Customer Reviews

Before Five in a Row

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Before Five in a Row is a sweet book that presents many ideas for the parents of preschoolers to have fun teaching their children about the world around them. This is a wonderful guide for both homeschool and non-homeschool families.

The first section of the book offers educational activities centered around classic children's books such as GOODBYE MOON and CORDUROY. Based on these books, you will take nature walks with your child, play fun games, act out stories, do simple science activities, and eat fun foods. These activities lay the foundation for future educational situations---providing simple math, science, reading, and language arts readiness.

The last section of the book offers general activity ideas not centered around specific books.

These activities are not just wonderful educationally, though, but relationally as well. They are opportunities for the child and parent to build beautiful memories and strengthen the child-parent relationship.

As a busy mom of 4 children, this book reminds me of what a special time these early years are without making me feel guilty for not being "super mom". We homeschool using the Five in a Row curriculum with our older children, and Before Five in a Row is a nice go-along with our older ones' educational process. My 2 and 3 year old sons love when they get to do "school". In fact, my 3 year old often begs us to do a Before activity with him because he loves them so much. Even his big sisters like to join in with many of the activities such as when we went berry-picking to go along with BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL.

The Lamberts also offer a website with message boards for Before Moms to "meet on" and exchange ideas and advice. There are many great articles there related to the Five in a Row books, education, and parenting in general.

I HIGHLY recommend this book. You and your family will be blessed by its use in your home.

This book is a jem! Although, I wish the price were about [amount] instead of [amount] plus s/h. Fortunately, our library had this book. Since I was able to sample the book for free, I have made the decision to buy it. The Biblical application is worth [amount] in itself. My three year old is just beginning to understand the Bible so the lessons are appropriate for her, but my 22 month old has no interest at this time. I have done unit studies for Good Night Moon and Courdoroy. The studies were done without the purchase of extra materials, we used items around the house, like my box of extra buttons for Courdoroy and paint from previous art projects for Good Night Moon. The studies take about 2 hours to complete, and there are 24 lessons. Aside from the main book read in each lesson, the author gives reference to older books that are hard to find, like I cannot find The Adventures of Little Bear, so I improvised and found another book entitled Little Bear. So far, I have not had a problem finding the other books in our county library system. I really like unit studies because we live such busy lives and the unit studies help pull many sujbects together in one place. Some of the subjects covered are science, art, biblical application, language arts, prose, math, geometry, zoology, botany, memory games. Although these are mature topics, the author does an excellent job in explaining them in preschool terms. The idea is to stimulate a child's interest in a life-long learning process. My children get so excited when they see and hear me talk about preparing for the next unit study. They really have absorbed and shown deep interest in all the material so far. Life is busy and this book has it all. I do not spend my precious time preparing an original unit study when this book has it all there for me! Thank you, Jane Claire Lambert, you are a jewel!

This is an absolutely wonderful, easy-to-use curriculum for little ones, ages 2 to 4. My son isn't even 2 yet, but he LOVES the stories that are used in this book! I have even been able to incorporate some of the activities suggested, and am looking forward to incorporating more as he gets older.

I feel this book can be used by Christians and non-Christians alike, as yes, there is a Bible reference section, but it is short for most stories, and does not get referenced in any of the other sections (i.e., literature, drama, science, health, math), so non-Christians can skip this section without detriment to the program.

Most of the books are still available for purchase, there are 5 that are out of print, but can easily be obtained through your local library or inter-library exchange program.

The stories are gentle, fun, and in some cases, might allow you to share pieces of your childhood with you child (for me, Cordoroy was a childhood favorite that I can now share with my child), and the life lessons can easily (and enjoyably!) be taught.

The second section on learning readiness also has a lot of useful ideas that I look forward to using in the coming months.

This is a good way to do some homeschooling with your child and I highly recommend this to anyone!

This book is a great because it brings books alive as a parent uses the suggestions to make each book more enjoyable. The only problem that I found was a few of the books cannot be purchased easily, but any library should be able to get these books on loan. The books that go along with Before Five In A Row are wonderful for a 2 year old. Worth every penny for a parent to spend quality & quantity time with a child.

