The following is excerpted from Getting the Most Out of Beyond Five in a Row from Beyond Five in a Row, Volume 1. © 1997 by Becky Jane Lambert, all rights reserved.

Welcome to Beyond Five In A Row. You're about to begin a wonderful adventure in education built around the concept that the single most important lesson any child can learn is to "love learning." We strongly believe that if a child successfully learns this lesson, all the rest will follow. Beyond Five in a Row is a literature-based unit-study built around strong, traditional and delightful children's books. In this volume, you will be exploring two books of fiction and two non-fiction selections. These four books will take one semester to complete.

Unlike Five in a Row, you will not be studying specific academic subjects on specific days of the week. Instead, you will be guiding your student into a variety of areas each week. Some weeks will have a heavier emphasis on science while others may have greater emphasis on the fine arts, for instance. What you study each week is a function of what chapters you happen to be studying. Overall, your student will receive a comprehensive education in five principal areas: History & Geography, Language Arts, Science, the Fine Arts and Human Relationships. There are several areas you will need to supplement including: Arithmetic, and the narrow language arts specialties of grammar, spelling and penmanship. These subjects do not lend themselves to a unit-study approach and you'll want to be sure to include them each week.

With this type of curriculum, it is not possible to simply read one chapter every day and do the associated lesson activities. Some chapters are brief and you may very well finish the chapter and all related activities in one day. Other chapters, however, may be either lengthy, or filled with an unusually rich field of learning possibilities. These chapters may take nearly a week to explore thoroughly. Your overall goal is to complete the volume in one semester; approximately 90-100 school days. On average, you'll find yourself covering a chapter every two days or so, but part of the joy of unit study is allowing students to follow their interests. You may find some lesson activities such as a personal journal or a leaf collection for instance, that continue for weeks as you pursue your studies. Other activities may take only 30 minutes to complete. Remember that our goal as educators is not to cram facts into children's brains long enough to successfully complete a test on Friday. Our goal is to help children fall in love with learning, to discover the joy of reading, to learn how to find answers and use research tools, to learn to think critically and to assimilate knowledge in a way that is both relevant and memorable.

Inherent in any unit study is the need for good supplementary resources. You'll be making regular trips to the library as your student moves from topic to topic. While Beyond Five in a Row provides a tremendous amount of specific, factual content, it will not be enough to satisfy your student who wants to pursue a subject in greater depth. Find a librarian with a heart to serve rather than one who is simply good at checking out books. Explain your needs and what you are doing and then let her know how much you appreciate her support in helping you locate good resources. Bake her a pan of brownies occasionally or bring her an inexpensive "cash and carry" rose from time to time, along with a nice note or card of appreciation. A good librarian is a tremendous resource to any educator!

You will also want to invest in a good set of encyclopedias. That does not mean spending a great deal of money! We recently bought the entire World Book Encyclopedia on CD-Rom for our computer for $20 after the mail-in $20 rebate offer from a local computer store. And of course you can locate used encyclopedias at bargain basement prices through classified ads, flea markets and used book stores. For 99% of your student's needs a 1977 encyclopedia works just as well as a 1997 edition. Expect to pay between $25 and $150 for a set. A good encyclopedia, dictionary and atlas are the links between your curriculum guide and the library. These resources do not by any means replace the need for regular trips to the library, but they will substantially reduce the frequency and urgency of those trips. Your student can immediately begin to branch out and enrich their studies using resources at hand. Later in the day, or later in the week when your schedule permits, you can go to the library to look for specific books on the topic.

You will also want to look for opportunities to continue building a personal resource library as time, finances and space permit. Don't rush out and try to fill your library in one week. Get to know the used bookstores in your area and watch the sale tables at major bookseller chain stores. You can often find wonderful resource books for 25 cents to a few dollars. If it's a quality resource, buy it whether you need it now or not. You will eventually appreciate having a book on trees, another on our solar system, etc.

You will discover that each chapter includes a "parent summary" for your benefit. If you wish, you can "assign" the chapter reading to your student and use the parent summary so that you'll know what has been covered in the chapter. But we also encourage you to read the chapter aloud with your student. You can take turns reading, listen while he reads, or read it aloud for him using your best dramatic voices, vocal energy, etc. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Most likely you'll employ a combination of all these approaches.

One important tool for helping pull a unit study together is a time-line. You can purchase good timelines or you can make your own. A time-line can be as simple as a notebook, binder or scrapbook with each page representing 50 or 100 years. You may want to create an adjustable scale time-line covering 100 years per page up until perhaps 1700. Then cover 25 years per page up to 1850 and further expand the detail of your time-line by only covering 10 years per page through the year 2000. Whether you purchase a time-line or create your own, the important concept is to help your student begin to locate the place that each person or event has in history. Everything is either before or after something else. The Spanish Armada was sunk after Columbus discovered the new world, but before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Each time your student writes down an entry or looks up a date in his time-line, he will begin making those associations of time relationship. He will also begin to discover what things were happening parallel in history; what music was being written at the same time as which war was being fought all while certain scientific discoveries were being made. The world is all inter-connected and time-lines are one of the very best ways of grasping the big picture so important in a good education!

You will find an essay question idea for every chapter. We strongly believe that learning to communicate clearly is foundational to any good education. Your student may or may not need to understand the complexities of physics in his chosen career field, but he will need to be able to communicate with others through both the spoken and written word. Use these essay questions as a starting point. Encourage your student to write frequently. If you have another idea for an essay question, by all means use it instead. Assign the length of each essay based on your student's abilities and age. Younger students or students with learning disabilities may only be able to write 1-3 paragraphs. Older students, or those who excel in writing may want to write 1-3 pages or more. Feel free to adjust the assignment length as you find out what works for you. And don't feel obligated to use the same length every day. You may assign a 100 word essay one day and a 500 word essay the next.

You will find Career Paths to explore from time to time. You may choose to study each of them to a limited degree, to at least learn more about what various professions do. Others that particularly spark your student's interest may merit much deeper investigation including a field trip to meet and interview someone in the profession. Again, use the curriculum in a way that works for you and your student.

You will find that most chapters have suggestions for internet websites to further enrich your student's studies. It goes without saying that if you have internet access you'll want to use wisdom and supervise your student's access to the wide variety of sometimes unwholesome material available in cyberspace. On the other hand, there are wonderful resources available from businesses, agencies and universities that can provide a rich resource for learning. Use wisdom and learn about the internet yourself rather than just turning your student loose with a modem and web browser!

At the back of this volume, you will find a Scope and Sequence detailing the various academic subjects covered. We suggest you mark off each subject as you complete your unit and keep this list as a part of your student's permanent academic record. You may also want to keep a variety of other documentation including your student's essays, reports and projects. You will also find a certificate of completion for you to sign and date when your student has finished this volume. Again, keep this certificate with your student's permanent academic file.

Thank you for selecting Beyond Five in a Row. We hope you have a wonderful time using it. If you have internet access be sure to visit our website at www.fiveinarow.com or visit our folder at America Online (keyword PHS) to exchange ideas with other Beyond Five in a Row users.

Now, welcome to the wonderful world of Beyond Five in a Row. You are the leader for this adventure, so gather the children around you and have a great time!

Becky Jane Lambert
April 1997