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Am I the only one who gets a deep feeling of dread when I look at the next page in the guide and see that Grandpa's Box is not on the schedule? My kids get really upset and it throws off the school day. They LOVE Grandpa's Box and don't understand why I can't toss the schedule to the wind and read i...

It's getting better! Part of the problem was having him do cursive on regular notebook paper. I've started having him use handwriting paper so he can write bigger and he has the dotted lines to guide him. I've been kind of afraid to do less than the guide says on the assignments because I know it's ...

I know he presses hard and makes his letters tiny, so his grip is probably tight. When I sit right beside him and continually remind him to make his letters taller, he does much better.

I may have my friend who tutors check his grip because I don't know how to correct that.

My ds8 is thriving in Preparing, loves the books, narrates better than his older sister (also in Preparing). Handwriting is his downfall. He forms his letters carefully and neatly, but he is so slow and it is torture for him. I don't know how to help him because I have the same problem. When I write...

Our collegiate dictionary is a little too much for my kids to use efficiently during vocabulary study. Can anyone recommend a dictionary you have used with your kids during Preparing that is more kid-friendly but still actually has the words we need?

It occurred to me this morning that I could just ask dd! So she looked through and decided that #72 looked good, so we started there. It was still easy, so I might just alternate for awhile until it gets challenging.

Hi,

I'm on my 3rd day of Preparing Hearts with my 4th and 3rd grader. All is going well so far, but my 4th grader thinks her dictation is WAY too easy. It's just right for my 3rd grader. I think she needs her own dictation sentences, but I'm not sure where to put her. Any "placement test" ideas?

After today, I am feeling a lot better. She is so diligent with her written work, and enjoyed her science experiment. She couldn't give me a history narration, but she could answer questions about the reading, so it's not as over her head as I feared at first. Narration is going to be really hard fo...

I addressed the issue of my 9yo in the thread about delaying Beautiful Girlhood. She's good, really. She practically inhales books and writes well. Back to 7yo. She will be almost 8 in the fall when we start, an older second grader because of her birthday. It has always been in the back of my mind t...

I know that we're online and none of you know my child, but I can promise you that my oldest is very well placed. She reads so much that I can hardly keep her in books. Her previous homeschool work has been challenging, and she transitioned into classical school easily this year and is the top stude...

I chose this guide because she solidly placed there academically, and she will be in the age range by fall when we do our real start. As a bonus, she gets to study astronomy, which she's been begging for, rather than repeating the Land Animals book, which she covered in minute detail in 3rd grade. I...

My 7yo is doing a trial run of Bigger this week to see if it will be a fit for next year. (Why the trial run this week? Long story lol.) She enjoyed starting cursive, spelling and grammar came easily, and she complained that there wasn't enough math (she loves her long Saxon worksheets from school!)...

My oldest is doing a trial run of R2R this week, to see if it will work for her 5th grade year. Today went really well, except we didn't get to the history project (my fault). She narrates easily, dictation was a breeze, and I had to make her stop doing math because she still had other boxes to comp...

Thanks!

I have a book in which each chapter is a mini-biography of a famous composer. It's at the right reading level, so would it do for the biography portion of DITHOR? Or does it need to be one biography?