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I have 3 children and am hoping to use HOD next year with them. I was thinking about putting my 10 yo dd in CTC and combining my 8 yo struggling reader with my 5 yo (she is advanced and reading already) in Beyond Little Hearts. My hopes are that this will give my struggling reader time to catch up and get on track. Can I get your opinion? I'm trying to avoid buying three different curriculum. Any other suggestions that I haven't mentioned will be considered and appreciated.

Welcome to HOD!

Have you checked where each child places on the placement chart? http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

I find it's helpful to see what skills each child has first. Then it's easier to think about who can be combined. It also helps the ladies here understand what skills your children have to help them know how to best advise you.

I think that from the short description you gave, you may be able to combine the younger 2 kids for the short term. But keep in mind that placing your 5 year old in Beyond would place them in CTC at age 8. Which I personally think is way too young. I personally aim to have my kids enter CTC in 5th grade. But each child is different, and if they have successfully completed each HOD program, they are usually prepared for the next guide when the time comes.

Adding to what Crystal said... If you combine and find that you are consistently having to adjust or drop activities for dc, they really aren't well placed and won't be getting as rich an education as they could. I am speaking as one who has had to make a big step back for one ds due to misplacement.
Perhaps a good option would be Beyond at half speed for 8yo, using a selection of books from the storytime options that this dc helps choose. Then use LHFHG fo 5yo, choosing level 2/3 readers to go along. As important as the charts are now, also look at the level of writing and narration and time allotments for work in older guides to assess whether your dc will be on track to successfully complete those courses

Thank you so much for your response. I had skimmed the placement guide but today I sat down and really reviewed it and it seems to me that my 5yo. will be ready for Little Hearts as she is finishing a Kindergarten curriculum this year with no issues. She is almost done with phonics which she should have completed by year end. I believe based on what I read that my 8yo. ds could go into either Beyond or Bigger. In a situation like that, which do you feel would be better?

For a little background on ds, he has seemed to go backward this year. Math facts that he knew last year he has struggled with this year. We are looking into the possibility that he may have dyslexia due to still getting letters and numbers mixed up and writing them backward. For example, he writes 31 instead of 13 or b instead of d. He struggles with reading and writing. He acts like it is the end of the world if he has to write a word, much less a sentence. I may have contributed to the problem by not forcing him to do it and allowing him to begin giving oral answers as opposed to writing them just so we could get things done. His spelling is not good at all. We took him out of ps in 2nd grade and his school used more of a sight words approach as opposed to phonics and although I have tried to go back and teach him phonics, old habits die hard. He tends to look at the first letter or two of a word and guess at the word instead of sounding it out. I have looked at HOD for a couple years now and really feel this is the direction God is leading us. But any help I can get with proper placement would be wonderful. Dh said if we need to buy 3 curriculums we definitely will but he wants to be sure we get him where he needs to be so ds won't get discouraged.

Well Heather, if I could do it over, I would have ds #3 in Preparing this year rather than CTC. As I look through my (new ) catalog, I see so much in there that he missed (my fault) and would have loved. Draw and write through history is a favorite of all three ds, as were the One Small Square books. This may be the perfect intro to HOD for your ds...lots of fun books and plenty of writing practice. The Bible study is great, and we all had fun with the armor of God project. As for spelling, we do struggle with that here as well, but the dictations (no more than 5 minutes each!) have been helping a lot. That was one of the things I had let slip English is another area that we learned to love thanks to posts here about doing much of it orally or on whiteboard...makes me a partner in the lesson
So, we have been buying 3 levels, passing each on to the next child in line, and this year, we have reached the point of only needing the next hs guide We make sure to order extra consumables for each dc.

Oh yeah, my ds also mixes letters, mostly due to not caring. I recently started giving him a supplement called Attentive Child from Source Naturals, a chewable tablet, and his focus and work "ethic" have really improved this week. Sometimes we need a bit of rebalancing

As for the 8yo and 5yo, how will the 8yo feel being combined with the 5yo? When will the 5yo turn 6? I know of one family that combined kids similar to yours in Beyond for one year, and then the following split them into Bigger and LHFHG. Then next year they will do Preparing and Bigger.