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Fggggg

Also, I'd appreciate if someone who is past these units( 15-16) would tell me if the content of what he wrote is about right , it sounds interesting, but like I said I haven't read any of his books

This is preparing? We aren't up to that yet, but he is way beyond where my 4th grader is in terms of writing. She can't write that much detail yet. Also, his handwriting is beautiful. It looks like he's doing well. And it sounds like you guys have a good routine going for now that helps you get some school done.

The only other thing I thought of was could your 4th grader do LHTH and LHFHG with the younger ones? It might be fun for all of them, and you would feel better that it's getting done. My 4th grader is perfectly capable of running LHFHG for us if I need her to. I usually do it, but sometimes there are things that I have to get done right away. (I work from home and we have a 1 year old.)

I can't give any advice on how to do the guides when sick, but I know I had the worst morning sickness with baby #4 and couldn't function for about 3 months. I used a Robinson Curriculum approach during that time since I couldn't teach so my oldest read on his own for 30 minutes to an hour and then I had him copy from the book and he did his math. He was just in first grade, but I think if I had a period when I couldn't teach I would do that again and then come back to my guide when I was feeling better. Hope the surgery goes well for you

Robinson is a good idea,but I don't like the books they use
Did you use the books suggested or the HOD books? anyway, your son was in 1 st grade,but my son is 4th and at e end of the year he is required to take a state test . We will try to do this method with the younger though since I'm not doing anything extra than the three Rs , but I'm still concerned that my 4 th grader is not doing enough writing . I have DITHOR, but he is not doing it since it needs parent involvement.

My 4th grader is definitely capable of doing the younger guides with the youngest and he did Little hands for a week , until he said its too much and he did not want to do it anymore I even paid him $1/day ,but he still didn't want to do it,and I am not sure i should ask him to do it since he is already doing so much. His school work takes about 4 hours.

The content of his synopsis for the Golden Age of Greece is awesome! We just finished that section a couple of weeks ago. My daughter is 9 also, and a great reader, but she struggles to do the Written History Narrations. I feel like we need to work on writing more too. So, your little guy is doing great with them. Some times as moms we do have to pray for wisdom on how much we can handle and then ask for the ability to give ourselves the grace to accept when we can't get everything done that we think we need to. I'm struggling with this right now too. You have to prioritize getting healthy for yourself and your family, so it's ok if you are letting the oldest work independently and the younger kids are hitting the main subjects. Eventually it will balance out again when you are well. Blessings to you and your family.

If you would like to send me a personal message, I would be happy to help check the content of your sons essays or listen to him do an oral narration on the phone even. My daughter and I are reading the material together this year, so I do know what the content is about. Last year (2nd grade), my daughter did all of her reading independently too and I faced the same thing of not knowing if she was grasping the ideas properly. I guess another option for you, one that we do this year sometimes, is that your child could read the books to you. When I have too much laundry or whatever, to sit and be the reader, I'll have my daughter read out loud to me.

Just some thoughts. I hope they are helpful. And as a side note, we also have four little ones-- 9,5, 5, and 2. We are using PHFHG (9yo) and LGFHG (twin 5yos) and some great learning videos for the 2yo;).
Blessings,
Amy

Dandelion5,

My goodness, you have a lot on your plate right now! Hopefully, this will be only a season in life for you, however it is wise to consider that you will likely have quite a recovery period even after your surgery. So, with this in mind, a plan is a good idea.

First of all, it sounds (and looks) like your son is doing a good job with Preparing Hearts. You can be so proud of what he is able to do on his own and on how he is growing in many areas. So, take a moment to feel very good about that!