If you are looking for a text to give you ideas that you wouldn't come up with on your own, this may not be the book for you. I'm sure that "Before Five in a Row" is intentionally simplistic because the audience IS children ages 2 - 4, but I wish I had realized that before I bought it. The book choices are awesome though! On another note, I absolutely love "Five in a Row" which is very throrough and creative and teaches me lots of things I didn't even know!

While some reviewers correctly note that most of the ideas in B4FIAR would be easy to think up for a creative parent, the benefit of the guide book is that there is NO planning required! Simply choose a book from the table of contents, read the guide and go. Libraries carry these classic books, though we have purchased most of them over the years.

For busy out-of-home-working parents who what to be able to have a special book time with their little one without much planning, and for busy families with lots of children, this guide saves valuable time which is better spent WITH the child and rather than researching FOR the child!

- homeschool mom of 5

This is a great resource if you are interested in sharing good books with your children. My only disappointment (and a rather large disappointment at that) is that several of the titles are out of print--Yellow Ball, My Blue Boat, The Quiet Way Home, The Red Carpet, and Jenny's Surprise Summer. Five out of twenty-four titles! Almost one-fourth of the stories are available for purchase, but only if you want to pay $20-$60 each! I feel that if BFIAR was updated to include all books that are in print (maximum of one to two that are not), it would be worth the full price. As it is, it's only worth 3/4 of the price.

This is a wonderful resource. I only wish it were twice as long. I have been using it for 6 months now with my 2-3 year old and 4-5 year old. Upon first glance, this book could really seem useless to the untrained eye. It could also turn out bad if the mother were using it with a two year old not ready yet for discussion! I tried this book on my son when he was only two and he hated it! He'd rather just read and play with his trucks. But I picked it up again when he was four and my younger daughter was 2 and it has been a wonderful treasury. This is the time in my life when life stops, the clock is turned off, the academic meters are shut down, and my children and I just enjoy one another. This book is a treasure and a secret. My older son loves to go on rabbit trailes, and this is the time that we take to just talk about all the things that interest us. My daughter loves the cuddling, and the questions that are on her level. She is so proud to answer a question. The books are all God-honoring, healthy, interesting books. And- we really have learned a lot. We have noticed things about books that we did not used to do..now we are learning to really get inside a book, and observe and watch all the gifts that God has given the authors and illustrators. And most of all we really do feel closer because of it. I highly recommend this book. Use it alongside your "academics" if you are too goals-oriented like me, to drop formal academics all together. It does not have to be "all or nothing." Enjoy!

Before Five in a Row has been a great start to "homeschooling" for us. It isn't really a homeschool curriculum, and I don't consider my 2.5 year old a student yet, but the format of the learning ideas in BFIAR has taken away many of my homeschooling fears. It has given me an ounce of experience in organizing and preparing for lessons, and the confidence to say "hey, maybe I actually can teach my child!" Each lesson in BFIAR is focused on 1 particular book, some of which are expensive/hard to find due to being out of print. This is frustrating, but if you're determined and patient enough you will be able to obtain a copy of every book (through libraries, ebay, amazon, garage sales, thrift stores, etc). If not, no big deal...just skip the lesson for the title you can't find and move right along. My son loves digging deeper into the themes and illustrations of each book with me, as opposed to us simply reading the book without the guidelines and ideas presented in BFIAR. This is such a fun way to spend precious time cuddling, reading, and talking with your child and you will be amazed at how your child will grow intellectually! I recommend BFIAR to anyone with young kids, regardless of future plans to homeschool, private school, or use public schools.

I purchased this "curriculum" sight unseen for my then three year old and almost immediately wished that I had saved my $25 for something far more worthy.

While most of the literature selections for B4FIAR are wonderful it is the activities themselves that were a real turn-off. They are common sense and rather unimaginative to say the least. I would have to say that at least 90% of the activities were things that I would have done with my son even without the book. I don't need a "curriculum" to tell me to drop blueberries into a pail after reading "Blueberries for Sal" or to talk about the weather and clothing choices while reading "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

In my opinion, save your money, buy some good children's literature and come up with your own activities... they're bound to be at least as creative if not more!