Question for anyone who has done Five in a Row

We used FIAR for prek and K. My ds is 11 now, and I’ve passed those on to a friend so can’t look it over to refresh my memory. But for the most part we have fond memories of the books we read. He usually remembers them when we run across them in the library, and not too long ago he asked me to purchase Roxaboxen (from vol. 4, I believe). While I don’t remember specifically which books we loved and which ones not so much, I can tell you that no book list is going to have all the books loved by everyone. And which ones will vary from person to person. I don’t really remember anything I would consider twaddle. But then again, what different folks consider twaddle tends to vary quite a bit, too. But overall, it was a positive experience for us, with many wonderful picture books enjoyed by both of us. While likely more vague than you were looking for, I hope that’s somewhat helpful.  🙂

Melissa

I envy you — starting with Five in a Row!  I miss those days!  We loved it so much that I have collected most of the books and am keeping the manuals to pass down to my daughter for that day when she hopefully has children of her own.  

I would agree with the books the previous poster listed, and would add (sorry, my manuals are packed away, so I can only list titles, as I’m not sure which volume they are from):

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (we did this annually, and made a pie each time!  Great memories!)

Cranberry Thanksgiving (we STILL read this each year!)

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear 

Ping

The Glorious Flight

Lentil

Grandfather’s Journey

The Salamander Room

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge

Little Nino’s Pizzeria

There are several that we didn’t get to, due to time or poor planning on my part, but I am collecting the picture books anyway, because I have found that any of the books make a great jumping off point for a study of some kind, be it geography, language arts, art, etc.  

Once you have used FIAR for awhile, you will find that you can extend just about any picture book that is story-focused to make a lesson from the story.  The whole point of reading the book for five days in a row is so the child can recognize and remember the previous learning while listening to the story again.  And believe me, they don’t forget those lessons!  To this day, if my daughter sees a FIAR book somewhere, she will say “I LOVED that story!”  

And yes, some may seem ‘twaddely”, but I really didn’t feel that way about most.  The books were chosen with specific learning themes in mind, and I found that the stories ‘grew’ on me and we learned a lot even if the story wasn’t a favorite at first.

We also purchased volume 4, and there are some excellenct stories in there, as well!

Have fun!