Together or apart for DITHOR?

[mrsrandolph]

My 8 & 9 year old are together in the Guide. They just began Preparing. Their math and spelling I do separately. She is 9 and he is 8. Complicating things a bit is the fact that she is a fast reader and he has some learning issues, though he is a good "reader", his other skills (retelling, comprehension) lag well behind her. Plus, he is a year younger.

Of course, combining them for DITHOR would be easier for me, but I wonder if I'd either be holding her back or pushing him too hard. Thoughts?

[MomtoJGJE]

I'm in the same boat. I want to combine them, but not really sure how it works when they are close in ability, but not at the same level really. The only thing I've figured out is that they will be reading different books, so that might just solve the issue by itself. It might not end up being a competition because of that fact. So maybe, even if you put yours in the same reading level (like both doing level 2) you could do different books. I'm at least fortunate that mine will be level three and level 2

Now as far as difficulty in all those areas, my oldest really struggled, and still doesn't like, reading. So we just took things very slowly. It's taken her through all of Bigger and a good portion of Preparing to do just level 2. We did the first few genres at "half speed" which means that I split the reading up into 30 days instead of 15 (and I picked shorter books too, so she was only reading a page or two at a time) and did the book work every other day with just reading in between. Then I still did "easy" books (like the ones that are supposed to only take 10 days) but paced them at 15 days, which upped her amount of reading to 3-4 pages daily. When I did that I started taking two or three weeks off in between genres to give her a bit of a break from reading. Now she has 3 genres left and has no trouble at all with the reading or the work. Oh, and at the beginning I wrote it for her or at least wrote it down so she could copy it. I'm just pacing her out now to where she'll finish at roughly the same time with level 2 that Grace finishes with the ERs so that they can be combined in DITHOR. Grace is a much better reader right now than Jayden was, so I'm not anticipating having to start out so slowly with her. I'll probably just start out doing the shorter books at regular pace for her.

ETA: posted submit too early I meant to say also that one thing you could do is do it half speed with the younger, having her read shorter passages every day and narrate on the days you don't do the guide, but have the older only read every other day when you DO the guide. That way they'll still be together, but the younger one won't have as much reading each day. Do that for a couple of genres and see how it's working out.

[Robbi]

I would keep them together as far as genre and day but they could each be at their own level books. Even if you did same level books, I don't see how you could do it completely together because they will have to read aloud to you one at a time. So if that time has to be divided, they might as well be at own level books. This is just how I thought thru it, don't know from personal experience! HTH

[my3sons]

Super thoughts here already! I agree - different books chosen according to each of their reading levels will already help. I would probably only do the "All Levels Together" days together, and do the rest separately. This will not take long, and it will help you choose a pacing on those individual days befitting each individual child. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie