The following is excerpted from Volume 1 of Five in a Row. © 1994 - 2008 by Jane Claire Lambert, all rights reserved.

Select a book to study with your student. There is no right or wrong order for covering the material, although in the appendix, you'll find a suggested semester reading calendar for the fall term which links several stories to the appropriate seasons of the year.

Some teachers will choose to purchase each book as a valuable addition to their permanent library. Of course, any public library should have (or be able to request), each of the titles in this book.

Important Note: Please take the time to read the book aloud to your student each day before covering the lesson material. Five in a Row was designed and tested to be read daily! The repetition is essential to your student's learning process, and the time you spend reading together is just as important as the lesson material itself.

In the appendix, you will find a sample planning work sheet for Who Owns the Sun? You'll also find a blank work sheet which you can reproduce and use. Or, feel free to design your own worksheet. The sample sheet shows how to correlate the teacher's guide suggestions and plans to the five days of the week you will study each particular book. Some teachers don't use planning sheets at all, working directly from Five in a Row. Do whatever works for you!

Notice the lesson plans are outlined briefly and give you a quick reference for the week. Not every lesson suggested in the Teacher's Guide under Who Owns the Sun? is listed. There are too many lessons for one week. Choose the ones that are especially suited to your student. The subjects Applied Math, Science, Art, etc. do not have to be used in the same order every week. The plan is completely yours. Use only the subjects and topics you wish. Remember when planning that this curriculum builds on itself. Whatever you study on Monday will be recognied by the student when you read the story again on Tuesday. When you read the story a third time one Wednesday, the lessons you introduced on Monday and Tuesday will not escape the student's notice as he hears or sees the examples again. So each lesson, except the one for Friday, gets at least one review and some lessons get four reviews. The topics you think are the most important therefore should be scheduled toward the beginning of the week. It seems as though Art often gets tagged in the Friday slot. Be encouraged to use this topic earlier in the week, perhaps Wednesday, so the student can study the pictures for several days as he hears the story read and reread.

Also in the appendix, you will find a sheet of story disks. These are quick, symbolic representations of the nineteen titles included in Five in a Row. They may be used to make a Literary Map. First, color the disk and put the name of the book on the back of the large map of the world (a laminated map is more durable) and by placing a velcro dot on the disk and the other dot on the map where it goes, you can quickly take it off and put it back on each day. Teacher's tacky putty will also work, and you or the student can locate the disk and attach it daily. Eventually you will be able to track the stories you have read all over the world. Even young students will learn some map basics. Any stories with fictious settings can be placed in the margins of the map as the "Land of Make Believe".

There is also a blank page of disks in the appendix so that you can make your own pictures for these stories, or replace a lost disk. You might also like to make disks for other stories you read outside of Five in a Row.