Our Itinerary!

Well, I'm ready to unveil our studies for the year using Five in a Row as our core curriculum. FIAR is a literature based unit study program we've been using nearly as long as we've been homeschooling. Dan (the school principal and benefactor) and I (teacher and curriculum specialist) decided to have the kids leave the US a little this year to focus on world geography and cultures. Last year we spent settling the western US and it is time to see the world! FIAR has many wonderful titles to choose from using volumes 1-3 and this year I added volume 4 to the collection. Volume 4 titles are meant to be studied longer so when you look at our month by month itinerary you may notice some months have fewer destinations. We'll have R7 who will be in 2nd grade and I5 who will in kindergarten studying these together at their own level. I may decide to insert a different title in for I5 when R7 does a volume 4 title. How can he miss doing Katy and the Big Snow for example??

One thing that took me some time to decide was how to organize the time. Do we go by continent and/or country? Travel to Europe and stay there until we've done each title we can there? We'll be using Galloping the Globe and Trail Guide to World Geography to add some extra challenges and fun with our geography studies and these are organized by continent. In the end I'm pleased to announce that I decided against those plans. Instead, in true FIAR style, we will be skipping all over the world and each time we come back to a particular continent I will use it as a review for our young kids. Do you remember what other country we studied the last time we came to Europe? Tell me about it. Or...we visited France a few weeks ago. Show me which country that is on this map. Toward the spring we'll turn a little ethnocentric again (remember what that word means??) and we'll be having some fun with nature.

And now...our travel plans!

August

Night of the Moonjellies (CT)
Arabella (out of print so I may have to abandon this one for now)
Gramma's Walk (a sub for Arabella)

September

Mirette on the Highwire (France)
Duchess Bakes a Cake (Austria)
Ferdinand (Spain)

October

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car (Great Britain)
The Giraffe that Walked to Paris (France)
Pumpkin Runner (Australia)

November

Wee Gillis (Scotland)
Grass Sandals (Japan)
Cranberry Thanksgiving (northeast US)

December

Paul Revere's Ride (MA)
Gullywasher (Mexico)
Clown of God (Italy)

January

The Story about Ping (China)
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear (Russia)
A Pair of Red Clogs (Japan)
Angelo (Italy)

February

Snoflake Bentley (Vermont)
Higgins Bend Song and Dance (River Setting)

March

A New Coat for Anna (France)
Grandfather's Journey (Japan)
Henry the Castaway (Explorers)
Mrs. Katz and Tush (Isreal)

April

The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Great Britain)
Make Way for Ducklings (Boston)
The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar (Nantucket)
All Those Secrets of the World (Chesapeake Region)

May

Truman's Aunt Farm
The Salamander Room
Harold and the Purple Crayon
The Raft (Wisconsin)

This is the first time I've planned out a whole year of FIAR titles at one time. I'm so excited about the journey we'll take this year! I've got about half or more of the titles labeled on a folder and each time I come across an activity or sheet for it, I copy enough and put it in the folder. I'm hoping to avoid the paper jungle I've had in the past. Soon each book title will be done. Some of the journey may change if titles cannot be found. Each child will have a passport that we'll stamp each time we study a new place. What a year we will have! We begin rowing on Monday, August 13th. Bon Voyage!!