Beyond Five In A Row: Thomas Edison

We love Five in a Row.   Have you seen all of the books we have rowed so far?  I have had Beyond Five In a Row sitting on my shelf for the past year and decided we would delve into this summer.   I had plans of doing all of the activities and lapbooking elements, but with the way our summer is working out, I decided to just READ the book we had chosen aloud and pull out a few good activities from the manual.    That was a GOOD DECISION, especially since I was doing this with a six and nine year old.  

The book we chose was Thomas Edison, Young Inventor.   As we read through each chapter (usually at lunch each day) I would read a little bit from the teacher's guide as well.  Some of the things we learned:
 

 Thomas Edison was homeschooled from a young age... his mother set up a laboratory for him in their basement.

Tom's questioning was essential - my children learned that asking questions is good!

Thomas Edison published a newspaper at a young age and worked with the telegraph.  He was a Morse Code expert.

Thomas Edison is so much MORE than the inventor of the light bulb!  

I would highly recommend purchasing (or obtaining from the library) the FIAR manual!  It has so many valuable cross curricular ideas and bits of information I had not even thought about.   I cannot tell you how much I learned about Edison in this study!  

Homeschool Share has some wonderful lapbook pieces for this if you are going to spend a lot of time on Thomas Edison.   Our goal this summer was just to expose the children to good books and lots of reading -- I tried to keep things simple so we eliminated paper and projects!  

Next up for us in Beyond FIAR:  Betsy Ross, Designer of our Flag!