heartofdakota.com

We are severely struggling in our homeschooling this year. We were struggling some last year but then we added a new baby almost a year ago and we just can't seam to get things on track since. I ordered them a lot of A Beka for this year after talking with local mom's who've added babies to their homes while homeschooling but I think this has only made the situation worse.

My oldest (6th grade) is seriously struggling to keep up with her studies and what she does get done isn't of the best quality. She is starting down the hormonal lazy stage but I think a lot of her problem is the A Beka is too hard for her and is overwhelming her. She is definately having trouble reading and comprehending her science and history, and she is struggling with her writing assignments. We highly suspect she is dyslexic and possibly has an APD. She is a highly visual and auditory learner however. Teaching Textbooks math has worked quite well for her. And she loves to watch history and science stuff on TV with excellent retention.

My younger student (3rd grade) is also struggling with the amount of writing required of him while the non-writing content of many his books have been ridiculously easy for him. He's already finished his science and will finish his history in a few more days. That leaves me the rest of this year to fill in as those are required in each quarter here. He struggles with the physical act of writing but we're hopeful that now he's started cursive things might improve for him (we've seen a slight improvement so far). He's the type where if he's bored he will make your life miserable trying to get his studies finished. He prefers to learn by doing, asks millions of questions, and if it interests him he can work almost on par with his sister (sometimes I think he out does her).

I do know that this textbook heavy way of doing things is not working for us. I'm at my wits end to be honest. I cannot imagine getting through the rest of this year like this. The stress has started to affect my health in fact (blood pressure, headaches, and others). So i'm looking at making a mid-year curriculum switch. I've been looking at HOD for a couple years but just haven't made the leap. I'm mostly worried that it will be too similar to Sonlight which has not worked well for us. We liked the books but there were too many and too much jumping around in multiple books every day and only using 2-3 pages of each book. My kids especially found that very frustrating. I want something Charlotte Mason oriented like HOD is but I am hoping for fewer books than SL uses. I also need a good balance of easy for mom activities to keep their interest and motivation.

So i'm looking for input on which programs might be a good match for my kids? Should I even try to combine them? I'm thinking I probably should keep them separate but am not sure? Does HOD sound like a good match for us? And can we make the switch mid-year and still finish before the year starts next fall? My DH and I are prepared to school through the summer if need be to get the kids back on track. Though i'll only have half days to work with in summer due to canning and garden duties. Thank you so much for your help.

I haven't used Sonlight, but evrey review I have read comparing SonLIght and HOD say that Sonlight has a ton more book than HOD, and HOD is more open and go. There is very little prep for HOD - mostly just getting simple supplies ready for art and science activities. You can see all of the books required under each guide. (The Economy packages are the true must haves. If you want to do HOD science (which is sounds like you do), you will need that as well. The read-alouds are nice, but you can skip them if you just don't have the time to do them. Extensions you would only use if you want to combine kids, placing an older child in a younger guide. Everything else you would decide based on if you wanted to cover that course.)

I have found that HOD has some aspects of CM learning while still having a few classical/textbook items, keeping the reading down a little. It is the perfect fit for our family because I wanted history and science to be more unit study/living book oriented, while still keeping some traditional "school" aspects to it.

Thank you very much. HOD sounds much more towards what I want than SL was but also less textbooky than what we are doing now and that's good on both fronts.

I have used both Sonlight and Heart of Dakota and there are lots of differences between them. HOD takes more time to go through a book slowly and really savor it and interact with it. With Sonlight I sometimes feel like we are just going through the books at breakneck speed and not really retaining anything from them. Sonlight is also a lot of just reading, reading, reading. With HOD, there are more hands on activities, narrations, etc. Also, Sonlight requires a lot from me as a parent doing read-alouds and everything, where as HOD moves the child towards independence and working on their own. Also, HOD just takes less time in general, but doesn't sacrifice content to do so. I think you will enjoy it!

I think you could start mid year and even if you don't finish the guide before the end of the school year, you can just pick up where you left off and it will be fine. The guides are only written for 4 day weeks anyway starting in Preparing on up so if you regularly school 5 days a week you can get through them quicker.

Thanks so much for giving me examples of how HOD and SL are different. That is super helpful indeed. We do normally do 5 day weeks so we might be able to get through HOD faster. Doing two cores with SL was too much reading for me-I spent all day reading between the two of them and would lose my voice before we could finish. But if I decide to keep the kids separate with HOD I think I could manage it. I am glad HOD has a slower pace with the books. That's definitely something I want.

