heartofdakota.com

My soon to be 10yo 5th grader places in both Preparing and CTC... If I do Preparing, she will be off track for the 9th grade Geography guide... However, I want her to really absorb and understand what she is learning! My question is.. What age was your child when they did CTC??

Thanks,
jennifer

My dc were 10 and in 5th grade when they did CTC, but we had done LHFHG, Beyond, Bigger, and Preparing leading up to that. My advice is to go where she best places. Look at it again and see if you feel one is a better fit than the other. There is a big difference in the level of independence and the amount of work between Preparing and CTC. Is she ready for a bigger chunk of independence and more writing? For us the step up to CTC was a big one and took us a while to get used to even after having done Preparing. CTC is great, but it is a longer day with more writing and more independence. This is the guide where they begin reading the history for themselves and the reading level/material can be challenging for some. I know somewhere there is a link to the more difficult history book that could give you an idea of the reading level, but I'm not for sure where to find that. Here is a link that compares the skills in Preparing to CTC: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12582&p=90658#p90658 Maybe that will help.

My child did CTC as a 10yo/5th as well, but we also had gone through all the guides leading up to it. If I were just coming into HOD and had a child that placed between Preparing and CTC I'd do Preparing.... that guide basically teaches you and your child how to do the next few guides.

One thing you can do to get through the guides quicker if your child is on the older end (basically if you want to be on track for the HS guides) is to do the guide 5 days per week instead of just 4. There are 35 weeks with 4 days scheduled each week... if you do it 5 days per week you get 7 extra weeks per year (assuming a 35 week year) so if you do that 5th-8th grade you would get through unit 28 of mtmm by the end of 8th grade...

That is all assuming my math is correct

My dd is going to be 9 and starting CTC for 5th grade (she turns 10 quickly into the year). We only completed Preparing last year as it was our first year with HOD and she started that when she was 8. I know others have used CTC for the younger end of the age range as well and some have used it for the older end of the age range.

If it were me, I would circle the boxes that fit well for your child on the placement chart. If your 10 yo is a strong reader and can write quite a bit each day, then CTC will be fine and I personally would go with that. If your child doesn't read well or hates to write and won't write much, then I would go with Preparing. CTC has quite a bit of writing and reading and to me, those two things will determine whether or not they will do well in CTC IMHO. Preparing is great also and my dd did love it last year. But I think if your 10 year old can do things listed in the chart for CTC, then I think you will enjoy CTC more.

We'll start CTC in January, so mid-5th grade. He'll be almost 11. I plan to continue with it through 6th grade, starting RTR the beginning of 7th.

Michaeljenn wrote:My soon to be 10yo 5th grader places in both Preparing and CTC... If I do Preparing, she will be off track for the 9th grade Geography guide... However, I want her to really absorb and understand what she is learning! My question is.. What age was your child when they did CTC??

Thanks,
jennifer

Hi Jennifer! I am wondering what your soon to be 10 yo did for school last year? Did she do Bigger Hearts? I am also wondering if you could share a little about your dd's reading/writing/grammar/math in regard to the placement chart, if you get the chance. The ladies are right - dc do CTC at different ages, and as long as they are placed right, they flourish! One of our sons was 9 1/2, and one was 10 1/2. Others do it later and love it! It just depends on your dd's proper placement. If you get a chance to share more details, we'll all chime in with more detailed advice!!! BTW, both guides are awesome. You can't go wrong, and there are many paths to doing high school well with HOD. So, just choosing the guide she places best in now will be the best placement and provide the best year ahead!

In Christ,
Julie

Well, my daughter was in public school last year.... However, she had been homeschooled before that. She did very well at school, did not make lower than a 95 on her report card all year. She was a bit bored to be honest with you. We had a lot going on last year, and we knew that public school was the best option for the season we were in. They had been BEGGING to come back home, so we will be homeschooling again, hopefully all the way through High School. She is strong in math and I plan to use Saxon with her, mainly because we have an awesome lady who teaches homeschool math classes and she uses Saxon. I am a bit scared to put her in Singapore this late in the game. She has used Rod and Staff English in the past as well, and loves it..(strange, I know) LOL Her writing skills are pretty good. She could use some improvement, but enjoys it for the most part. The biggest thing I am concerned about is the independent reading. She does not "enjoy" reading that much at all. She is a good reader, just has not enjoyed what she had to do at school last year... which was basically was reading passages and preparing for the STARR test. I am a bit concerned that their could be too much reading and it could bog her down, but I am not sure... she could really get into the books and surprise me. She saw the CTC science book Plant Life in Field and Garden and started reading it, and said she enjoyed it. LOL As for looking at the placement chart, she honestly places in CTC, but I know it will challenge her. It is honestly hard to tell how much it will challenge her since she was in school last year. My plan was to maybe read a paragraph, then have her read a paragraph ect.... and then slowly having her read everything on her own. I think one of the hardest things about this decision is that I LOVE everything in Preparing that I have pre read so far and part of me doesn't want her to miss that year. But, I honestly want her to be able to get to Geography by 9th grade, and not be off a year. Soooo how is that for rambling? I hope I made sense here!!

