We’ve been using Five In A Row (FIAR) as the main part of our homeschooling program for the past year, and we’ve very much enjoyed it.  With FIAR we read a certain picture book every day for 5 days, while using that book as a discussion/learning generator over a variety of subjects and topics.  I have found it to be a connecting, organic, comprehensive, creative, engaging, and simple homeschooling curriculum.  Because I’ve been very intentional with doing our daily FIAR over the past few weeks, we have lots of projects completed (which I hope to share here), as well as a little girl who is excited about the projects we’ve done.  It’s really neat to see and hear both of the kids making connections in daily life to what they’ve learned in FIAR, and thinking about things they would like to learn about.

Recently we read the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and, per a FIAR suggestion, I took the kids on a ‘nature walk’.  The idea was to act like the characters in the story- and as naturalists- by going out and observing nature.  I talked about it with Ashton beforehand, and got her buy-in.  The kids brought their pencils and notebooks and had a really fun time wandering around finding things to draw.  Thankfully Florida is teeming with life, so in every nook and cranny there is something interesting to find and draw.  

I’m going to make nature walking/journaling a weekly part of our homeschooling program.  And I’m going to find magnifying glasses to bring along as well.  I wonder what other gear would be useful to bring on these adventures?  Please comment if you have an idea.  

Nature walking is cool, but pictures of poop on the blog, Jessica?  Really??  That’s what I wanted to say to my children on our walk as they excitedly shouted, “Look, Mom, POOP!”, and proceeded to plop right down and copy it into their journals.  I do suppose poop is nature, too, isn’t it?