{TOS Crew Review} Before Five in a Row

Many homeschool mothers have created special memories with their children by using Five in a Row (FIAR). These unit study books are a wonderful way to instill a love of learning and reading into elementary age children. However, what to do with preschoolers? FIAR has an answer to that as well in their Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) volume.

BFIAR is geared towards preschoolers ages 2-4. There are two sections in this volume. The first is just like the regular FIAR volumes. There are chapters for each book with learning ideas to implement using the book as a jumping off point. Then in the back of the book is another section with simple fun activities you can do with your children to help prepare their learning readiness.

Just as with the FIAR volumes, the BFIAR book has chapters based on wonderful story books - perhaps even favorites of your children already such as Goodnight Moon or Caps for Sale or even Blueberries for Sal.

If you are not familiar with how FIAR works, it's just as the title suggests. Children love to be read to and love having their favorite books read to them over and over again. The FIAR curriculum allows you to chose a book that you & your child love and you read it every day for five days - five in a row! Each chapter (based on the book you chose to read) has additional learning ideas that can be used. You can discuss art, math, science, history, and more based on the book you chose to read.

While I do not currently have a preschooler in my home since my youngest is now seven, I know I would have loved having this book when he was younger. That didn't stop us from trying out the BFIAR volume. We went through the chapter for Caps for Sale and he loved it. We created a "Caps for Sale" notebook where we used some fun pages for him to help remember the story and work on skills such as math, counting, handwriting, and more. I used many of the suggestions that BFIAR made to study this particular books - for example discussing the art work.

BFIAR can be purchased through Rainbow Resources for $35. If you have a young learner, I highly recommend the Five in a Row books. I wish I had done more with these when my boys were younger. I didn't fully discover the joy of the FIAR products until I was schooling my youngest. If you'd like to see what others has to say about BFIAR, then head on over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

 

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review.  All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.