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I've done a month of Bigger Hearts for His Glory, and we are having such a great year! I'd love to add more to my testimonial at a later date, but I just couldn't wait to share some of the exciting experiences we've had so far. I'd like to point out some of the "Bigger" things in BHFHG, that symbolize the growing up children are able to do at this stage of learning... things that help them move toward being more independent in parts of their learning in such a wonderful transitional way. Can you tell I'm excited about this phase?

First of all, as always in Heart of Dakota's curriculum, the history is very living, and written in such a narrative way. My son begs me to read more of "A First Book in American History" each day (to which I smugly reply, "You'll have to wait until school tomorrow!" Ahhh, such joy in anticipation!). Also reminiscent of the earlier curriculums... great timeline activities, hands-on history activities, and personal application devotional study.

Now, here are the great BIGGER parts... "older" geography activities (today WE took bites out of graham crackers to shape them into the 7 continents, name them, and the oceans... I say "we" because I "helped" with this one... who can expect their child to eat graham crackers alone?)... other BIGGER parts... history notebooking (LOVE this addition), vocabulary card making (using contextual clues and a dictionary to do); more "grown-up" art exploration, poetry study, Bible study and verse memorization. Also a BIGGER addition... memorization of one verse of a hymn each week from Hymns of the Heart. It was pretty exciting to see my kids belting out from memory every verse of "Holy, Holy, Holy" at church last week!

O.k., now for the Language Arts and Math side. Still the same great options of reading as always. I personally really appreciate this because one of my sons is ahead in reading... this helps out because I can just do his matching level in Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. Still the nice options of spelling. Still the same great open-endedness of Storytime read-alouds - all genres covered. Still great simple hands-on math activities that add a fun energy to math. Still wonderful living Science selections to read accompanied with engaging experiments my son can do rather than just watch me do them.

Now, here come the BIGGER additions... cursive that lives up to its name of being "Cheerful", read-aloud questions that go deeper, science notebooking (LOVE this), daily grammar by R & S (I didn't think my son would really get into grammar, but he really likes this - in his words, "Mom, I really like this - how about I just do this on my own and you check it later?" Another BIGGER addition we enjoy is more narrating on various subjects. Finally, dictation... which is showing itself to be a very valuable tool in helping my son to become a better speller.

I can sense a change coming on (isn't that a lyric to a song?)... my son is getting BIGGER... he's growing up and doesn't need me hovering over him to do his school. (Thank you Lord - with 3 boys, one being a baby, my "hovering" time with my oldest needs to come to a close!). I even sheepishly confess that at times he takes the teacher's guide and just reads the plans to move on independently while I'm busy "hovering" over my second son doing Little Hearts for His Glory and attending to our baby. I think he could probably do most of it more on his own, which I'm sure we'll be transitioning into in the next curriculum by Heart of Dakota... Hint, hint... write like the wind, Carrie!

So, my short testimonial became a long one. To those of you who have stuck with this rambling testimonial... what stamina you have shown! I'll bring it to a close by saying... We have a BIG LOVE for Bigger Hearts... it does NOT disappoint!

I couldn't have said it any better than the previous poster! I have been using this for 1 month also with my girls grade 3 and 4. We are having the best school days ever, and the "extension" books provide just the right challenge for my 4th grader, while the curriculum "as is" is perfect for my 3rd grader.
The girls have been enjoying our school, and I have not felt frazzled like I have in the past with other complete curricula. I think Carrie has been blessed with the wisdom of knowing just how much is enough for a day
I actually have time to attend to my 8th grader while she works on her curriculum, because I'm not spending all day trying to coordinate everything or dealing with busywork.
I sorely wish I had discovered Heart of Dakota a few years ago, but I'm glad I spotted it this year! I also heartily recommend Heart of Dakota to new homeschoolers over any other prepared currculum on the market.

Isn't it funny how the older ones just sort of take off? It's great to see, yet a little sad too. They grow up to soon! My son often uses our teacher's guide-he's not doing a Heart of Dakota curriculum this year- to find his assignments for the day. I am thinking I may just write up his assignments by week and put them in a notebook just for him. That way, he can go at his pace and not spend so much time waiting on me while I finish with younger sister. His increasing independence is a good thing, as I have a son who will be starting Kindergarten next year and there will be 3 to teach.

I am using Bigger with my 8 year old who is on a second grade level. We are both loving it.

It seems to really connect with Matthew who loves history and geography. Before Bigger Matthew was always begging to do science experiments and I dreaded them because they always seemed to long and involved and you had to go out and get strange things that no normal person keeps on hand. Enter Bigger. The science is the perfect blend of reading, notebooking and simple experiments that we both love.

This is our first year to use HOD and at first I was a little stressed out that we did not seem to be able to get it all in in one week. After reading how others are doing with it , hearing how long it takes them and the ages of the children doing this program I realized how truly amazing it really is. It can be tailored to fit a varity of levels and you can move at your own pace. We do a wide varity of other things during our school week incuding a two hour science class on Wed. afternoons, a 1/2 day co-op once a week, geograpy club once a month, book report club every other week and weekly piano lesson. So if it takes us more than five days to finish a unit so what. We just move ahead and enjoy the process. It took me awhile to be okay with this but now I have peace about it and am happy with everthing we have done with Bigger.

Also I would just like to say that Carrie and Mike are wonderful the way they take care of all their HOD users. Carrie is very quick to answer questions wether on the forum or through e-mail.

Durea
Matt's Mom