YEA! LHTH playgroup - and a question

[Heidi in AK]

Hi friends! I'm so excited to say one of my friends is interested in my recommendation that we use LHTH for a 2-3 year old boys' playgroup! She approached me about doing one, and I told her hands-down that LHTH would be the EASIEST to administer and do!

I have a question, though. How would you do it? We will meet once a week. Of course, my hope is that as she considers doing this with her DS, she might become hooked on HOD. I just love it so (and am super excited about Missions to Modern Marvels, although we're probably ten years or so away from it!) and gush about it.

We would meet once a week, and I think that because the boys are so little, we don't need to move quickly. However, I don't want to do EVERY day in the manual, at the same time. Would you do one or two lessons from each unit, one unit a month (each lesson each week), or how would YOU do it? Both boys are about 2-1/2 to 3, and we'd like to have a couple more boys too. We'd probably do this throughout the school year.

My DD would tag along, but honestly, she'd probably sit in the corner and read a book.

[Heidi in AK]

I am thinking of doing one day a week, just working through the guide sequentially, so that we are doing LHTH at a slower speed. That way, if my friend wants to pick up LHTH (which it does sound like she's intrigued), she can pick it up and not have to back up and redo any units. As the boys get older, we can revisit later, if we need to bump it to 2x a week initially, and then 3x a week, as they both get older.

[Mercy]

I tried to do a search for you, but i couldnt find it anywhere....some people have done LHTH as a sunday school curriculum. I know I have seen this mentioned. If you can find a few posts on that (or anyone willing to share...) That might help you plan.

Sorry I couldnt be of any more help...

[MelInKansas]

I'm sure you will get lots of better ideas than mine. But what I did with my DDs, because I wanted to do school 3 days a week but for my 4YO (at that time) wanted to be able to get all the way through LHTH before we did her K year the following year. I would look through the whole week and basically pick out what we were going to do and what we were going to skip. Meeting once a week I think it might work to do a unit in 2-3 weeks and you'd just have to skip parts of it. Depending on how large the group is, there are certain things that wouldn't make a lot of sense anyway. You couldn't really have the children act out the story, for example. Some of the crafts, having them find and cut out things of a certain color or a certain number of things, you would probably want to adapt so things were pre-cut, or mostly cut giving the children a little bit of cutting time, but to help more than 2-3 children with cutting and pasting.... sounds like trouble to me.

It would be fun to hear from anyone who has, or knows someone who has, used it for Sunday School, that would be a perfect fit for what you are looking for. The thing is, in once a week, you just can't expect to cover everything in depth, because you don't have enough time. Reading and depicting the Bible stories, the rhyme in motion, maybe the Hide and Seek page if the children would be ready for that, those are some things you could easily do. I hope you figure something fun out!

If your friend decided to pick up doing LHTH herself, I don't see that she would have to go back... but that's me.... I skip over things and I have no remorse. I think my 4YO (who is currently 4, we did LHTH when my older 2 kids were 4 and 2, so the then-4-year-old is now my 6YO) has learned the skills needed to move on to LHFHG in K next year... even though I skipped parts of LHTH. We didn't get as in-depth with the Bible portion, that's probably what we mainly missed out on.

[mom23]

This sounds like so much fun! I agree with the idea to maybe spend a couple of lessons per unit-combining things, skipping where necessary, but honestly I think most things would easily adapt to this type of setting.

[Heidi in AK]

Thank you so much, everybody. I did have a little heartache spreading each unit out over five weeks. It's a good idea to look for the highlights and use them in our time together.

[Carrie]

Heidi,

This is such a fun idea! We've actually had many families do LHTH in all sorts of settings, even though it was written with the home setting in mind.

Depending on how much time you will have when you meet once each week, you could either do one entire day's worth of plans or two day's worth of plans. I wouldn't do much more than that or you'll lose your kiddos' attention.

In order to get the full benefit of LHTH, you won't want to randomely be skipping activities in order to squeeze more in during your sessions. This is because everything within HOD has a specific purpose and skill attached to it, so in order to be ready for LHFHG, you'll want to do LHTH as close to the way its written as possible. Otherwise the program will lose its flow, its sequential building of skills, and the thread of God's continuous story through His Word.

If you will be meeting with your friend each week, you have two routes you could go with LHTH. One would be to not worry about tying your own LHTH schedule to the weekly meeting time but rather just progress with LHTH on your own at home and make the time you meet be a review. Little ones love to repeat activities, and it can sometimes be hard to tie yourself to someone else's schedule. In this way you won't end up hodge-podging your way through LHTH but rather will consistently move forward without skipping or feeling rushed.

Another option would be to designate which day or two of the unit you will be doing each week during your meeting, and then make sure that you have done the previous days in LHTH prior to your meeting time so that you are on the right unit and day to match with your meeting time. If you do go this route, I'd plan on doing LHTH 3 or 4 days a week to allow yourself plenty of time to get in the days needed to be on track prior to meeting with your friend. This would also keep you steadily progressing forward and would keep things in order sequentially.

Anyway, just a few thoughts as you ponder a plan.

Blessings,
Carrie

[Heidi in AK]

Ok, Carrie, thanks for that! I can go over this with her and decide what we want to do!