspects that first made homeschooling so appealing to me. In the past two weeks we have discussed things like discernment, patriotism, architecture, buoyancy and fiction. This curriculum has helped make our homeschooling experience a direct reflection of the ideals I hold when it comes to educating my children.