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Let me preface by saying that I realize I'm looking waaaaay too far in advance, considering my daughter is 5 and in LHFHG. But she got me thinking, as she was looking at the catalog saying, "I'll do Beyond in 1st grade, Bigger in 2nd grade..." etc. As she is at the youngest end of the guides, would we be "skipping a grade" if we went straight through the HOD guides at full speed?
We plan to homeschool year-round with shorter breaks, as the summer here is excruciatingly hot anyway, so even going a little slower, we'd probably still catch up due to the year-round aspect. I wouldn't want to slow her just for the purpose of slowing, but only if she needed it.
Her hypothetical progress looks like this:
Age 5 - K - LHFHG
Age 6 - 1st - Beyond
Age 7 - 2nd - Bigger
Age 8 - 3rd - Preparing
Age 9 - 4th - CTC
Age 10 - 5th - RTR
Age 11 - 6th - Rev to Rev
Age 12 - 7th - Missions to Marvels (did I get the name right?)
Then the 4 planned high school guides would through age 16 and 11th grade. Would we be done? Would we do something else when she's 17? Not sure I want her going off to college when she's just turned 17. Wow, I can't believe I catapulted her that far into the future.
Some of you have children at the young end of the guides, and some have been using HOD since K, so I'm hoping to ease my mind a little. I realize that life can happen in between, but assuming nothing stood in our way of this schedule...

I'm hoping others chime in for you. I'm up and everybody is sleeping, so I thought I would respond. I don't think you will miss a guide, but you will be finished with the guides quicker. Maybe you could stretch the last guide out to cover 2 years. Your daughter could even take some college courses online or at a local community college. Just a thought. We are doing LHFHG for 1st, Beyond for 2nd, etc...only because it fits better for my boys that way. My daughter is 5 and completely ready to start LHFHG, but she has a twin brother that I don't think is quite ready. I might start in January anyway and see how he does.


Tracy

We were/are the same way but when we started Beyond I realized we needed to slow down. So we are doing it 1/2 speed.
He needed to slow down though and I want him older in the older guides so he gets the benefit of them. Of course I have a boy so I think boys need to be older.

There are lots of ways to do this to stretch the guides out. My preference is to do a modified LHFHG for K - and then use it in it's entirety as written with 1st grade options for 1st grade. This allows us to use Beyond for 2nd, Bigger for 3rd ... but even more importantly, they won't be in Preparing until 4th. We are doing Preparing this year for my oldest son, and it is an amazing, very thorough program. I know that my oldest son (who has always been advanced) would not have handled Preparing at full speed as a 3rd grader. It requires quite a bit more writing than Bigger, and fits him perfectly this year, but last year it would have been too much.

A lot of women slow down at Bigger, and take it half speed. Some women start LHFHG in it's entirety doing it only 4 days a week and continuing to do Beyond and Bigger also at 4 days a week until Preparing. This adds over 100 days - close to a school year. The child will get to Preparing later and be more ready for it. I really like that idea ... and may do it with my two youngest. Preparing has a 4 day school week - and we have grown to love that schedule. It opens up 1 day a week to get errands done ... and do field trips. We also plan on adding in a co-op day next semester. In order to do that, though, we all need to be on the 4 day a week schedule.

Each family has different dynamics ... you'll figure out what works for you!

I agree with what everyone else has posted...you may find that you need to slow down a little bit once you get to Beyond and especially Bigger. My oldest DS was in 2nd grade when we did Bigger and I found that I had to slow it down and do it over 1.5 years. He is what I consider advanced...reading at about a 9th grade level now, writes really well, etc., BUT he was losing his love of learning b/c it was pushing him too much. Bigger is a HUGE jump from Beyond, especially in the areas of writing, narration, and comprehension. We have been doing Preparing now for the last part of 3rd and this first half of 4th and it has been a GREAT fit for him! I couldn't imagine if he had done it for the first part of 3rd instead--I think he would have ended up disliking school instead of enjoying it. I have also done LHFHG over 1.5 years with my second DS to slow him down and it has been wonderful for him. I am very confident that as he begins Beyond in a few months he will be READY for it! HTH you some!!!

