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Hi all! I hope you are all enjoying your last days of summer OR having some great first days of school.

We are currently in week 29 of LHFHG with our 7 and 5.5 year old sons. They have both really enjoyed doing school together and we want to keep them together as long as possible. They are each doing their own math, reading (Emerging Readers-7 and TRL-5.5), spelling for our older son, and Do it Carefully for our younger son. How many of you have used Beyond with a 5.5 year old? I don't want to hold back our 7 year old and also don't want to frustrate our younger son. Any thoughts or encouragement on keeping them together successfully? We also have a 3.5 year old girl and 2 year old girl who will most likely combine when they are older.

Thanks and Blessings!

I haven't done it with a 5.5 YO but if he is doing well in LHFHG, able to do everything, answer questions, and if he is progressing in handwriting, able to write all his letters and numbers smoothly, he might be able to do it. 1 guide per year might be too fast though so you could consider going 1/2 speed for a little while, or 4 days a week instead of 5, to give him more time to mature, especially in handwriting, before you'd end up in Bigger at 6.5.

I was at a similar decision point as you when my 2nd was 4.5 and I knew she could not do Beyond, so then I had to decide whether to have my oldest wait for her to catch up. I'm glad I went on. But since yours are both doing LHFHG in their own right, at least that's what I assume from what you have said, maybe Beyond will work well too.

I don't have any experience to add, but wanted to let you know we will be right there with you. We are on unit 32 of LHFHG and will be moving straight into Beyond. Dd will not be 6 until October. We are planning to do Beyond pretty much full speed as I think both dc are ready to handle it. However, we will probably start Bigger at half speed when we get there to allow dd some time to grow into the guide. Everything has gone so smoothly with combining in LHFHG that I am excited to start the next guide.

I think any child who is doing LHFHG full speed and completely (ie, you aren't skipping anything) would be able to do Beyond. The issue would be emotionally/maturity later on in the older guides.

So while I don't think there would be any trouble with moving forward, I also think I'd slow it down a bit, just to give your younger a bit of time to catch up.

You could even do half speed with everything except full speed math and Language Arts. So left side and story time half speed.

Thank you for all of your helpful responses and encouragement! So one more question. Which boxes should my younger son continue to do in the younger guides? Right now he will continue to FIne Motor Skills, Math Exploration, and Reading Choices from Little Hearts. So will the boxes in the same place in each guide be the ones the boys do differently? I just want to make sure they are each where they need to be in those "grade" specific skills. Hope I'm making sense!

Thank you!

Math you may do the Essential Math from LHFHG (do you have a new LHFHG guide? Did you know they are offering 1/2 price to LHFHG users and you get the new math plans, as well as the 1st grade fine motor plans?). If your son did the K options in LHFHG he could go ahead and do all the things in Beyond. For copywork you would just have him do as much as he can do well in 5 minutes or so, don't worry about completing the whole poem (don't worry with either of them, but hopefully the older one can do a bit more).

Reading choices - do you mean phonics? Each guide just says "whatever phonics/reading your child is ready for." So it's not from one guide or the other.

Once your son finishes LHFHG K math, he moves right into Beyond math. When he finishes the K fine motor skills (handwriting and rod and staff books), he moves on to copy work in Beyond. Once he finishes phonics, he starts the Emerging Readers listed in the back of the Beyond guide. He should also start spelling when finishing phonics. The rest of the Beyond guide can be done as is.

We started Beyond when my DD was 5.5. She has actually done very well with it. She loves the history stories...actually she begs to do more every day. Same with the story time books. The science is quick and simple. There is a decent amount of writing, but you could ease into that as she gets ready.

I think she would be fine. She already has a head start from doing LHFHG!

I started Beyond with three boys at the ages of 5.5, 6.5, and 8. It worked week for us, and all the boys moved into Bigger this week.

I'm known for being short and to the point. You need to separate them into their own guides. A 5.5 year old does NOT need to be doing Beyond.

Wow! I really appreciate everyone taking the time to help me figure this out! When our oldest started LHFHG last year our original plan was to keep the boys separate, so the younger boy was more listening in at first. As we went on though, our younger son was consistently asking to do more and was piping in with answers as the older one was being asked. So our younger son has not done everything from cover to cover as written in the guide from the start, but has added more as we got deeper into the guide.

So I could move ahead with combining them and go at a slower pace in Beyond, or move the older one ahead to Beyond and start the younger one again in LH next year when he's in first grade and have him do the first grade options with it. The question would be, what does he do for Kindergarten this year? Continue on with his math, The Reading Lesson, and Do it Carefully, but what will happen is he will end up listening to all the read aloud books, history, and he'll want to do the science activities with his brother! What to do?!

Keep going! What you are doing is working! Don't mess with it until (and if) it becomes a problem. I have used the guides with a student under the age group without a hitch. I think it has to do with combining. If you are combining with an older sibling it can definitely work.

If you didn't want to go to Beyond, then could you start back at the beginning for LHFHG for the left side? For the storytime, you could read other Burgess books (some you can get the kindle edition free I think). I bet at 5.5, he won't remember doing the activities OR won't mind doing them again. You could add in something like the coloring book that goes with History for Little Pilgrims to change that up a bit too.

I had your same situation, or similar, with my first two kids. Except there was really no way my 2nd was ready for Beyond, though she had listened through most of LHFHG. She has better narration skills than her sister, it comes more naturally to her, so she could answer questions and do some of the activities, but when I looked at Beyond I knew there was no way she would be able to do that. So here's what I did: my oldest's Beyond year the 2nd still listened in on Storytime, tagged along for activity based things like art and science, really she tagged along for most of it but I also had some workbooks on her level. Then the following year, when big sis moved up to Bigger (well before really) she started LHFHG again. She did great with it, and has done really well because it is "her" guide. She could complete it fully and now I know she is ready to move into Beyond.

Though yours is older than she was when I was considering this, and may be ready for it, and having him do Beyond as much as he can may be what you want to do. I was faced with the quandry of pull back or move ahead, for my oldest's sake. I chose to let my oldest go ahead with what she was ready for and let the 2nd come into it slowly and that has worked out really well for us. With a few of my own mistakes along the way but I won't go into those.

Thank you all again for your very helpful responses! I am grateful for such kind, helpful mamas who take the time to help each other out!

Melissa, I like your ideas about having him listen in, but actually starting Little Hearts again next year. I'll be praying about that.

Blessings to all of you!
Christy