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So we have an 11yo and almost 9yo combined in Preparing and a 6yo in LHFHG. As we wrap up Preparing I see almost 9 who is a very advanced reader/math-- struggling with English 3, longer writing assignments and more in-depth narrations, and the Project/Creative stuff that is supposed to semi-independant. I don't want to tell him to skip stuff, and feel like he might benefit from going down in guides bc he was so young when we did Beyond and Bigger. Is this ever recommended?
11yo is a struggling reader, who will need help with any reading in CTC...but places well for all other CTC.
So... my idea was to combine the 2 youngers in Beyond next year--thinking this prevent my 9yo from getting overwhelmed and frustrated/give him a chance to enjoy the younger activities/ give me time to work on reading with 11yo--and the 6yo would LOVE to have big brother doing school with him too!), BUT there are no official 'extensions' available to do Beyond with older kids? Any ideas on what this might look like? Anyone done it this way before? thank you in advance ladies!

I beefed up Beyond for my 3rd grader last year. I wrote up a blog post on the subject if you'd like to see what I did. http://cindyshomeschoolblog.blogspot.co ... rader.html

Would he like to redo Bigger do you think? You could try and give that to him for him to do on his own and structure it similar to Preparing. You could also assign all of the extenions as well. If he did Bigger on his own, then you could probably have him skip redoing Preparing and take CTC half pace for a while. Just a thought. And if the 9yo is struggling with grammar, I would just repeat the level 3 book next year again and use that for Bigger. What do you think his thoughts would be on doing this?

That is difficult, but he's so young I don't think it would matter repeating. I agree with the pp... I think I'd have him do Bigger, but structure it like Preparing, and add in the extension readings for him. I don't know if the extensions are just reading or not, but if they are just reading, then maybe you could use the key idea to have him write a narration once a week like in Preparing just to give him the practice of that... I would definitely have the narration be on the extensions because of the notebooking going with the regular history readings.

And like the previous poster also said, if you went this route with him then you could probably skip Preparing with him the next year and go on to CTC...

I used books like the DAulaire books on George Washington, Columbus, and Benjamin Franklin. I also used Paddle to the Sea. There are so many good books out there. I don't remember all of them I pulled together.

Another recommendation I would have are the audios from character concepts.com called Uncle Rick. I love the cd set adventure stories from Americas past. My boys have really enjoyed them. Since you are already reading a lot, think about cd sets that can enhance their learning. They can build with Legos while listening.