Well that cinches it for me. I am glad I slowed down Beyond this year. We may also do Bigger at 1/2 speed. It's working so well for us with Beyond and I know he can't handle anymore he needs to mature. So that would be Beyond for 1st and 2nd grades and then Bigger for 3rd and 4th. And that would put him at the top end of the guides when we hit preparing.
Now his younger brother may be a different story but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
Thanks to all who answered.

So the consensus seems to be not to use the guides exactly as written but to slow them down somewhere along the line -- the kids typically can't keep up if they're at the young end? That goes a little against my 'check the box and get it done' method, but I guess I can adapt. I understand there are a lot of variables here and I don't yet know my children's academic capabilities, but I just wanted to make sure that if we don't need to slow down, we'd be okay to do the guides and not be "officially" missing a grade. Thanks to all who responded!

Kristin, I know we're tracking at the same speed, and let me say your DD is precious!!! Very meticulous, huh?

We are going to do LHFHG, Beyond, and Bigger in 4 years, completing that at 3rd grade. That is, if Shana doesn't jet me straight through them faster.

I am at your end with younger children. I just wanted to chime in and say you should just see my home school journal with all of those well laid out plans as you are making, and that I made two years ago when my oldest was 6.

My strategy for school is fairly simple at this point. I try to teach them where they are at, and this is not always easy to do but well worth the effort. I try to let them go at the speed they can do; after all this is one of the many reasons I choose to home school. This means that I teach not at 'grade' level, but at ability level. It means I modify slightly teacher's guides as needed to meet ability, rather than grade level. Does this make sense? It means my 8 year old is doing extensions with Bigger because he loves to read and can easily read at that level. It also means I wouldn't dream having him past English 2 for 2nd grade. It also means that he is currently doing 1st grade spelling, but moving rapidly. Does this make sense? Yes, the guides will need to be used for your dd as she progresses according to what she can do. You might find some year that you do need to slow down since she isn't ready for the level she has reached; at other times you may find yourself condensing because she is more than ready. Does this make sense? I am new to HOD, but I have been using this style with MFW, prior to HOD, for 1 1/2 years and it is working well.

Enjoy your dd; 5 is such a blessed age.

In Christ,

Thanks, and I completely understand about meeting the kids where they are. There is a very good chance I will have to slow down at some point in the future. I was just looking at the big picture, which is the way I look at things. I guess just looking at all the guides it seems like there could be a year missing if you are going by grade level. Thank you so much for your responses, I understand now. One could either go slower and not do the guides exactly as written, do something else for a filler year, or start college early. This is assuming no academic reason to slow. My husband is all for finishing and sending them to college at 16-17

Ladies,

This is a great question, and one that we have definitely pondered! If you do happen to have a 5 year old in LHFHG, and you use a guide a year every year it is possible that you will finish the HOD cycle by the end of your child's junior year. It is good to keep in mind that it will be a rare family who will not be touched by hardship, transition, or life's surprises and is truly able to keep the pace of completing a guide a year every single year that their child is school-age. So, it is often a huge blessing to have a bit of wiggle room already built in for you. Many families do not have this wiggle-room and would desperately love to have it!

I mention completing the guides, because families may in their quest to stay on the guide a year plan, omit whatever was not finished in a previous guide to move on to a new guide the next year. This pattern can leave a child feeling overwhelmed and unprepared in starting a new guide, so often it is better to stay-the-course and carry a guide over into the next year to finish, which can also draw out time spent in a guide and is something to consider.

With these thoughts in mind, I wouldn't make a specific plan to stretch the guides out as plans can often change. If your child and you as the teacher are able to complete a guide at full-speed, I would definitely do it. You will know if you ever need to shift to half-speed or need to slow a guide down. For those with combining scenarios, we will sometimes slow a 5 day guide down to 4 days a week to allow a younger child to stay with an older child, so this is one scenario in which a bit of slowing down is often recommended. Another time that slowing down is recommended is if a child is on the youngest side of a guide and seems to be struggling a bit with the workload. Or, if a family is large or has time-consuming health issues, we may advise slowing down a younger child for a time. One other time that slowing down a 5 day plan to a 4 day a week pace would be if other children in the family are using HOD guides that have them on a 4 day a week plan and the family desires all kiddos to be on a 4 day plan. However, if the child being slowed down is on the upper end of the age range of a guide, we would not recommend slowing down for that child in this situation.

