Would you ever stop a child halfway through...

[mrsrandolph]

I have 2 in LHFHG. One just began and one is half way through. I have 4 children, and I am beginning to see there is going to be NO WAY I can run 4 guides and DITHOR. Would it be an abomination to start my youngest in Beyond when my other one starts in beyond basically leaving him out of half of LHFHG?

I HATE to do that. I just don't know what to do!!

[MomtoJGJE]

can he handle doubling up? I did that with Julianna...

We started her and Grace combined in LHFHG, but it became apparent that couldn't work between their personalities and abilities. So Grace continued full speed and Julianna did half speed 4 days per week. That was the perfect fit for her. Then it was obvious she needed full speed... so we did full speed four days per week. Then I upped it to five days. Then for the last 8 or so units she was in much need of more, so I doubled up. I would do 2-3 days worth of work per day for her. She wasn't reading yet, so I couldn't add in ERs or Language Arts, she was already doing as much math as she wanted and was fine doing 2-3 days worth of fine motor skills. It still took right about an hour to do double everything, which was how I knew she was ready to do that.

So maybe if you could double up LHFHG with the younger one, and the start the older one Beyond half speed until the younger one catches up and then they could go full speed from there?

[MelInKansas]

If you think that younger one would be ready to move up that far, my concerns would be in Math, whether you would keep the math at their level or try to skip, that doesn't seem like it would work, and then some of the skills. I confess to not emphasizing enough the things like calendar stuff. It made it harder afterwards when we encountered those things again. Also writing is one of the areas that can be really difficult if you have a child in a guide too hard for them, you've seen the guides so once you get to Bigger and Preparing if you are having to help with a lot of the writing work that would make it much harder for you than doing another guide even.

Since they are only 1/2 guide apart it seems like you could combine them but you usually want to go with the younger one and add on for the older, not push the younger one up to try to keep up with where the older is at. Maybe you've already done this, held the older one back a little bit. I am sure God will give you wisdom as to the right thing to do.

Blessings!

[StephanieU]

I agree that speeding up the younger or slowing down the older would be a good idea. Can you just jump the younger one up to where the older one is for th eleft side of LHFHG (plus storytime)? If so, that is what I would do. He would miss some Bible history, but maybe you could do that as a family over the summer/during a break? Or if you do something else (church, etc) that gives a the Bible in chronological order, then you would be fine there too.

[MomtoJGJE]

That's true... Didn't think of that suggestion! You could easily just skip the 6yo ahead to where the older one is for everything but FMS/math/reading... keep those on level, which you would do when combining anyway.

[mrsrandolph]

Great Suggestions. I could not double the younger one. He's not ready attention span wise for that much listening, though he's getting there.

I would keep their math and reading separate.

So, If I do the left hand side for both (starting where older is), keep math and reading separate, does that sound good?

Shannon

[MelInKansas]

It definitely seems like a good place to start, given what you have told us about them and your schedule I wish you the best with it!