How I Learned to Teach… And You Can Too
In the beginning, all I knew about homeschooling came from one friend who was doing it, and from a convention my husband and I attended.
My friend inspired, the convention overwhelmed.
On my own, I poured over the catalogs that I had picked up - reading, re-reading, highlighting, circling, turning down page corners - trying to figure out what I needed and what I wanted.
One entry kept pulling me back. It seemed so simple, like an extension of what I was already doing as a parent. Could homeschooling really be just that - an extension of what engaged parents were already doing?
I had to find out, so I took the plunge and ordered it. That Five in a Row program, by Jane Claire Lambert, turned out to be the single best purchase I made in all my years of homeschooling. My children learned and I learned too. I credit FIAR with teaching me how to homeschool. Nothing less. Let me tell you why.
For the uninitiated, the premise of FIAR is that you read the same children’s book every day through the week, mark your world map with the setting, and choose different options to explore each day from the curriculum guide, specific to each book.
Children love repetition so the re-reads are not tiring. The activities you’re exploring as you go along through the week bring to life aspects of the material and illuminate the learning in a slightly different way each day. Liken that to re-reading Wuthering Heights, the Bible, or Romeo and Juliet. See what I mean? You get some affirmation of what you knew and some new insights and perspective.
We learned about going to the hospital when Madeleine had her appendix removed – even used a marker to draw a scar on my daughter’s tummy - children are washable, remember. We took the leaves out of our kitchen table, set them up on book stacks to make a low table in the living room and sat on cushions around it like the girl in A Pair of Red Clogs (I think that was the story, or was it Grandfather’s Journey?) and much more. I caught on, I got it.
It spurred my own ideas too. When we read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, we went to a spice shop that had crates and sacks with names of exotic places stenciled on them. We looked, we smelled, we bought – Madagascar vanilla, Vietnamese cinnamon, garam masala. Then we cooked and baked and traveled the world through food over and over.
Sure, perusing library shelves may unearth some treasures, and there are book lists for different topics and time periods, but the curated collection in the FIAR series is one that I could not have put together on my own.
Learning this way is like sketching– you start with the general shape, add some anchoring features, and then add the details and keep on refining them all through life.
Whatever core material you are using, think about creative tie-ins or stretches. Studying horses? A zoo trip, horseback riding, sure. What about seeing thoroughbreds up close and personal? A friend of mine lived near a racetrack and managed to get a tour of the stable, just by calling and asking.
Even off-the-books opportunities. My kids still remember the time we got them up at 1:00 am and took a drive away from the city to get a good look at a meteor shower. The solar system wasn’t in our syllabus at the time, but when it did come up, their ‘stellar’ experience was a great lead-in.
We used Beyond FIAR, too and I still occasionally think wistfully about the Boxcar Children’s adventures and Homer Price’s doughnut making machine. One of my girls used the Before FIAR program in a babysitting program she ran when she was a teenager.
When our youngest finished high school, we had a small recognition and reception for her with our church family. Marking an ending, we went back to the beginning of her home education and drew parallels from one of our all-time FIAR favs – Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews.
As Eva Padlyat dropped down under the ice to collect mussels in Ungava Bay when the tide was out, our young lady was about to explore adventures on her own, for the very last first time.