Next, as far as correcting your oldest son's written narrations goes, I would suggest using proofreader's marks in pencil to show your son what needs to be corrected in his writing. This is not hard to do, and I do it with my own kiddos. First, have him read the narration out loud to you. This will help him catch many of his own mistakes. Let him use his pencil to immediately erase and correct any mistakes he catches while reading aloud his narration to you. Next, go through the narration yourself with a pencil. Underline three times any letter that needs to be capitalized. If a punctuation mark is missing, make an empty circle at the spot where it should be. If a punctuation mark is added where it does not belong, circle it in pencil. If a word is not spelled correctly, lightly circle it and write the correct spelling for the word in the margin. If a word is missing, make a small carrot where the word belongs and write the missing word above the carrot.

Then, have your son go back through and capitalize underlined letters, add missing punctuation to the empty circles, erase circled extra punctuation, and erase and correct the spelling of circled words copying the correct spelling from the word you wrote in the margin. After he's done, he can erase your marks, leaving a fairly clean copy without recopying! This process will go more quickly after you've done it a few times. Plus, it doesn't take your voice to do.

As far as narrating goes, one thing to remember is that the goal of narrating is for the child to retell the passage using words and phrasing he/she has borrowed from the author's telling and to share in detail those parts that stuck in his/her mind. The child may key in on a part of interest and devote more time to the telling of that particular part. A narration is different from a summary in that the child makes his/her own connections and brings those out in the narration rather than trying to summarize the passage by simply hitting all of the key points. As you can see, with the focus of narrating being on the child's connections, your role is not to have all of the answers, or to correct the child, or to make sure he has included all of the key points; but rather your role is to avidly listen with book in hand to make sure your child is narrating the correct passage and is not wildly off topic. After the narration, you may gently ask your child, "What about....?" or "Could you tell me a bit about....?" however, you don't have to ensure that your child has covered it all. This makes narration sessions more of a exciting opportunity for your child to share about what he read, rather than a quiz show where he must get the right answers. This is why the key ideas are helpful, and skimming the text as your child is narrating is helpful too, but having the parent read the text ahead of time is optional.

As far as DITHR goes, there is an option on each of the teaching days to turn to the back of the Student Book and do a written assignment in place of the discussion. This is for days when you are not able to do the lesson as written and need your student to work independently instead. Days that have these options are noted with a small clock above the plans in the Teacher's Guide. In your situation, I would have your child do DITHR only on the days noted in the Preparing plans (which is 3 times each week). Whenever your son has a lesson he is supposed to do with you, instead have him turn to the back of his 2/3 Student Book and do the written assignment noted for that day instead. This will allow you to keep going with DITHR, without having to talk.

For any other boxes that you need to check your son's progress because they are supposed to be "S" or "T" boxes, have him meet with you and have him read aloud the box directions and then answer any questions in the box aloud, or point to any areas mentioned on the globe, or show you any notebook page he has completed, or read aloud any narration he has written. This can be accomplished in a 30 min. meeting chunk in the morning, with another correcting time just for you in the afternoon. The meeting time will make sure that you have your finger on the pulse of what he is doing each day, will keep him interacting with you without added stress on you or your voice, and can even be done by climbing into bed with you or sitting on the floor next to you on the couch. I know this is true, because I schooled through 11 weeks of complete bedrest flat on my back with each of my last 3 children. I was only allowed to sit upright 15 min. out of every 4-6 hours and Preparing was one of the guides I was doing at the time. This short blip of mine health-wise is certainly nothing to what you are dealing with health-wise, but I share in the hopes that you can see that schooling bedside or couchside with little talking is possible.

As far as your little ones go, I wouldn't worry about LHTH right now. Young children can often catch up very quickly and make great gains. For Beyond, I would try to work to do the left side of the page one day and the right side the next day. This will put school at about 45-60 min. a day for that child and will keep that little one moving forward steadily each day. If there is any way that your husband could read aloud the history pages assigned in Beyond one night and the storytime chapter assigned in Beyond the next night that would take care of the main reading aloud for the most part (if you are doing the guide at half-speed). Then, you could have your older son do the poetry when it comes up with the younger child, and you could do what activities you can from the rest of the plans. Going half-speed doing the left side of the page one day and the right side the next would really help keep Beyond from being overwhelming. Your little one who is LHTH age could also join in for anything with the Beyond child.

