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Hi,
I've been reading some of the other posts on the board and I think I'm ready to ask my own questions now. I'm considering HOD for my dd next Fall. She will be 7 in June. She completed K12's Virtual Academy for Kindergarten and half of this year, first grade. We're finishing her Phonics with their program, but doing the rest of her school on our own. I believe this would put her best fit in the Bigger curriculum, as she will be done with Phonics and Handwriting. At this point, her dictation consists of one sentence at a time, perhaps once a week. I believe she would be considered an emerging reader? She reads very simple books on her own.
We have had some family issues this school year, which is part of what led me to pulling her out of the virtual school. I needed more freedom with her schedule, because some days we can't get much school done. (She's not the one with the problem, though.) I've read some posts about people not completing it all in one day and just picking up where they left off the next. Someone said they took two years to complete the program. Others have said they do it in 4 days/week. How do you know how much is "enough"? Is it okay to skip a lesson? Or is it better to just take longer to complete it the program? Should you add on a month to your school year if your days are hit and miss, or still take the summer off? Is it better to try to add on here and there to make up for what didn't get done one day? I think I need to get my brain out of the virtual academy way of thinking, and back to the freedom of traditional homeschooling! lol I guess my concern is while I love how each day has every activity listed, if I don't get those activities all done, will my schedule be all messed up? Will I forever be playing catch up and tweaking the schedule? Will I have math checked off two or three days out, history one week behind, etc.? Or, do you just not move ahead in other subjects until all the activities for one day are done? I hope I'm making sense!

Hi,
I know how you feel. I would love to be able to check off all my boxes every day, but on many days, we don't finish everything because of outside activities, doctor appointments, or just life. We just pick up where we left off the next day and it is working well for us. So, if we only complete 7 out of 9 subjects on one day, the next day we will begin with the 2 subjects we missed the day before. It takes longer to get through the school year this way, but we school year round and take breaks when necessary. So far, we've never taken longer than 12 months to complete a guide doing it this way. It's been very freeing for me to let go of the need to complete every subject every day. When I first began homeschooling, I was even uptight about "Day 1' not being on a Monday. LOL! I've come a long way.

Hi Scrappy11, and welcome to the HOD Board! I am excited you and your dd are going to get to begin enjoying HOD. It has been an amazing way for our family to homeschool for the past 10 years. We really enjoy our days with HOD and are so happy with the way our schooling is going! I think you and your dd will enjoy it as well.

The first thing to do that is quite important is to carefully check out the placement chart. Placement is key, and when it's right on track it make the year flow beautifully! I would say from what you've shared that your dd would possibly place in Beyond Little Hearts, especially as she is 7 yo and new to HOD, but you will know best. You can just click on the link below and check out the first page of the chart carefully, especially the Beyond Little Hearts and the Bigger Hearts... columns...
http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

In choosing whether Beyond or Bigger Hearts is right for your dd, it may be helpful to consider the difference in writing in each of the guides. Carrie had this to say in regard to writing in these guides in a past post...
As far as choosing between "Beyond.." and "Bigger..." goes, the amount of writing varies quite a bit between Beyond and Bigger. Bigger requires more writing in the areas of a once a week history notebooking assignment, a once a week science experiment sheet and a once a week science notebooking entry, along with once a week copywork of a Bible verse, 1-3 vocabulary cards each week, cursive handwriting practice daily, and daily grammar instruction with written practice. It also provides a choice of spelling or dictation passages. If your little one sounds like that would be fine for her, she belongs in Bigger. If not, then Beyond would be best.

Beyond has much less writing doing copywork daily from the poetry, using a gentle once a week introduction to grammar, and writing daily for very short spelling lessons.

You would also want to look at the emerging reader set to see if your little honey should do all or at least the last half of that set. The schedule for that set is included in both Beyond and Bigger, so you'd have it either way.

As far as guides go, I just want to reassure you that they do not come more OPEN and GO than HOD! I literally pick up the guide and teach (and right now we're using 3 HOD guides). The time allotments are very reasonable, so your day should not go long. Beyond Little Hearts took us about 2 hours to complete each day, and BHFHG took us about 2 1/2 to 3 hours each day. The boxes of plans make it easy to break up the work in time increments as well, and the "Let's Share Our Schedules" thread (which is near the top of the Main Board on this message board) has lots of awesome schedules you can look through for ideas for how you'd enjoy setting up your day.

