I'm thinking of getting this for my soon-to-be 11yo (it's for 8-12). Any thoughts? Thanks!

We're starting this next week :-) I have all 3 volumes and all the books for it (we're graduating from FIAR that we've done for nearly 4 years now). It's unit studies based on books. They're chapter books, and you can either read together, have your child read to you, or have the child read to themselves. There are activities suggested for each chapter, so a chapter could be covered in as short as a day, or be a week or more, depending on how deeply you delve into the topics. I really like that you can focus on your child's interests/needs with this program. It gives some light structure (plus you don't have to think of all the activities yourself!) but lots of flexibility. My DS is REALLY looking forward to starting! You can also check out the message boards (no need to register to read) here: http://www.fiveinarow.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi and read more. HTH!

I'm going to use it with my 8 and 9yos - we've already been through Before FIAR and FIAR. We finished using the Scholastic Literature Guides for the first four Harry Potter books and we're halfway through Roar which is a Narnia unit studies (not as thorough as FIAR but we come up with ideas as we go along).

Cool - thanks! I am going to order Vol. 1. :)