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I am schooling 4 children ages 11, 10, 8, and 6. My question is about my just turned 6 year old son. If he were in PS, he would have started K this past fall.

He is very very bright. I am already doing All About Reading with him, and he reads quite well. He just began Saxon Math 1. His fine motor skills are very weak. For example, in math, he totally gets the concepts, but I have to write the number for him (once he tells me the answer) and he traces it with crayon after me. We did KUMON cutting book, so he cuts well. He colors terribly.

He is a very immature child, in my opinion, intelligence aside. He has immature speech, which I understand is still developmentally appropriate at his age. There is the fine motor (that I mentioned). And emotionally he is a whiner. But he doesn't whine about school. He loves to "do" school.

I have been doing LHTH with him, but much of it is too easy, so we basically do the Bible story and devotion only.

I just don't know if he's ready for LHFHG. I am concerned about his ability to retain history readings. On the other hand, he played with an ipad while we read The Hobbit as a family and he remembered the names of characters I couldn't remember!

So, should I just jump in and see where it goes?

AND...if you think I should start him in LHFHG, should I do it with the vision of eventually merging him with 8 year old sister who is 3/4 through with LHFHG. Where he is advanced, she is not...hmmm.

Is 2 years too far apart to keep them in a single guide if I can merge them at some point?

Shannon,
I will just share what I did with my dd who is 7 & in 2nd grade. When she was in K I just finished LHTH that I had used in prek. I went through 2/3 resources 1st yr and 4/5 resources 2nd year. I added the fine motor, math, and phonics (right side of LhFHG) while she was in LHTH in K. Near the end of year I added storytime from LHTHG to k year. She was delayed in language and attention. As her skills have caught up I have added more skills. She finished LHTHG in 1st grade as is. Now she is over half way (unit 20) of Beyond. Although she was delayed developmentally in some areas she is now average. By allowing extra time when she needed it (prek-1) she is breezing through her work.
If your son is having difficulty with fine motor skills (typical of boys) spend the extra time now so that it doesn't bog you down later. Each guide ups the writing, copy work, drawing so firm up those skills now. I really enjoyed the Rod & Staff fine motor workbooks. Have you used those? There are many fm skills in LHTH. You could combine both kiddos for right side of LHFHG and that would give you a glimpse of how son can handle the amount if listening required. It would seem to take even longer to have son do the work in LHFHG if LHTH is a struggle. I believe kiddos can make steady progress and have learning spurts so why not just keep on steadily but thoroughly in each guide. Hope you find a schedule to work as you have 2 posts about this.

My son also has struggled with fine motor skills too. I read up a lot on how help kids with fine motor skills (and we did therapy too) and one thing I saw was to get them pencils that are extremely fat in girth. Those helped the most. We also tried a different finger position for holding a pencil. He tolerated that for about week and it was a no go after that. I also would get him all kinds of little things that he would "play" with that forced him to use his fingers differently. He still struggles some but he has always had a good attitude. I think it just boils down to that fact that he doesn't move his fingers as fluidly as he needs to for some activities. So we have tackled one big thing after another in this area. Now we are working on bending the first joint and stroking a paint brush (I actually asked about help for my son with art since he is so bad at it). But to help with this - he now takes piano and the teacher is giving him weekly finger exercises. He also plays with playdoh weekly to help strengthen his hands. And for Christmas we painted mason jars with Mog Podge and pasted tissue paper on them for candles. My kids had to make 9. I can honestly say that when we started my son wasn't doing very good but now he actually has a brush stroke or two between his other 15 paint jabs and stabs LOL. I think a big part of developing fine motor skills is the opportunity to do use his hands.

For me, I would let him move up to LHFHG because intelligence wise he can. My son is 7 and he is doing Beyond and doing fine with it. But I would just be patient with him about anything involving writing. A big part of writing is just practice, practice, practice. And this year is the first year I can actually read my son's writing. He has made huge improvements. I know next year they schedule cursive with Bigger but I am may or may not start it then. I might give him another year under his belt to get used to writing in print better. So I would say - I would have not problem moving him up if he does meet up with the info in the chart. In LHFHG, they are still learning and he has plenty of time to improve in that year too.

It sounds like he is probably ready for LHFHG, if you think he would like sitting through the readings (history, storytime). That is really one of the main things added. You are already doing reading and math, and the fine motor work might be frustrating for him, it sounds like, but hopefully since it is a pretty gentle introduction he will do okay.

If your goal is to combine those two then probably starting LHFHG is the right thing to do. It seems like you could probably combine them, though it would probably require lots of adding in for the older one, and maybe some assisting the younger one with fine motor and writing. Sometimes that is more work than doing a guide as-written that fits the one child perfectly. But since they are (probably) within the same guide, it seems like combining is certainly possible. People combine with 2 year age spans, with extensions and things added on for the older one. The recommendation is generally (you've been on here so you've probably seen it) meet the younger one where they are at and add on for the older one.

Good ideas to ponder here already! From what you've shared, it sounds like ds's fine motor skills would be improved by doing LHTH. I'd probably do two complete lessons a day of LHTH, one in the morning and one in the afternoon perhaps, so there would be a break for wiggles in between. LHTH's art activities, Bible activities (Count on Me pages and Numbers and Colors pages), and letter activities (Hide and Seek pages, tracing, etc.) would all be doubled up and move him along in these areas so he truly would be ready for LHFHG. Listening and participating in the Biblical history theme in LHTH by doing all of the parts of that theme will better prepare him for the longer readings in LHFHG. Continuing ds's phonics and math would keep him moving along nicely in these subject areas. As far as combining the two, I'd say it will depend on how your ds's fine motor skills progress, as well as on how dd's skills progress in general. This is just one idea to ponder along with all the rest. Hope something here helps!

In Christ,
Julie