FIAR Burnout

Since 2000, I've been teaching Five in a Row. Anna and I went through the books twice, Carrie and I went through most of them twice, Thomas and I read each of them once or twice, and now I'm going through the manuals with Abby. I truly love FIAR and I think it teaches many, many good lessons in language, art, science, and social studies. Since we love to read aloud, it has been a perfect curriculum for our family.

But this year, I've felt rather burned out with the FIAR lessons. Along the way, I've done many, many hands-on projects with the kids, made lapbooks, cooked almost every recipe in the book, and read stacks of supplementary books. For some reason, this year I'm just bored. Now, Abby loves it and begs to have FIAR every day. But I've found myself dreading the reading and avoiding projects. Since I love FIAR and think the lessons are important, I don't want to give it up, as has been suggested to me. Abby is my last FIAR student and I don't want her to miss any of it.

What to do? How do I solve this?

I spent a good bit of time talking through my feelings with my husband and 2 oldest daughters. I spent some time praying about it. I worried over it and thought about it a great deal and wrangled with the problem, trying to figure out exactly what the matter was with me and how to fix it.

Finally, I looked at my goals for Abby, which I felt God had given me this summer for the upcoming school year: Plenty of snuggle time. Better behavior, mainly being still, attentive, and focused. Learning without books. More Bible knowledge, prayer, character training.

I thought about how FIAR helps me meet these goals: it provides snuggle time, especially if I do it in a conversational style. It helps Abby with attentiveness and listening to the read aloud helps her stay focused. It's learning without textbooks, which is huge for me. And it can be used to teach character.

To solve my problem, I decided it would help me if I found some things about each book I would like to learn. For example, for All Those Secrets of the World, I would like to learn more about American culture during WWII and I would like to learn more about the Chesapeake area. We're working on this book right now and I've been doing my own research in these areas. We've been listening to the Andrews Sisters, which is fun for me.

Character lessons are always helpful for my children, so I have figured out a couple of character traits to work on for each book and found picture books to illustrate that trait. This project enables me meet one of my goals for Abby.

And finally, I've given myself permission to leave off lots of projects and lapbooks. We are in a busy season of life and I simply can't be all things to all people. There's plenty to learn from the manuals without added projects, but we still like to use supplementary books and will continue to check those out from the library. In fact, I've found a new library with lots of good books to go with each FIAR book.

I'm happy to say that I'm lovin' FIAR once again!