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For my older 2--grades 5 & 7.
RtR the older will do some extensions not all. Also she will do Shakespeare and Philippians as written. She will do Phonetic Zoo daily instead of dictation and our own grammar program and math u see.
The 5th grader will do RtR as written except she will not do shakespeare. She will not do the Philippians study because we have a thorough Bible study and memorization program that we do at our church. Like her older sister she will do Phonetic Zoo instead of dictation and will work through first language lessons and math u see. Both girls will do the IEW writing lessons. I'm planning to teach this to a small class of students so we will likely work in a different order than in the manual.

For my younger 2--grades 2 & 4.
Bigger Hearts. We are going to do this as written except add in our own grammar math and spelling.

For story time selections I was contemplating reading aloud all of the story time books from RtR to everyone. Is that a totally bad idea? Time is limited because I work at 2:00 four days a week so we must be done with school at 1:30 at the very latest. I will not have time to do 2 read aloud story time sets. If I don't read the RtR books aloud what should I have the older 2 do about getting them read? I already suspect that they will be doing plenty of reading with the history books and dither books.

As for storytim, read Tue ones frok Bigger and maybe let the older two take tunrs reading aloud to eacj other or both read storytime silently. There are far totoo many skills beingtaught through storytime in Bigger yo go so far above their hheads as well as reading books the Bigger hearts kids need to not have heard already once they reach rtr. The rtr stoeytime box is optionally an I box so id do that.

As for plans. My 6th grader will do CTC as written except math mammoth for math.
My 3rd grader will do Bigger as written. Both will do DITHOR.
My Kindergartner will do The Reading Lesson and some mathbased on Singapore and rightstart methods. And we will do some fun stuff as time aallows. I don't do much formal stuff at this age. Probably some alphabet books dealing with art and. Bible and such.
my 2,almost 3 will do his usual...uprooting our day

I would read the Bigger read alouds to the younger kiddos-there are a lot of important skills going on in that box for Bigger as the pp said. If they are able you can have the older kids read the RtR storytime to themselves and then you check in with them after, using the directions in the Storytime box in the guide to follow up with them. That will save you time but still give them the benefit of those great books. From the HOD website regarding the read-alouds for RtR: "If you are already doing a read-aloud package with a different Heart of Dakota program, then you may choose to have your 5th - 6th grade student read these books on his/her own instead. A daily schedule is provided. In order to read these selections on his/her own, the student should be a strong, independent reader that is not overly sensitive. Otherwise, reading aloud is the preferred method for using this package. This package is highly recommended, unless you need to economize."

Just to double check - you used the placement chart to place them, didn't you? That was so helpful to me - especially the first page of it. If you did, then it sounds like you have a good plan in place. I agree with the pp that I would read aloud the Bigger Hearts Storytime books instead of the RTR books. The RTR books would be quite lengthy to read completely aloud, and your older dc can easily read them on their own. My oldest did last year, and loved them! I did the follow-ups with him after he had finished reading. Reading Bigger Heart's Storytime aloud, on the other hand, will help that age of dc be able to better do the follow-up skills in the box, and will be very manageable and enjoyable to read aloud. At the younger age, the dc benefit more from hearing the read alouds at their level than the older dc who are capable of reading the book on their own would benefit. I too work part time and need to finish school by early afternoon. This is what we have done, and we have really enjoyed it! HTH! I think you will truly enjoy HOD - it has been such a blessing in our home.

In Christ,
Julie