Starting Bigger

[Nealewill]

I am very excited - my son will be starting Bigger in March! I have decided that the time has come for me to split him and his sister up. Realistically, when we first started using HOD this year, I knew he was on the edge of doing Beyond or Bigger. I decided to put him Beyond with his sister because I wasn't sure how running multiple guides would go (I have an older child in Preparing). I am finding it is actually a breeze . I am not saying my day isn't busy but it is very double. After praying more and more about it and feeling like I was holding my son "back" because he was just ready to move on, we (my husband and I) decided to move my son to Bigger. And by moving him starting in March, we can do 3 days a week of Bigger for all of 2013 and then move to 4 days of Bigger for my son in 2015 to get him ready to start Preparing when he turns 9 in 2015. And by splitting my youngest two children up, I can keep my youngest at 3 days a week for the rest of Beyond and all of Bigger. I am very excited to split them. Currently, they do reading, spelling, and math separate anyway. My husband does bible with them. And then I only spend about 30-45 minutes max a day on the other boxes. So I figure I may only have an extra 30 or 45 minutes of teaching in my day max. I figure if we go at a little bit of a slower speed doing only 3 days a week for all of 2014 but we continue to do math 4 days a week (my math doesn't line up with the guide anyway), then there is only 1 day a week where I will have to do both guides in one day - that day I will skip math LOL. Voilá - hardly any change in my schedule for then for 2014.

[MelInKansas]

So, I am trying to make sure I understand what you are going to do:

3 days a week of Bigger with your son and 3 days a week of Beyond with your daughter - but you plan to do full days of them on just 3 days instead of spreading it out so you do 3 days of work in 5 days? You are right in that the day you do Beyond and Bigger both will be a VERY full day (as both children will need your attention for the full time they are doing school). I am wondering if there's not some way you could spread out the work, do a few boxes each day, rather than try to do the whole day's work at once. It would be something like 1/2 speed only a little faster. It might make your kids happier to just do a little each day (I know it would mine).

Bigger is more work than Beyond, by quite a bit. Bigger full speed was a challenge for my DD and for me, with a busy household. We loved it, don't get me wrong, and you may be better able to manage it than I was .

[Nealewill]

Realistically, I probably will be spreading it out over the 5 days rather than doing 3 full days. I guess my plan is to get 3 days of each level completed a week. And then we will do math for 4 days a week instead of 5. Both my son and daughter have some strengths where they fly through different things. So for math and spelling, they are flying through. My kids are to the point that when they write their sentences after they do their spelling list, I only have to write on the board the words they can't already spell rather than the entire sentence. Even with the weekly grammar lesson in Beyond, I rarely write their sentences in full for them to copy. I only write down words they don't know how to spell. Honestly, we only went to this method because they have been writing other stuff, like when they are playing or wanting to write something for my husband, and they do a pretty good job with spelling on there own. So neither one of them are taking as much time in this area. Also, my two younger kids are my 2 children who work really hard to get done quickly. My oldest drags her feet terribly. If this was my oldest and youngest whom I was trying to do Bigger and Beyond with, this would be a disaster! But my middle child, he pushes through anything I give him and with a good attitude. Already, my kids kind of know their schedules and usually these two are pretty much on it and work hard. Before we came to HOD, we had a lot more "workbook" type items we would do for phonics, practicing handwriting, and a few other things. My middle child especially would race his sisters to the table to get done first! He is a little bit competitive. My youngest would also come to the table and she would just work meticulously on her stuff as well. Normally for these two, I am the one telling them they need to take a break because their hands are getting tired - they don't want to take a break because they just want to get it done. And for me - I think that is where the blessing in this family dynamic will be. My son who is moving into Bigger will work so hard until he is done because he knows, once I am done, then I don't have to do anything else for the rest of the day And he just seems ready.

