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I think it's a great plan myself! My 6 yo son needs more time before and with Beyond and perhaps Bigger... so I'm going to take it slow like you (4 days a week) and see how it goes. We can always move to five days a week at any time if we needed to speed things up again.

That IS a wonderful surprise! Congratulations!!

We took two weeks off for the first time ever! We usually school all through Christmas week but DH actually had time off this year... a first for us. So we've been enjoying lots of time together! We've finished 18 weeks of lessons so it actually was a nice "semester" break for us. We start back up o...

Halfway done with a 9.5 year old! It's been a great fit for him. Our younger son is more immature, in general, so we may space things out so he hits it at age 10 instead. Lots of growth in the next few years, however, so we'll play it year by year and adjust.

- Bronwyn

Sue, Feingold was a gift from God for us. The changes in our son were enormous and immediate. BUT... and this is the big BUT... my DH was fully supportive and eager to try it. We have continued to change our diet over the years to a healthier one (lots more fruits/veggies, whole grains, etc.) but on...

I so agree! My husband asked each of the boys what he was thankful for today and after the usual answer of "apple pie!" my eldest announced it was "homeschool". This is the first year he has ever been truly challenged and happy in his schooling. So I also am especially thankful for Heart of Dakota t...

We're similar to some of the others: early to bed, early to rise. Bedtime for the boys is 7 pm and 7:15 (they bathe back to back) and DH and I are in bed at 9 pm. DH and I are up at 5:45; boys are up between 6:00 and 7:00. We have, so far, not had the need to get them up earlier than they naturally ...

Thanks ladies, for the encouragement! The details, Julie, on the "why" helped enormously. He didn't mind cutting it down to five sentences and he managed to include all the important stuff... he just went off and wrote longer biographies of the main characters to present to his father later "in case...

We're in the middle of Week 15 of Preparing Hearts and it's going wonderfully. We've seen some great growth in skills for our son! We're currently doing written dictations that are 3-5 sentences in length. Last week, DS9's dictation was 7 sentences long. It was great with lots of details and explain...

I have a similar age difference (9 yo and 6 yo) and in the same grades but we start official kindergarten at age 6. :) We're doing Preparing with the older and Little Hearts with the younger and it's going *wonderfully*. We've done three weeks now, which in the scheme of things isn't long, but it's ...

I also pre-read it when my eldest was 7 and decided to wait. We read it together fairly recently (he's about to be 9) and he adored it. It is ODD though. I didn't know it was a movie but we live in a bubble here. :D I should add that he likes odd books and stories with twists. We have read all of Na...

Wow, that makes perfect sense. I just *knew* you would have the information somewhere but I wasn't finding it. Thank you! I'm definitely going to spend some of tomorrow reading "ahead" so to speak!

We're working on an Adventure story this week for my 2nd grade son. We did the Story Map on day 3 and he loved it... but I was so amazingly lost on the "mood" box. I have the definition in the appendix but a list of possible moods in literature would be a huge help to me. (And yes, I'm feeling fairl...

Thanks ladies for that quick answer!

It is what I thought we should be doing but one does know how we like to complicate things.

I'm sure this is fairly obvious but I thought I'd better ask to make sure I have it right! We'll be doing Preparing Hearts with my oldest son, who will be 9.5, starting in August this year. We'll be using DITHOR alongside it. My question is books to use with DITHOR. Is the suggestion to use one of t...