heartofdakota.com

Hello HOD Homeschoolers,

What was YOUR week Like?

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Week in Review http://bit.ly/1Jis1tu

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 15
Bigger Hearts for his Glory: Unit 26
Creation to Christ: Unit 9

I remember when I first started out with HOD and it would drive me nuts if my guides weren't all on the same Unit/Week. Ha! No problem with that now

This was our last week of school. My two younger kids completed their guide. My oldest finished up through Unit 31 day 3. It was a fantastic week!

One thing that we always do at the end of our year is to go back through and look at everything the kids accomplish. That is exactly what we did on Thursday. It was so a joyous time!

This week though, I have cleaned off the shelves from all of the old stuff and put out all the books for next year. It seems like my kids like this as much as me. Even with my oldest, she only has a few books left for CTC. I really needed to use her box that came with RtR so I actually took most of the books off the shelf for CTC - all the ones she finished - and then put those away but put out everything for next year. She was very interested!

And finally, I had to package up some of the DITHOR books that we weren't using. Now that my youngest is starting Bigger, there are a lot more school books for her level! My school shelf just can't accommodate them at this time. I told my husband that what I really want is some shelving dedicated to school only. One of his goals is to put shelving up in our closet. We have a VERY long closet off of our bedroom - about 17 feet long - it goes the length of the room. He has talked for years about putting some shelving up in there. That would be wonderful! I would ideally like to get all the school books out of the basement and set them up on the shelf up there organized by year. I could also keep all the DITHOR books up there too along with the extension. I know that my kids are obviously not in the extension range. However, I usually buy the extensions because I plan for my kids to read them as they get older. And that is exactly what happens. Last summer, my oldest dd read several of the extensions from Bigger. I am not sure what her choice will be for this year but I just love having a fantastic library on hand. I personally struggle with using the public library because there is so much trash there. If I buy all of the books from the guide for the storytime, the read alouds, and the extensions, then I know I am stocking my house with good quality books. I also have bought several books from the $5 book list. My library doesn't seem to have too many of those. I even use the $5 book list for when I choose books to read to my kids at night (I read to them every night before bed). For me - I love that I don't have to do any research to find great books! And I love how easily my kids can benefit from the research that Carrie has already done.

lissiejo wrote:
I remember when I first started out with HOD and it would drive me nuts if my guides weren't all on the same Unit/Week. Ha! No problem with that now

This is exactly what I am working toward for next year! I love that my oldest has 4 units left to finish in CTC starting next year. Plus, I am probably going to push youngest to complete Bigger over 4 days a week instead of 5. This will give everyone a few months between switching up to the next guide. I love that I will have a few months to dedicate to each child as they switch from one guide to the next. It will be awesome and a huge blessing to NOT have them in the same guide!

We are not stopping school for the summer. And my kids are all in different weeks of their guides, just like yours. I do like it. Switching at different times makes it easy to just add in one new guide, though the number of different daily schedule/routines I have written out as we change from one guide to the next is a bit mind-boggling.

Like now, my oldest is in CTC unit 11, my 2nd is in unit 20 of Bigger and my 3rd born is in unit 26 of LHFHG. We started LHFHG last August, Bigger in October, and CTC in March. If I keep going through most of the summer we will finish LHFHG probably in August, finish Bigger in October or November, and CTC I don't want to predict right now Some people plan far ahead but I am not one of them.

Nealewill, I have a couple of bookshelves in my walk-in closet and that still is not enough. I now have tubs for each guide and corresponding books (LHFHG and LHTH are in one HOD box, and they fit nicely in there). I don't have as many tubs as guides, so I have to switch the whole thing out. With Preparing I left the books that weren't currently in use in the tub, it seems like there were just so many little books in Preparing. It doesn't seem quite so bad in CTC.

This isn't a week in review, just to chime in and say thanks for sharing! I will miss these posts over the summer, it seems they don't keep going as so many people are not doing school. But I will be, plugging away at it and will see you all again in the Fall! Have a great summer break!

Melissa - I really do wish we could school over the summers. I started out with those intentions when I first started homeschooling. But we have SO many kids on my street, that as the kids got older it was almost impossible for them to not feel sad when they see all of their friends playing outside and then they would have a full day of school. I have also thought about doing 1/2 pace but then it seems like we just feel disconnected from the material - especially since they can easily go much faster. What we started doing now is we complete 1 or 2 genres over the summer, we do some math review, they do spelling a couple times a week, we are studying Latin and Greek so they look at that 3 days a week. And then my kids get 1.5 hours of TV a day IF they read for 1.5 hours (so they get 1 minute of media for every 1 minute that they read). The reading they do in DITHOR counts toward that time for media. But it is really fun to see the books they pick and it gives the kids the freedom to learn about what they want. My son is really into these "I Survived...." books right now. He just read one on the Shark Attacks of 1916. It was a little bit intense but boy oh boy did he like it. He was even able to orally narrate it back to me! He struggles with language so oral narration has always been a struggle. Next year I am really looking forward to seeing that area grow tremendously when he does Preparing

There are several kids in our neighborhood, and my 6YO, who loves to make friends, has befriended a few of them. It is already getting so hot here that the kids aren't outside all day. My kids are also sold on the idea that we get lots of days off when those kids have to be in school, therefore sometimes they have to do school when the other kids are off. I won't lie, this June so far it has been hard for me to keep on track. June is usually the month I take off, but because of having the baby in January I am plugging on through. There will be a vacation and perhaps an additional week off in August.

In the summer we do a full school day only if there isn't anything else going on. Tomorrow there is a get together with our homeschool co op group and we are not going to do school at all. Some days, just due to slow starting, we don't even finish it all and then especially my oldest will have just a few things to finish up on a day off (or when I am doing day 5 with the others). My goal is to get 9-10 weeks of our guides done in the 13 weeks of summer. I just hope I don't get burned out! It sounds like you have a good plan and keep your kids on track, plus you haven't had the time off for a new baby like I have. There's something to letting it just feel like summer for a little while, I always remember that time being really special at the point my kids are not (too young to have a job yet... though they may start working for me in cleaning the house and stuff, above and beyond the regular chores they already do).

Like I said, I think you are doing great! I can't imagine working part time and homeschooling, it seems like you do it so well.