RoughCollie: Can you tell me more about FIAR (or anyone that has used it!). Thanks.

[Sue G in PA]

I was intrigued by your response to my post about my son and decided to take a look at the curriculum. It looks like it might be a good fit for him and for us and my youngers would probably have fun joining in as they can (ds5 is doing MFW now which we do really like). Thanks for any more info you can give me.

[RoughCollie]

If you go to the forums

http://www.fiarhq.com/~gbprnhrz/forum/index.php

you can find out loads from people who are currently using it and simply from reading the forums.

Basically, you read a certain picture book to your child every day for 5 days. For each book there is a lesson plan, so you cover all subjects using the book as jumping-off point.

Reading each book so many times sounded tedious to me, but the kids loved it. There was something different to focus upon in each book every day.

The picture books that have been selected for the program are excellent.

I supplemented with other books, which were often ones that were suggested in the lessons plans, whenever I felt like it. Mostly I just followed the lesson plans, which were beautifully written and entailed very little extra work from me, beyond procuring the books. We either bought the books or borrowed them from the library. We did everything in those books, and as I recall it only took about an hour a day, when I did not elaborate on it with additional resources.

The very best part was that I thoroughly enjoyed FIAR, too. It was so much fun!

I used Singapore Math and SOTW then, too. They didn't have homeschool teaching aids for Singapore Math, like they do now. So I tried to make math interesting by buying or making manipulatives to go along with the lessons. (I finally gave up the manipulatives because they did not particularly help the kids and just made math last longer and it wasn't any more fun for them.) FLL hadn't been published yet, but if it had been, I would have used it. Whatever TWTM suggested instead (can't remember the title) was something my kids hated. So we just did phonics (ETC), penmanship and reading lessons for Language Arts (supplemental to FIAR).

I had read TWTM already and was impressed with it, so we used SOTW too. The kids enjoyed that as well, but FIAR was the #1 Hit at our house during grades 1-3.

The forums are full of wonderful, knowledgeable people, too. I haven't been there in years because we stopped using FIAR after grade 3. I tried Beyond FIAR, but I got so bogged down in it that I didn't continue it after the first book.

Hope this helps.

RC