FIAR: Rowing Our Favorite Stories - Ugly Duckling

First of all, what is FIAR? I came to know about Five In A Row(FIAR) here.  It is a detailed review on FIAR. The original FIAR curriculum has given a list of books and one has to choose a book from the list and read it with the child for five consecutive days. While reading the book, you have to do activities on literature, art, math, science and social studies one per day.  This is called rowing a story. The rowing is an interesting opening for many topics. You can find the list of FIAR books here.

 I haven’t yet bought the curriculum.  But I started collecting the stories as could as possible.

People who work on five in a row curriculum may wonder when they see the title.  Ugly duckling is not in the FIAR books list.

The idea of rowing a story is excellent.  Isn’t it? So, I started rowing some of my little one’s favorite stories.

Ugly Duckling is an evergreen children’s classic and it opens the gate for endless activities. We have the 'Ugly Duckling' story book, but my little one loves this one for the beautiful illustrations.  You can also download the story here. Honestly, we didn't row a story for 5 consecutive days.  My little one is on summer vacation and she is a kinda “Give me more.”  So, we rowed this story only in two days.

Literature art:

Reading a book with beautiful illustration itself is a great literature art. Then, what else have we to do?  We named the farm birds and farm animals like duck, goose, hen, rooster, turkey, horse, sheep, horse, pigs …..  We also named their young ones. We watched a video on sounds of animals.

Maths:

 I drew a picture of a duckling with dots from 1 to 25.  My little one connected the dots which she always loves.  I also made this worksheet with duckling and ugly duckling to introduce the concept of skip counting like 1, 3, 5 7… and 2,4,6,8…

We also did some patterns using the duckling and ugly duckling pictures.

Art:

My little one colored the duckling picture she connected.  Then she called me, “Amma One more connect the dots duckling.” I drew it and gave her.  After connecting the dots, she started coloring it in a hurry burry.

“Slow. Slow.  Color it neatly.”

“Amma. It’s an ugly duckling. It should look ugly.”

Science:

My little one pasted the pictures for ‘life cycle of duck’ then I wrote the descriptions.

Since, the ugly duckling travels in different seasons, four season activities are also best to do.  But, when I started doing the four season activities, my little one said, “It’s boring.” So, I didn’t continue it.

Social Studies:

I told my little one about Abraham Lincoln who wasn't good looking but became one of the greatest US presidents.

Small World Play:

I finally set a pond in a tray for a small world play. A frozen pond was the first sensory bin I set for my little one before I started blogging. I set a pond with turtle, tortoise, fishes, frogs, lotus and of course a duckling.  I also set a frozen pond with a swan.

Our Weather Unit

My little one has become a weather reporter now days with reports like “It’s going to be a hot sunny day today.” Or “It’s only partly cloudy. There won’t be any rain today.” 

So, I thought of making a weather wheel with the symbols for sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy, partly cloudy and snowy (Though there is no possibility for snow here).

My little one loves to change the dial every morning according to the weather outside.  I also included a rotating bar with a clip to indicate the temperature outside.

Since, there is no enough rain this year, I thought of making a rain in a bottle.  I did this experiment to teach my little one how it rains.  I poured the hot steaming water in a jar. The blue hot water represents the sea.  Steam filled in the jar represents the clouds.  I placed a plate with ice cubes on the bottle. Water runs down in sides of the bottle represent the rain. 

A cool experiment to teach the water cycle also.