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Okay, I have asked a lot of questions to a lot of moms about my 2 youngest children and them being back to back in grades. I have gotten a lot of great advice and I have tried to have peace with it. And thank you to all of you who have really helped me out with your wonderful advice.

So here is just a little recap of my issue - currently I have my youngest, one who is 5 (she will be 6 in 3 weeks), is doing Beyond with her older brother, who is 7.5. My youngest is gifted so she really does fully place in this level. But in switching to HOD, I had always intended to keep my kids separate because I wanted that one on one time with each of my kids through many of their subjects so that everything was always at their pace. By keeping my two youngers together in the long run, I have literally had no peace about this schedule. I have tried but I just literally am not happy with this. Basically, to keep them together, I will have to hold my son back in level for a 1/2 year to a year to give his sister time to reach the youngest age of the guide. That wouldn’t be so bad if I could actually use MTMM for high school without much modification. But where I live, I need to add personal finance and economics in at some point and both of those classes are offered in the final cycle with HOD. Plus, I would really want to beef up the English class significantly to more match up with 9th grade English. And realistically, I chose HOD because:
(1) I love what they teach and love the book selection,
(2) I love that it is ALL spelled out for you in their guide,
(3) I don't want to modify anything because I work from home a lot of hours and my kids may have more difficulty following the guide if I modify it too much, and
(4) realistically I want them separate so that I can work with each one of them on every skill – especially the writing activities like written narration starting in Preparing - one at a time.

So, I have read that doing Bigger and Preparing back to back are not so good for moms. I have read that moms find it boring because you are reading the same set of books to your kids 2 years in a row. And I can complete resonate with this thought. I have also read that it is really hard on mom to do this because these 2 years are extremely teaching intensive in comparison with all of the other levels. So, to help alleviate some of this, I have decided that next year my youngest two children will do Bigger together. My youngest daughter will do everything her brother does but I will probably not have her do a few of the writing activities if they seem more challenging for her (like writing out the experiment or the doing the full 3 vocab words a week). I also plan to possibly omit R&S 2 and not have her start DITHOR that year. Then the following year my son will move onto Preparing and I will modify Little Hearts to make it more similar to Bigger in work load and have her do that for a year. This will give me only one highly teacher intensive year. And I am okay with that.

So here is my question – since I will have 2 kids back to back in levels, I know my youngest will be listening in on my son’s story time. Honestly, all of my kids gravitate to me when I read out loud no matter whose book it is. So I was thinking, starting with Preparing, that for one child, I would read the story time books as is. Then for the other child (not sure which one) I would read out loud the extension pack books instead. This way I am not reading the same book with each child 2 years in a row (because the other child is going to hear me reading this the year before). Does this sound like a good idea to anyone? I am a fairly unsensoring type of mom so do you think I will run into a significant amount of inappropriate content in the extension pack books for younger ears?

Our kids are almost exactly the same age! My youngest will be six in February and my middle one is 7.5. My oldest is nine like yours, only mine are girl, girl, boy, and I have combined the older two not the youngers. Honestly, I think some combining is really the way to go when you have kids as close together as we do. I would encourage you that it is really easy to do R&S English & Singapore Math at a higher level than the guide suggests for an older child. You can look in my signature for how I am beefing up Bigger for my 9 year-old (who really places in Preparing). For instance with your oldest in Preparing, do you look in the guide to see what page you are doing in R&S that day? Or, do you just turn to the next lesson in the book? I'm guessing you just turn to the next lesson. Anyway that's what I do with my oldest who is doing R&S 4 with Bigger. Same with math. After level 2B you're just working out of an appendix to see your lesson anyway. I made her bookmarks with the page numbers to read in her extension books each day. In many ways she is quite advanced for her age (especially in reading), but I think she is challenged and getting a great education with Bigger.

If I were you, I would plan on going 1/2 speed with your two younger ones in Bigger next fall (I think that's when they would be starting?), but let your son do R&S 2 and math full speed. In fact, to put more space between them, you could start your son in R & S 2 right now. Then if you take 1 1/2 years to complete Bigger he would be in R & S 4 by the time you get to Preparing in January 2016 (I am assuming you are about half way through Beyond right now). Then keep them together. Just because they're in the same guide it doesn't mean you can't separate them to teach written narrations or anything else you'd like. Have one go play or do independent work while you work with the other.

High school is a long way off - he could probably skip 1/2 a guide somewhere if you really want him to do the WG guide as a freshman, and he wouldn't be behind in English if you keep plugging away at R&S. Alternatively, I think there are suggestions for adding economics and other possible needed credits to MTMM that probably wouldn't be too hard for your then high schooler to keep up with without a reminder in his guide.

Personally, I wouldn't even consider trying to beef up LHFHG to Bigger level - that to my mind would be a lot of work and way harder than doing back-to-back guides.

Anyway, I know I didn't answer your question about storytimes. I will say my daughter, who is a sensitive reader, is really enjoying reading the Bigger extensions herself this year. This wasn't the help you were looking for, I know, but I just wanted to share my thoughts!

Actually, my kids do their own level for spelling, grammar and math already. We actually use Right Start for math (I saw you do too for your youngest). Just curious if you do for you oldest as well?

