homeschooling trevy: five in a row

Trevor's health has been in the toilet since December-ish. 

We're trying to figure out what's going on but if you know anything about neurology...

there are no easy or quick answers.

This has played a pivotal role in our decision to bring Trevor home with his brother and sister. I've already been doing what I call homeschooling lite with him in preparation for this day. I've also been stock piling materials that I felt would be a good fit for him. 

Before Five in a Row being one of those choices.

Five in a Row is a literature rich curriculum. The philosophy is to spend an entire week in one book and explore the various applications (Bible, language, poetry, art, movement, science, etc) through that one book. All of the books are chosen for their meaningful text and beautiful imagery.

The teacher's manual is wonderfully laid out and simple to use.

Simple is a MUST for me.

The pictures are my evidence that he is delighting in this approach.

This week's book is Yellow Ball.

Trevor's favorite things about this read are the author's name: Molly Bang. 

And the last page which is a picture of the little boy sleeping with his arm wrapped around his yellow ball. Only recently Trevy has started wanting "buddies" to sleep with. I'm guessing he was making that connection with the picture.

I love that every reading is an opportunity to work on language development (vocabulary, who is the story about, what happened first, what happened next, what do you think is going to happen at the end...) and building his reading skills.

I read the story the first day and then ask him to help me read over the course of the week.

Today we created art that looks like the front cover of the book. Such a simple project but so much meaning in it. I was able to teach Trevor how to color in a circular motion (OT) and we used the crayon with water color resist method (Science). It was such a fun project that his older sister (peer modeling!) couldn't resist joining in on the joy!

If you're homeschooling a child with special needs I would definitely recommend exploring FIAR! Now that I'm thinking about it, you could use this for home enrichment even if you aren't homeschooling.