Plus, I really just need to split everyone up. I need them each to do their own thing. Because my youngest DD is gifted, she can understand anything I give my son. Because she has excellent fine motor skills and is very artsy, everything she does looks better than my son's. However, just because the her stuff looks better than her big brother's stuff doesn't mean that my son did anything wrong. Her stuff will probably ALWAYS look better than my son's. And that is okay!!!! So another big reason that I want to split the two up is because as they get older, I do NOT want anyone comparing themselves to each other in school at all. My son will notice that the things his sister does sometimes looks better. Well, since she is gifted, she does most things better - almost as good as my oldest who is 3 years older. This is not the norm. So I am sure that as my youngest gets older, her handwriting will look better, her art projects will look better, her writing and spelling will be better, and so on and so forth. Again, my son just normal for his age and I think he is on the smarter end when compared with peers. But I just don't want him feeling inferior because he got compared with a child who is gifted and who is really about 3-4 grade levels ahead of her age.

And as for my youngest child who is gifted, there is really no reason to move her up with her brother. She is 6 (just turned 6 yesterday). If she wants to learn more - she can - different building sets and challenges, another language, origami, ancient Chinese writing (that is what the specialist recommended) or just cursive . But I am not going to move her up. While she can perform the work required in Beyond easily, even if I double it up, you can tell that she is tuckered out after 2.5 hours worth of school. She completes her day well. But I just don't want to put that much "school" on her. I would like for her to be able to sit down and read for fun if she wants, build crazy inventions if she wants (this her passion, making inventions out of legos with moving parts), do mind bender puzzles (she LOVES these), get out the paint supplies and paint a beautiful picture, do word search puzzles (she loves this also and completes adult words search puzzle books regularly). I want just want my youngest to be herself, not stressed about school, and loving learning but loving it away from her brother.

(okay - sorry for my mouthful - these were all the things that went through my head for a couple of weeks before I made the decision to separate my two youngest).

[Nealewill]

So - I am on my break here and was penciling in my schedule.

Monday: We have co-op but in the evening, my husband will do the left side of the guide with one of these children and I will do the left side with other. I call the left side the "fun side" so the kids will love it.
Tuesday - Friday: everyone does reading and writing. We aren't using the emerging readers for either child but reading tons of stuff from the library. My middle child will start DITHOR with his big sister next fall. I will also alternate days with the children from bigger and beyond for the left side.
Tuesday - Thursday: do the right side of both guides in 1 day. Since reading and math are done 4 days week instead of 3, I won't be using the guide specifically for that. But everything else on the right side will be done in these three days. However, this leaves me with Friday to make anything up that didn't get done on the right side. But hopefully I won't need it.

[MelInKansas]

That all sounds good and very do-able. I was just thinking that having 3 full days of work and 2 days of no work would be more difficult for my children to handle than having 3/5 of a day's work each day. We take off our co op day, though I could easily fit 1/2 day in if I needed to, but I just don't feel the need right now.

I am actually doing Preparing 4/5 speed (math every day) which I never would have come up with on my own but my DD kind of started it. I like that day 5 is mostly independent work for her and therefore much easier for me. And 4/5 is a more do-able amount but still makes me feel we are moving through the guide at a good pace. Since her sister is in Beyond, they finish their units at the same speed. (LHTH just happens whenever).

[Nealewill]

I agree - my kids would act terrible on the days had no school because there would be no structure. And they would act terrible on days where they did have school because they want to be lazy like the days the don't LOL.

Sounds like your dd is moving right along though! My dd needed the 5th day or we just didn't get all 4 days completed in a week until about unit 10. My oldest is on unit 17 now. I was even really worried about the increased reading with the book Little Miriam. We set a timer for the 9 pages she was to read and she finished in 30 minutes and with a good attitude. So I was very grateful for that. Seems like HOD is just perfectly staggered as the kids grown. The beginning is a little less work so you can build those skills, the middle is more intense with volume, and then at the end it is very similar in level to the next level up. Seems like what I was all worried wasn't even worth my time of doubt.