And yeah - I think next year is just going to be that year where I will see what happens. I want my youngest to have that extra time to play in life and I love having each child be in their own guide with their own books. I am so jealous of those moms who have kids in separate guides with separate things. My biggest concern for the kids is that Josie (my youngest) does a lot of other things better than my son already (who is older). Both my husband and I feel like it is better to not have them together because we don't want anyone comparing anything with each other. And even though my youngest is gifted, we don't want to graduate her too early either. But with my son, he is a math and science genius where as my girls are LA and art pros (my youngest actually does it all pretty much). So we just don't like the thought of them having any opportunities to compare themselves to each other.

For my youngest, I have also considered just doing my own thing for her for a year and "unschooling" her basically. I have thought about having her go ahead and do R&S with her brother next year but then do a year with Primary Language Lessons. I have thought about doing the history from LHFHG because I like the history. Her and I could do a devotional for Bible together. We would go ahead and start DITHOR. I would have her do copy work in cursive but much less than what her brother would do. But then I thought about adding calligraphy because I think she would like it. I don't have any idea what science I would do with her. And then for story time for her, I have thought about doing other books recommended in the book pack for Bigger. I don't know though. Before I came to HOD, I was pretty much completely eclectic. I didn't used to mind planning it all out before. I am not totally opposed to doing it for year again if I need to. What I don't want to do to her is make overwhelmed with workload. I think until she reaches 8.5, I don't really want to put her in Preparing because I want her to be ready to be independent. I am loving that my oldest has enough confidence to write things on her own. I want my son to get that confidence and I think he will get it with Bigger. I want my youngest to have that extra year as well to gain confidence in spelling and writing to be able to do all the writing she will need to do. And I just don't want to feel rushed by either child.

I have actually thought about not having my youngest do Bigger with her brother next year but have heard so many people comment on how doing Bigger 2 years in a row was not a good idea that I think I will risk seeing how my youngest does. What I miss with Beyond for my son is the additional writing activities. I felt like with my oldest she was doing more writing for her age right about now and I think my son is really ready for that. I don't know that I think my youngest is ready nearly as much. I do think she understands plenty and can read just as well as other kids in the program. But when I look at her just writing independently next year, I don't know. If she pushes through easily in Bigger and has no struggle, then great. But I still think I am going to split them after that. I love that my oldest is discovering everything alone and want that same opportunity for the other two.

But thanks for your thoughts. I do appreciate them.

There are different storytime options in Preparing, the History set does go along with the history, but there are also boy interest and girl interest storytime packs for Preparing (I think.... I am pretty sure?)

I did the same thing, even though it was 2 years later, I am doing different storytime books with my daughter in Beyond now than I did with her sister 2 years before. It freshens it up for me, and really, can you ever read too many good books? Of course Beyond and Bigger do have more options/lists of their storytime books and they are books that are easy to get at the library.

I don't think LHFHG trying to make it up to Bigger level would really work either. The history selections are really more meant for a younger child. Technically, at 7, I suppose she would still fit the age range of LHFHG at the beginning, but after doing Bigger, I don't know if she would like going back 2 levels like that.

You could maybe use the extension books from Beyond or Bigger as your history for that year, if you are "unschooling" continuing with math, maybe English, and find some great books to read. You will probably miss the activities and the great tie-ins that HOD has, but it could still be a great year! Or maybe back-to-back won't be bad for you, on your first time through Bigger you might find it better than you thought.

Yes, CTC has different story time options. I had thought of that too for that year.

And I had also thought of just doing the extensions for Bigger as the history but wasn't sure if that work out or not. But that is a great thought too.

Since it really seems like separating is your desire, I think the plan of having your son do Bigger and your youngest do LHFHG history and beef-ups next year is a good one. When she finally gets to Bigger you could still have her go slow to put even more space between her and her brother.

My oldest used Rightstart up through half of level D. We got really bogged down with all the practice sheets and the timed multiplication. She never liked math when we used Rightstart (except the games), though I do think she really learned a lot from it. She switched to Singapore last year and her sister switched this year. Singapore is much simpler for me to do and in general it is easier for the kids. My son loves math and really enjoys Rightstart level B, which is my favorite level. His sisters join him for all the math games, which is good practice for them. I take it you do Rightstart for all three? What level is your oldest in?

I really like the idea also of my youngest doing LHFHG and then my son doing Bigger and I think that may be what I will do. I think I am going to also talk to the HOD ladies at the homeschool convention and ask them about how my day would look the year that I do Bigger and Preparing in the same year.

As for RighStart, my oldest is level E, my middle is level C, and then my youngest is level B. I agree about those timed multiplication drills being ridiculous. I don't remember what we did when my dd had to do those. I know last year I got her a multiplication wrap up to help her memorize her facts better and that is what helped her the most. And I think I assigned those sheets as homework but we didn't time the activity. And if memory servers me right, I don't think we did a lesson a day because some of the lessons were kind of long. All in all though, I have been pretty happy with the program. There are days we have had to split the lessons and that is okay. Next year we will be moving on to Level G (the geometry level) and I am hoping we like it just as much. Even if we don't, I may buy a couple of the life of Fred books but we will be starting VideoText the following year.