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I will have a kindergartener this fall. I see a lot writen about "half speed". I was going to hold off doing Little Hearts with her until 1st grade, but now I am interested in starting it this fall and using it for 2 years. How exactly does that work? Do we only school a few days a week or do we only do half the day's work? How will I finish the kindergarten choices and transition to the 1st grade? Should we do subjects like math and phonics everyday? Thanks for any input.

I would be interested too!
I have 2 going through beyond and I am thinking the youngest might benefit from 1/2 speed!

There are different ways to do this, but the best explanation I received was to plan for 17 units one year and 17 units the second. This made so much sense to me! Another way to do half speed is to alternate pages. Monday- pg 1 of day 1, Tuesday - pg 2 of Day 1, and so forth.

I'm planning to do Bigger this year with my 2nd grader at half speed this way. The only difference for me is we will be doing full speed math and grammar, so for third grade we'll still be doing the history, but move into 3rd grade level math and grammar.

I make a lesson plan, which basically consists of page numbers and book names, on a separate page for each week. This will really helps with the half speed because I will do two weeks at a time to make sure I don't miss any boxes.

I hope this helps ladies!

I stressed over this a lot because I wanted to do beyond at 1/2 speed. It just hit me one day to get through 17 lessons this year and 17 next. And Math, phonics/reading and that stuff everyday.

I am considering finishing LHFHG half speed and then starting BLHFHG half speed if he still is not ready - he is having a hard time listening during storytime or anytime I am reading to him without a book with pictures - we we do the history portion he is constantly asking me who or what the picture is - but I know he is skilled in all the Little Hands so I went with LHFHG

I'm and still up at odds with it all. He can memorize the memory verses, he can do the math, he is doing good in the phonics, his handwriting is poor but I can see improvement...so I don't know I keep going back and forth on what I think - I just need to stop and break from thinking on it and pray!

There are so many options. I did LHFHG with K options 3 times a week in ds his K year and went to 4 times a week in his 1st grade year. With a summer break right in the middle somewhere. We did not spread it over 2 years, because he could handle doing the full days, no problem! We did do the 3R's daily and ended up using some sticky notes for some of the different subjects. When he began 1st grade we switched to the first grade options for the 3R's, because he was done with K options. When he finished LHFHG we took 2 weeks off and started Beyond! I have learned to let the kids lead in their learning (it took a while) and if they need more time we slow down, when they do fine we keep going and move on!
So for your little ones the Lord will guide you as you look through these ideas from other Mom's and see what would work best for your little one. And don't be afraid to modify for your child's needs
Success and hope your family will be blessed with HOD and this message board as mine is.

It can look however you want it to look... Some people do one page one day and the other page the other day... I'm doing a modified half speed because my 5yo loves workbooks so we do fine motor skills every day (I can post our "schedule" if you'd like)

One thing that I'm going to do is only go half speed through half of LHFHG, finish it out full speed, and do the first half of Beyond half speed, then finish it out full speed. I'm still only going to do one days worth of FMS every day, so she'll have some of the 1st grade options "left over" to finish in Beyond... while she's finishing those we will not do copywork and we'll start copywork as soon as she finishes the workbooks.

Doing it this way (half speed for the first half, full speed for the last half of both LHFHG and Beyond) will do two things... it will give an "extra" year for her to mature to be ready for Bigger, plus it'll let her be going full speed at the end of the guides, which is really important in my opinion for moving up to the next guide.

Hi there! We have gone half-speed for a portion of time with many of the guides with our different aged dc. Half-speed can "look" different in different homes, and there is no one right way to do it. I thought these links may be helpful...

How does half-speed look in your home?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5600&p=41232#p41232

When to Drop Back a Guide and When to Go Half-Speed:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9000&p=65878#p65878

HTH!
In Christ,
Julie