I agree with the pp that it is important to do each of the boxes of plans each day rather than skipping some just to move on more quickly. HOD guides build on one another, and the skills are taught incrementally, step-by-step through the years. Skipping boxes means skipping skills, and that means dc won't be ready for the next guide. So, better to do all the boxes and take longer to finish a year if need be than skip the boxes and move on to a guide dc are not prepared for skillwise. Catherine shared a good rule of thumb to try to complete a guide each year or so, provided dc are properly placed to begin with - which brings me back to placement. When you get a chance, can you share your findings from the placement chart with us? We'd all love to chime in to help more than, with ideas that fit your specific placement for your dd better! I am looking forward to getting to know you here. You have come to an awesome place!

In Christ,
Julie

Regarding the writing, that is tough to call. Right now, she does not like to write; but she can do it. She was supposed to "write" a story the other day, which she resisted, but once she got going, she had a lot to say! That being said, I actually wrote it down for her. She is only about halfway through this school year, though, so I'm not sure if that might change by the Fall. I'm looking at the 1st week sample for Beyond right now; if the spelling words for that list are all as simple as "hat," she is already at or beyond that level. The math for that week looks like it'd be below her level, too. She had learned addition and subtraction, although she doesn't have her math facts memorized...she can usually find the right answer (up to I guess 20?). She has had some grammar instruction, esp. nouns, verbs, fragments. She wants to learn cursive, so I have sort of started teaching that to her. Not with any formal program or anything, though.
I also looked at the Bigger sample. The narration seems similar to what she has done this year, but, again I do much of the writing for her, she just tells me what to say.
Am I maybe checking into it too early? Should I wait a few more months and see where she's at?
Thanks for your help! I

If you aren't planning on ordering soon I'd definitely wait a few more months. A lot can change in a few months.

As far as spelling... I look at the Beyond lists as training for how to do dictation. It's not really about learning to spell those words in my opinion, but more about how to study them so studying the dictation won't be so difficult. With DD1 I treated them as a spelling list... when we got to dictation it took her FOREVER to figure out what to do. With DD2 I treated them as training for dictation and it took her two days, as in on the second day she got it.

If you've never done singapore math before I'd suggest having her take the placement test on the singapore website. You print it out, and give it to her to take without helping at all. Whatever level she scores less than 80% (I believe) is the level she should place in.

If she can't do her own writing, then I'd definitely put her in Beyond. But if you work between now and fall on her writing more, and she gets to where she can write a lot in one sitting, then Bigger might be the way to go. The only issue is that you haven't done LHFHG and Beyond. My just turned 8yo just started Bigger, but she's also gone through LHFHG and Beyond.

If you do place her in Bigger, you might want to look at slowing it down. There is a huge jump, from my experience, from Bigger to Preparing. I know just in the time we've spent in Preparing my oldest has come so far in her ability to understand it. She was a couple of months from turning 9 when we started Preparing... she could do all the work, but not really GETTING it until I'd say this past fall sometime. Right around the time she was 9.5.

Thank you for all your advice! It's been awhile since I started this thread, but I'm back! lol

I see that people place a wide range of ages in these programs (Beyond and Bigger). Should I be concerned that Beyond could be too easy for her?

Backstory: I recently pulled her out of the online virtual academy, where she should have been doing as much as 5 hours of work a day (but we never made it that far). So when I see how little time each day it can take to complete Beyond, I wonder if that would be "enough"? It looks like you cover a lot of information in that short amount of time, though. The two sides of me are warring between "young children shouldn't have to do that much official school time" and "she will be behind all the other second-graders!" Right now we are spending very little time on school each day, using a hodge-podge of curricula, because we both needed a break from all the pressure. But should I expect more when she is 7 and in 2nd grade? Or is it okay to take it easy for another year and supplement with fun stuff if I find we have time?

BTW, I did look at the wonderful placement suggestions on the website, and right now she is somewhere in the middle. Could go either way. Actually, if she had to do all that writing (in Bigger) right now, she *would* hate it. But like I said, Fall is a few months away . . .

Hi, we have done Beyond and are just finishing Bigger and based on everything you have said plus placement in the middle, I would go with Beyond and place her where she fits for math and spelling. You could check out spelling list 2 in Beyond as it is harder and gets harder as it goes. If you feel she is ready for dictation you can do that as well, (but would need the Bigger guide). Many parents end up with two guides because a child might place higher in math or spelling. I really think Beyond would be a great way to get her started down a new path. There are so many skills in each guide and she will be solid when she hits Bigger. I wouldn't worry about her being behind, HOD is solid and if you do the guides as written your child will not be behind I can assure you.

I just want to encourage you that Beyond is enough for a second grader! The read aloud history books are third grade level, the Storytime set introduces 9 different genres and covers the following skills, which include excellent introductions to developing your child into a strong oral narrator...

