If you're not familiar with Five in a Row, it's more of a guide book than an actual curriculum. The way it works is you read the same book five days in a row, and every day you focus on a different topic gleaned from the book. This week we read "The Story About Ping" by Marjorie Flack. Ping is a little yellow duck who lives on a boat on the Yangtze River in China. One day while diving for fish he misses his master's call to board the boat. By the time he resurfaces he realizes he will be the last duck to board and will receive a spank on the back. To avoid his punishment he hides on the river bank. Soon he is cold and lonely, and almost becomes duck dinner. When he find his way back to his boat, he is the last duck again, but he has learned his lesson and accepts his spank so that he can be safe and warm with his insanely large family.
It sounds like a simple kid's story, but when you really start to peel back the layers, there is so much more to it than that. Ping must face the consequences of his decision. There's a moral/character lesson. It's set on the Yangtze River in China, so there's geography. You can study ducks for science, or buoyancy, or water. Every page is illustrated, so you can study art. Using the Five in a Row guide was like having a blindfold taken off. Instead of just reading a children's book, which I do every day, about three times a day, we were really READING it. Here's how we did it:
Monday: Literature, what that is. Fiction vs. Non-Fiction. What makes a classic? Gracie dictated her own story to me.
Tuesday: Ping's decision, using discernment. Talked about strangers, keeping secrets from parents, peer pressure
Wednesday: Illustrations- medium, viewpoint, shadowing, reflection and movement on water
Thursday: Light and reflections, refraction. Looked at different objects through a jar of water
Friday: My favorite day. Life in China, locating China on the map. Religion and government of China, food, animals. Gracie later remarked that she was really glad we live in a free country. Watched some scenes from "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness", which is about the life of missionary Gladys Aylward.(Netflix is a great resource for homeschooling!). I was really excited to tie the topic into missions. We made a "kah-mee-shee-bye"(phonetic spelling!), which is a "story box". You make picture cards, then as you tell the story you slide them through a slit in a box, making a little theater. It's actually Japanese but I couldn't find any Chinese crafts, so that led us to talk about Asia as a whole! For dinner that night we ordered Chinese take out and
(this was Jeremiah's favorite part, lol) ate on the floor like they sometimes do in China. After dinner Gracie retold us the story of Ping using her story box.
Another advantage of Five in a Row is there's more opportunity to include Caleb in what we're doing. He liked reading Ping too and helped decorate the story box. He was also surprisingly deft with chopsticks!
It was a great week, and I am sooo happy I started Five in a Row. This next week we're reading Madeline and studying France of course, and the human body(Madeline has her appendix removed). There's no French restaurant around here so I'd better find some recipes online. I'm thinking pastries...
Here's a little of our week in pictures (Gracie is a pretty good artist, if I do say so :) )
What a fun holistic approach to learning! Sounds like a blast. Thank you for sharing. What great pictures! :o)
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