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Hello! My name is Rebecca and I am new to the HOD "family" starting this fall. I just received my BLHFHG and LHTH and was wondering If there was anything I should know before getting started? Any tips, tricks, advice?

We are required to have 875 hrs. of school in a year. What is the best way to keep track of that?

I look forward to reading your posts and getting to "know" all of you!

Rebecca,

Just wanted to welcome you here, so nice to have you!

Candice

Welcome Rebecca,

I just started using Beyond and LHTH with my boys. I look forward to hearing about your year.

Sorry I don't have any good ways to track hours as we are not required too, but I would think that you will be including alot of your everyday life in those hours too.

Karen

I just wanted to say hi and welcome!

I don't have any advice or tips for you as I'm still brand new to this myself and currently only schooling one. I'm sure I might be asking for some advice myself come January!

arbeomorrow wrote:Hello! My name is Rebecca and I am new to the HOD "family" starting this fall. I just received my BLHFHG and LHTH and was wondering If there was anything I should know before getting started? Any tips, tricks, advice?

We are required to have 875 hrs. of school in a year. What is the best way to keep track of that?

I look forward to reading your posts and getting to "know" all of you!

Welcome! we don't have to keep records but I've heard of homeschool tracker, maybe that could help? Don't forget to include all the training you do in your hours. Sports / parks should count as phys ed for example.

Hope you enjoy HOD as much as we do.

Hello, and welcome to HOD! My advice would be to relax and use HOD as is. Everything you need is included...unless you live in a state that requires extra, like I do. We have to add Health and P.E. Anyway, the manuals are complete, the kids learn a lot, and the lessons are short; so you should have plenty of learning time and plenty of time to pursue other interests, clean house, etc. I would say give yourself a bit of time to get into your 'groove' then it should be smooth sailing! I'm looking forward to 'seeing' you here.

Welcome to the HOD Family! BLHFHG has all that you need, so doing it as it is will help you find your groove (as inHistiming said so well). It always takes us a few weeks or a bit more to find our groove, which for me is mainly figuring out what schedule works best for our 3 ds's overall. Our dear baby is the wildcard, and things have to be fine-tuned and rearranged according to his needs throughout the year. I think you'll find it easy to log enough time by thinking outside the "public school box" (I had to learn to do this, even though I'm not required to log hours ). For example, your outdoor time can count for living science (as just general appreciation of God's Creation ), outdoor/indoor recess or exercise videos can count for physical activities, the endless teaching of habits such as room cleaning/personal hygiene/chores,etc. can count for health (this used to be in the health book we taught in public school - very funny, btw, talking to children about their need to make their bed when they were at ps ); then there's educational computer time, read-alouds before bedtime, etc. So, I wouldn't worry about adding things in to equal the time requirements - you'll find your daily life adds it all in nicely already! It will be wonderful to get to know you here at the HOD boards!!! Be sure to share the happy hi-lights of your weeks with us at the weekly check-in - I LOVE to read those!

In Christ,
Julie

Baking and cooking and other life skills are "home ec". Coloring, painting etc. are "arts and crafts". Lots of ways to add time.

Thanks everyone for the comments! We are very excited to be using HOD. Even my son who will be doing preschool asked if we could start "now". It will be hard to wait another month but my husband wants us to wait till September. I guess he got tired of hearing all the homeschool curricula comparisons and would like a break now that I've actually selected one!

Welcome to the HOD family! We're glad to have you here!

I really had to smile at that last post! Our poor husband's really get an earfull, don't they! Mine just nods his head and agrees a lot!

He's so relieved when I can talk with my sisters or to you ladies on the board over curriculum matters!

Blessings,
Carrie

Hi Rebecca!! Welcome to HOD. You will love it here. I too laughed at your last comment about your husband wanting a break from "homeschool speak". Sometimes I am like a wild horse galloping off on one of my homeschool lectures and then I have to slow down and realize my poor love will not get as excited as I will about the subject. Thank goodness for my "Sistahs!" on here. By the way where are you from?

We live in Wisconsin.

I am amazed at how many people narrow their curriculum down to HOD or MFW! I was thoroughly glad that someone made a comparison post of the two. It really helped me in my selection.

That was the boat we were in. I almost purchased MFW but almost by "accident" I came across this website and even though I was dead set on purchasing MFW, I kept coming back to HOD and looking it over. Finally I realized that God was leading me here because I most defitinitely wasn't going to purchase it in the beginning but I couldn't stay away either. The more I read and the more I learned, I knew HOD was the best fit for us. Praise God!!!

Rebecca,

I wanted to pop in and welcome you, too! I'm going to be using Bigger and DITHOR with my 8 yo son and continuing LHTH with my 4 yo daughter. I'm excited about "jumping in" in 1 week! I love how HOD is open and go (I'm sure this is something you'll love too )! I feel like I already have a great "feel" for what we're going to be doing from reading everyone's "week-in-review" these past months. You might really enjoy looking at those and seeing what Beyond and LHTH are like. I look forward to getting to know you better.

Kathleen