*Day 1: introduce and study different types of literature
*Day 2: model narration to foster comprehension
*Day 3: identify and analyze a different story element for each genre
*Day 4: relate personally to one Godly character trait, compare
Biblical and book characters, and select one area to improve
*Day 5: practice narration by retelling the story in a variety of ways

The Bible devotional may be a little book in size, but oh my, is there depth there! We simply loved those discussions. Godly character instruction runs through Beyond beautifully, and you can discuss that as long as you want. It begs to be discussed and lived out! With my oldest ds, before I had my littles, we discussed these deeply in Beyond and loved it! Here are the skills covered in Bible Study...

*Day 1: introduction and interpretation of the memory verse
*Day 2: personal application of the memory verse
*Day 3: observation of Godly character through devotional reading
*Day 4: practical application of the devotional character trait
*Day 5: exploration of a Bible passage focusing on Godly living

The introduction to grammar concepts on the fifth day may look easy, but check out all of these varied skills taught (and see how they lead so well into daily grammar the following year, which BTW R & S English 2 which is done in Bigger Hearts... is at least a year advanced, as Levels 7 and 8 are high school credit worthy)...

1 - sentences and fragments
2 - run-on sentences
3 - sentences: subjects and predicates
4 - sentences: statements
5 - sentences: questions
6 - sentences: questions and statements
7 - sentences: commands
8 - sentences: commands
9 - sentences: exclamations
10 - sentences: exclamations and statements
11 - sentences: statements, questions, commands, exclamations
12 - nouns
13 - proper nouns: first names
14 - proper nouns: full names
15 - initials of full names
16 - capitalizing ‘I’
17 - proper nouns: names of days of the week
18 - proper nouns: names of days of the week
19 - proper nouns: names of months
20 - proper nouns: names of months
“Learning The Basics” Components
(continued)
21 - writing dates
22 - common and proper nouns: places
23 - proper nouns: addresses of places
24 - common nouns: things
25 - plural nouns: adding -s and -es
26 - commas in a series
27 - action verbs
28 - verbs: using ‘is’ and ‘are’
29 - verbs: using ‘was’ and ‘were’
30 - verbs: using ‘has’ and ‘have’
31 - contractions
32 - alphabetical order
33 - alphabetical order
34 - friendly letters

Copywork, poetry study, art work, history activities, and the creation of a timeline at a glance are other wonderful skills taught in Beyond! Singapore math levels 1 and 2 are part of Beyond's plans, and Singapore Math is also very advanced, by at least a year. If you want the hands-on for 2A/2B, you'll need the Bigger Hearts guide though. However, as I said, it's a year advanced, so my seventh grader just finished 6B. He has tested way above grade level on standardized tests, in both grammar and math, as well as LA, so I know HOD's plans are setting him up for success. Dc doing Beyond also do 2 science experiments every single week! This is more than the average elementary student does by far. For reading instruction, the Emerging Reader's Set ends with a 4th grade reading level, and has well-planned oral comprehension questions that represent the highest levels of questions as well as the earlier levels. Oral narration skills are also taught through these questions. If dd is a very advanced reader, Drawn into the Heart of Reading is still another reading instruction option in Beyond.

I agree with pp, you dd sounds like a super match for Beyond! Why not get to enjoying school together, setting the stage for homeschooling to be challenging without being stressful and taking forever? I have taught Beyond twice, and it is simply a wonderful guide. I think you and dd would enjoy it, and I think you'd find you both looking forward to your school together each day! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Looking forward to school would be awesome! Actually, since we went back to traditional hsing rather than the online virtual school, things have been MUCH better already.

Thank you SO MUCH for all the info in your post! I appreciate all the time you took to detail that out for me. I've been reading and re-reading the information on the website, but it still helps to see it another way.

Okay, I feel confident about choosing Beyond now! Next question -- I would say she'd be appropriate for the Emerging Reader level. She is finishing up her second year of Phonics instruction and is able to read some books on her own (she's just started trying the level 1 step into reading and is doing okay with them). I think the Early Reader's Bible would be best if I want her to be able to read it herself--that's the idea, right?

Great decision! We are doing Beyond half speed right now, and it is my second time through! My oldest did it as an advanced 2nd grader. It was a great intro to HOD and covered skills very well!

As for the emerging readers, yes. She will need to be able to read it herself, out loud to you, and then answer the questions about what she read.

HTH!

Just wanted to pop in here and say welcome . Our family also used an online virtual school for one year, and I, too, have found great freedom and joy with just plain ol' homeschooling with HOD! I know I get a lot of surprised looks when I tell people that this is so much easier for me to teach, but it's really true...