From what you have shared, I think HOD would be a super fit for you and your family! Here are a few past thread that may help...

Sonlight and HOD:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8920&p=65267

Switching from Sonlight to HOD:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6204&p=45509#p45509

Please keep asking questions here, but I think HOD would be an incredible blessing to you as it has been to us!
In Christ,
Julie

Thanks. We've narrowed things down to HOD and MFW just need to sit and talk it out with my hubby to decide which way to go. I'm going to print out the samples so we can look at them better and really look hard at each one's features. I think both would be fun. If I come up with more questions i'll be back for sure.

MY3monkeys wrote:Thanks. We've narrowed things down to HOD and MFW just need to sit and talk it out with my hubby to decide which way to go. I'm going to print out the samples so we can look at them better and really look hard at each one's features. I think both would be fun. If I come up with more questions i'll be back for sure.

Hello,
There are some links on here that will give you a good comparison between HOD and MFW. I am not good at finding links, sorry, but maybe someone else can share them with you. I have done both HOD and MFW and my vote is for HOD! Wish I could be of some more help.

Thank you I will try to see if I can find the comparisons when I have some time to sit and snoop. I'd be very interested in seeing what the differences are between the two.

Well, I started with Abeka and did that through 2nd grade with my kids. Then I switched to MFW last year and we then switched over to HOD this year. Here is my experience:

2009-2010 When I first started homeschool, the only company I knew about was Abeka and that was just because all the homeschool moms I knew had older or graduated kids and there just didn't weren't as many companies to chose from 20 years ago. Plus, my husband was homeschooled and his family did Abeka. So I did that for K that year for my oldest. After the end of that year we switched Math programs because she didn't understand Abeka math at all.

2010-2011 So my oldest is now in 1st grade and she still did mainly Abeka with the exception of RightStart for math. The year went okay but was still not so fun. She complained all the time. I didn't know any different so we continued on.

2011-2012 The next year my oldest was in 2nd and then my youngest was in K. I was not liking Abeka necessarily but had since met a lot of younger moms with kids nearer (but still a little older) were using it and saying how smart their kids were I was scared to switch. That year was the worst for my oldest child. I had to supplement a lot and it was so much planning to add in fun stuff. I was miserable now too. It was very clear toward the end of that year I could not continue on in this fashion. I ended up getting a book by Cathy Duffy (100 Top Picks) from the library and in it, it had tons of recommendations based on your teaching style and your child's learning style. I also then asked EVERY single homeschool mom I knew what they used. At that time I had met several homeschool moms who were using MFW and they loved it. I researched it and read tons of reviews on it and decided to try it.

2012-2013 We switched everything this year over to MFW. My youngest was 4 but did MFW K (she actually had taught herself to read the year before and basic math and was begging for schools so we ordered K to keep her busy). My son was doing MFW 1st and then my oldest did the Adventures cycle (for 2nd or 3rd graders) and this was for her 3rd grade year. We did everything they recommended except their math program. However, about a third of the way through that year we discovered that my oldest was mildly dyslexic. So we prayed about it and we started using All About Spelling (this is a product developed by a parent who's child is dyslexic and written to cater to that crowd even though others can use it). So, we had a great year that year. Everything was falling into place, we got school done by lunch most everyday. My kids had a good attitude. They had fun. We needed that year to show us that homeschooling didn't have to be all bookwork.

2013-2014 I started the year with MFW again this year but ended up switching to HOD after 7 weeks. What happened you might ask? Well, a couple of things. First, MFW and my teaching philosophy don't completely line up. I was having to supplement in some areas that I felt like weren't hard enough with MFW. That was adding time to my day. I also was struggling with combining my kids. I now had a 4th grader, 2nd grader and child doing 1st grade work. Well, with MFW their cycle says you would combine the 4th grader and the 2nd grader together for school. It went terrible. My oldest was being challenged some but then my 2nd grader wasn't understanding anything. Also, they had too many projects that took to much time to complete that year. We spent hours on projects but I felt like we didn't learn anything. And then I also felt like we read stuff but no one retained anything either. I didn't like that there was no formal lit studies until 7th grade. As I started looking to supplement MFW to make it fit us better and I ordered a catalog from HOD. I wasn't necessarily intending to switch completely at the time but wanted to see if there was anything I could use to help my year. I looked through the whole catalog and read it cover to cover. I fell in love with the books. As I looked to see if I could add this or change that with MFW, I realized that I would rather do HOD instead of MFW for my year. I actually called HOD to ask about how I would combine my kids in their program because I thought that is was why they wrote their program the way they did. I found out that it wasn't really intended to combine largely different children but could be used to combine similarly leveled children. After speaking with someone for a good 30 minutes on the phone about it, I then re-read the catalog and searched the internet for reviews everyday for a full week. I then called back with more questions LOL. After finding out that Preparing was written to both the student and the parent, I was a little bit worried about the work load and my oldest actually doing it. After I hung up the second time, my husband told me to order it. We ordered Preparing for my oldest and Beyond for my 2 youngers. I was still really worried because my oldest is not the strongest reader in the world and they cover a lot of books. I am SO glad my husband had us switch because this is a wonderful fit for us and I finally have peace.

