New to Homeschooling

[bnickles]

Hi. I am new to homeschooling and trying to navigate all these curriculum websites. I have a daughter who is 7 and a 9 year old son. I'm looking for a complete curriculum to get us through the rest of this year. I would like something that has some worksheets but also some flexibility. I'm completely overwhelmed with what to choose but was recommended a few things including Heart of Dakota. Could you please give me some information on your complete program, what I would need to purchase, what is not included (I think I saw you don't include math?), and pricing. Thanks so much for your help.

[psreit]

Heart of Dakota is complete if you use all that is recommended in the guides. You can use your own math, but there is math that can be purchased with the HOD guides. You should look at the placement chart to know where to place your dc. http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php
After you look at that, if you have questions, feel free to ask. If you go to the home page, you can see what topics are covered in each guide. If you are only wanting something to finish off this year, you will not complete a guide. Each guide is written to cover at least one full school year. If you choose HOD, you can begin a guide now and finish it next school year. Each guide builds on the one before it, so when you finish one guide, you simply move on to the next. Lots of wonderful book choices and such good Bible and character training along with strong academics. It's also great, because everything is already planned out for you. HTH

[StephanieU]

So, the first stop would be the placement chart (http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php). Once you determine what guide each child places into, then you can go to that guide's page. Based on age alone, one or both of your kids might place into Bigger, so I will use that one as an example. Here is the Bigger website: http://www.heartofdakota.com/bigger-hearts.php. At the top of the page, you will see the link to Bigger Hearts Packages. This is where you would go to see what items you need to purchase. A little below that you can see the links to the first week, the introduction, and At a Glance. I highly recommend looking at these before going to the packages page to see if you think HOD will be a good fit or not. HOD is complete with options for math and language arts. But, it does allow a family to use what they are most comfortable with as well as what they suggest. On the packages page, you should see an economy package for history. This package will include the guide (with daily lesson plans so there is basically no prep work), all of the history books, and sometimes other subjects that only need one book. Then, there are packages that include science, read-alouds (which expand the history), math, and language arts. Depending on the Bible study planned in the guide, there might be books to purchase for that as well. The extensions should only be used if a student places into a higher guide but is using a lower guide for any reason. I would say history, science, math, and language arts are necessary. Bible and read-alouds are very beneficial, but if money is tight, you can skip them.

I hope that helps some. If the placement chart isn't clear for your kids, you can post about what they are reading, how well they write (copy work, handwriting, etc), and others can help with placement.