Otherwise, if it feels better to you to just do the 3 R's for the younger pair, you can continue as you have been doing. I wouldn't personally start searching for another curriculum for the littles to do instead though, as it's almost certain you'll end up with it being as much work as it would be to just do Beyond at half-speed.

Blessings,
Carrie

I saw our cousin, who is a 3rd grader 2 pages very impressive essay beautiful writing! I was very discouraged that perhaps He is not doing enough in the writing department.Maybe I should have placed him in the next guide? But then again, he enjoys too much preparing

Please please do not be discouraged at all. There are so many variations in childrens learning and abilities.

Please take heart, your son is doing a great job. You are doing a great job. It is incredibly difficult when you are unwell to be able to cope with everything. I know having just had a year filled with two surgeries and a house move. One of my surgeries involved my heart, and I do struggled greatly with breathing etc. It is hard, but whatever you can do, is awesome. I had to allow my older children to help the younger ones, I had my girls and oldest DS doing housework. I chose to do what we could for school on any given day and be grateful that we got that much done.

One thing I did want to suggest is maybe you can read the books silently yourself so you know what they are about. I'm not sure whether that is an option or not, however I have seen the wonderful offer above and if you can't read the books, please accept that lovely offer.

I will be praying for peace for you and your family in this time. It is definitely a huge time of growth for a family. Take joy in your trial. Most of all I pray that your surgery is sooner rather than later.

Carrie,

Thank you for taking so much of your precious time to write some wonderful ideas! I Really appreciate the narration tips, especially having him read it to me , I have never thought about this before and I think this will help to correct himself. I will also try to do one side of beyond and see how it goes... not sure of one thing though ,the day when I do the left side,will they have to skip math ?I am not using the math from the guide because both of my kids are in 2A.

And yes, I am very proud of how his progress, thanks to HOD! From tears and "I don't know what to write", he is able now to write a decent narration with the prompts from the guide. By the way Carrie, my son asked me if you write guides for high school too , because he loves it

Asherwood, thank you so much for your kindness! I know you are busy with your little ones too, but I'd really appreciate if you could review his narrations now and then, every few units.

Carrie,

Thank you for taking so much of your precious time to write some wonderful ideas! I Really appreciate the narration tips, especially having him read it to me , I have never thought about this before and I think this will help to correct himself. I will also try to do one side of beyond and see how it goes... not sure of one thing though ,the day when I do the left side,will they have to skip math ?I am not using the math from the guide because both of my kids are in 2A.

And yes, I am very proud of how his progress, thanks to HOD! From tears and "I don't know what to write", he is able now to write a decent narration with the prompts from the guide. By the way Carrie, my son asked me if you write guides for high school too , because he loves it

Asherwood, thank you so much for your kindness! I know you are busy with your little ones too, but I'd really appreciate if you could review his narrations now and then, every few units.

Dandelion5,

I'm so glad that this thread is helping you! As far as math goes, if your older two are doing math together, I would just keep going with math daily. You could then leave one box from the left side of Beyond to do along with the right side of Beyond to compensate for doing math each day. In that way, your days will be more balanced as you progress at half-speed through Beyond.

Hopefully, it will be an option for your hubby to read aloud the history reading from Beyond one night and half a chapter or a chapter of the storytime the next night. If this isn't an option, perhaps you could get some of the storytime books on audio for your child to just listen to a chapter each day? Audios of books can often be checked out at the library, or found online at sites like librivox.

Blessings,
Carrie

Ok, I just read the material on Rome and Carthage today, and his narration is great One misspelling is all I saw that could use fixed. I'll be doing Unit 17 by Thursday or Friday

Now, if my daughter would just finish her written narration sometime this century....instead of coming up with a million different ailments...life and school could progress at our household!!!