Another thing that we would not recommend, would be to plan to use another company's program in between your HOD programs simply so your child will not run out of HOD programs before he/she graduates. We often talk to many parents who have switched to something else and then returned to HOD only to discover that their child lost the momentum and progression of skills that we were carefully building from one HOD guide to the next. When they returned to HOD there was much reteaching of forgotten skills that were not focused upon in their year off. Using HOD guides in consecutive order will gently and progressively move your child toward the needed skills for upper level work.

Of course, you are always in the driver's seat and may choose any program you desire for your kiddos from year to year. I just wanted to share a bit of perspective on reasons not to panic and overplan what you think may be a gap year that in most cases will never actually come to fruition.

In those rare instances where a child begins the HOD path as a 5 year old and truly completes a guide a year every year through high school graduation, you have a couple of options. You may either graduate your child early, as he/she will have completed his/her high school requirements, or you may use that final year of high school to further pursue studies of interest, apply to colleges, retake the ACT or SAT if desired, begin a program such as College-Plus and start earning college credit while still in high school, travel abroad, work in missions-related work, take some courses at the community college, do an apprenticeship, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless! From our perspective it is better to have a year left to pursue these things later than to plan on stretching coursework out in the early years. Leaving yourself wiggle-room to stretch as the need arises is a wise option.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Carrie. I find it reassuring to know it is okay to finish at the end of junior year! Maybe I was just looking for permission to think that way.
We may or may not end up finishing "early", but knowing our year-round schooling schedule and the fact that it is not in my personality to let life's changes stop school (as it wouldn't if they were in a public/private school setting) it is reassuring to know we can just chug along and not force a slow-down. We have a small family - 2 girls, not combining - so really our only factor is whether or not they can handle the work (right now the answer is yes, we'll see in the future...).

Thanks again for all the helpful feedback! Carrie thank you for taking the time to answer personally.

KristenBeth,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You are right that once your child has completed the high school level HOD guides, he/she will be ready for graduation. Each state is different in its minimum age requirement for graduation so that is something to look into as you plan ahead. For example, South Dakota (where I live), has a minimum age requirement of 16 for high school graduation. Most states are similar. As long as your children have completed the required coursework and meet the minimum age requirement for your state, they can graduate early if you desire for them to do so. Colleges want to see a transcript of high school coursework and an ACT or an SAT score for admittance. Neither of these are based on age either.

Blessings,
Carrie

On the flip side of slowing down, we are actually trying to plan to get done a year "early" with high school (counting high school from 8th -11th) and not graduating them, but letting them take college classes nearby, getting core credits out of the way, having some sort of job to have them start slowly learning about handling finances (beyond the basics to real world stuff), and just letting them have a chance to explore the areas they think they want to pursue. Having internships or apprentice-ships (is that right?) or a mentor in their field would be awesome! and if we can get them where they are going "half speed" in 11th grade in order to start some of these things earlier that would be even better.

Obviously, life circumstances happen and sometimes they have to slow down, etc but we also school year round and I think this will allow us the opportunity.

MomtoJGJE wrote:On the flip side of slowing down, we are actually trying to plan to get done a year "early" with high school (counting high school from 8th -11th) and not graduating them, but letting them take college classes nearby, getting core credits out of the way, having some sort of job to have them start slowly learning about handling finances (beyond the basics to real world stuff), and just letting them have a chance to explore the areas they think they want to pursue. Having internships or apprentice-ships (is that right?) or a mentor in their field would be awesome! and if we can get them where they are going "half speed" in 11th grade in order to start some of these things earlier that would be even better.

Obviously, life circumstances happen and sometimes they have to slow down, etc but we also school year round and I think this will allow us the opportunity.

This is our plan with Wyatt exactly. My niece and nephew who are going to college now would tell you they sure could have used a TON of extra time preparing for college and for young adulthood. ACT's, SAT's, scholarships, college campus visits, interest inventories, grants, apprenticeships, financial training in the use of credit cards/checkbooks/finances/savings, home and auto upkeep responsibility, studying for clep tests, and a ton of other life application skills come to mind as I think of this final year. It gives me peace to know I'll have that time.

In Christ,
Julie