HOD matched up with pretty much everything I wanted to do with my kids and when. This was a much better fit for us than MFW. I also didn't want to combine my kids anymore either. I thought when I first started homeschooling I would want to do that but have discovered that I actually don't. HOD makes it very possible and pleasant to run multiple guides at a time. I love that once you start Preparing, the guides are written to the student and the parent. So my oldest can work alone. And she thinks it is totally awesome that it is written to her too. She does most of her projects and experiments alone without my help. I am still available to help and usually close by but she wants to do them alone. And she is learning so much more with HOD than she did with MFW. I felt like I was pushing to get school done because my kids weren't listening to me. But then we get stuff read and no one remembered anything from it. Now, everything is at their level and they remember so much more. I also love that with the hands on projects, they aren't over whelming. With MFW, I felt like the projects would take an hour or more sometimes. I lost everyone within the first 15 minutes. And those projects were so overwhelming this year I didn't even feel like we learned very much from them. With HOD, in the Preparing level there is history project the kids work on for 3 days each week and the project takes about 15 minutes a day to work on. The project always relates to what we are doing and I do feel like the projects do add to what we are learning. With my younger kids there is lots of hands on learning in Beyond and I love that my kids are loving this year too. They love when I read to them and they love the projects. I like that HOD includes a weekly grammar lessons each week for my youngers. MFW doesn't recommend formal grammar until 6th/7th grade and I felt like that was just too long to wait. With most boxed curriculums, to stay within their recommended time frames you need to switch most products to their recommendations. That was what I did last year with MFW, with the exception of Math and Spelling. I did the same thing this year - I am still using RightStart math for my kids. I have been using that for years, I know how to teach it, and the time we spend on math is similar to the time frame HOD sets aside for math. I also use All About Spelling still for my oldest. I don't know what I am going to use in the long run for my middle child because he struggles with language so much so he is doing All About Spelling too. But I plan to use dictation for my youngest.

I would recommend googling MFW vs HOD and see what comes up. They are both Godly companies and it really depends on your teaching style, whether or not you want to combine them, and what you want your kids to cover at what time. I am extremely happy with HOD and glad we switched to them. I plan to finish my kids remaining school years with this company as I love each level and this is a good fit for my family. My husband loves this company too, mostly because we has seen a huge change and growth in our kids as well. Good luck finding the best fit for you family.

Thanks for taking the time to give so many details about why you did or didn't like the different things. That's very helpful to me. I'm still trying to decide if I want to combine them or not? I am just not sure yet which way would be better for them. I do plan to keep our math and spelling (we also use AAS) no matter which program we end up going with. I'm hoping to do more snooping this weekend on how the two programs compare and some snooping on combining kids or not. Then i'm hoping to talk it all out with my hubby to see if he can help guide us in the right direction from his perspective.

I will pray that God helps you to find the best fit for your family. And once you do find it - it truly is a wonderful blessing!

This past post may help... I prayed for you in your decision!
MFW and HOD:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1446

In Christ,
Julie

Thank you. It was helpful. I'm leaning more and more towards keeping them in separate levels which leads me towards HOD. The more I think about it the more I think the kids need individual levels to work on their personal areas of weakness or interest. After all a 6th grade girl struggling in ELA has much different needs than a 3rd grade boy who hates writing and loves science. I'm just not sure you can meet everyone's needs in one package.

I think you are on to something here in considering what is best for your dc...

MY3monkeys wrote:...The more I think about it the more I think the kids need individual levels to work on their personal areas of weakness or interest. After all a 6th grade girl struggling in ELA has much different needs than a 3rd grade boy who hates writing and loves science. I'm just not sure you can meet everyone's needs in one package...

Along the lines of those thoughts, these posts would be helpful to read and ponder as well...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9338
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9339
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9341
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9342
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9343

In Christ,
Julie