Jennifer

I think I would go with CTC then if it were me. I know you mentioned you were worried about the volume of reading. Have you thought about going 1/2 speed or a little bit slower speed at first? Last year was my first year with HOD and my oldest dd placed in Preparing. She was an average reader and could write some but not a lot. I was very worried about the volume of reading! I had thought about implementing the same strategy you mentioned for her but after praying about it, I felt like I didn't want to start that track. I personally was worried that if I started reading things with her, she would expect it. So instead, for the first month we went kind of slowly. And the books definitely start off with not nearly as much reading. Some people will go half speed but we just went for about 4 hours a day. We did what we could and just stopped after 4 hours. Within a month we were going full speed every day. By the middle of the year, my dd was read 10 pages or so in a history book and then 6-7 science book. Plus, we were doing DITHOR and she would be reading between 8-15 pages in a literature book. I was so surprised at how well it went! And my dd doesn't actually like to read either. But there were some things we discovered with her this year. She loved any book about the arts. So the Shakespeare book was her favorite and her second favorite was the book about Mozart. I was surprised and delighted to find this out about her character It makes a lot of sense to me too why she would love these books - God knit her together with so much natural creativity and musical ability that everyone who knows her can see it in her too. But none the less, it was so neat to discover that about her. She also did enjoy the constellation book, the one small square books, and the Leonardo DiVinci book. She also read the Marco Polo book and raved about that. We picked the Level 3 book pack for her last year with DITHOR because she wasn't that strong of a reader and some of her favorites in that was Toliver's Secret, Louise Braille, and the book on Alexander Hamilton (she must love Biographies too and I didn't realize this about her either).

So HOD has turned my child who hated reading into to child who looked forward to what she would discover in a book . I envision the same excitement next year with CTC. I pre-read a lot of her books because that is what I do LOL. I ordered her the Level 4/5 book pack for next year. She will only study 5 of the genres for DITHOR and she will read the others on her own. But I think she likes HOD because the books they pick out are just SO good. Even my son who is 8, he has recently developed a love of reading as well. Today he sat and read for almost 2 hours (not straight - breaks in between). In our house - we implement a media rule for the summer. The kids can have 1.5 hours of media if they read for 1.5 hours. But my son, even after his 1.5 hours of reading was up, he kept going because he now loves books (and my kids are SO active, they don't really sit for long and rarely last the whole 1.5 hours in front of a TV or on a video game.) I think HOD has helped my kids to grow to love books. My kids love what I read to them and they are all ears. It has been a great balance as well. So with your dd, I think if she liked the plant book, she will probably like most of the other books. For me, the books are great and I have been very encouraged that my kids like the books so much.

I just loved reading what Nealewill had to say! Such good advice there. I think that this will be your success story - a dd who learns to have a love for reading who grows into her guide well throughout the year! I think Nealewill makes a good point about if you start by reading a page and then her reading a page that dd may expect that for the year. Starting half-speed at first at least for the first 2 weeks and having dd do all she is supposed to do in the plans may be a great way to ease her into it beautifully! If you took 2 weeks to do the first 1 week of plans, having dd do all of the reading,writing, etc. she is to do but slowing it down so you do 1 day's worth of plans in 2 days, I think dd would gain confidence and grow into it. You can reevaluate at the close of the first 2 weeks and see if dd should continue half-speed, or if she is perhaps ready for more.

For one of my sons, the writing in RTR was the harder part for him. I read through the RTR plans and marked everything that had him write with a "W". I then made a half-speed plan for him spreading out the "W" marked things over 2 days. I just jotted this down on an index card for us to follow as 2 columns of days to rotate through. It worked great! I am excited for him to jump in and go full-speed next year after our break, as I am confident he is ready for it. Perhaps you could do something similar for your dd by marking "R" next to the things she will be responsible for reading and then dividing them out over 2 days at first? Then, later you can just spread the "R" things out within the day, so she is not doing all of her reading in a row when she is doing a full day's worth of plans in 1 day. Just an idea!!!

You will be reading the Storytime, the Geography, and the Bible Study books, so these may be good things to alternate with her reading her own things. You also will be teaching dictation, grammar, math, DITHOR, and WWTB, as well as assisting dd with her History Project. Alternating things she is doing more independently that involve reading with things you are teaching and leading up may spread out the reading nicely within a day when she goes full-speed as well. I hope something helps here, but I think you have a terrific year ahead of you with CTC!

In Christ,
Julie