New to HOD

[4CsMama]

Hi! I am in the process of transitioning my family to HOD curriculum. While excited about the new adventure I'm not quite sure where to begin. I have an 8-year old & 12-year old and thought about starting with "Preparing Hearts", with the extension for my 12-year old, but not sure if this would be "too-young". 12-year old is beginning 7th grade, and has not had experience with diagramming sentences, but also want her to be challenged. On the other hand, I would have love to have them learn topics together. Any advice, input? If you wouldn't begin with "Preparing Hearts" where would you start? Also, any thoughts on which curriculum to choose for highschoolers? I have 10th & 11th grader and want to make this transition smooth while maximizing all that HOD has to offer.
Thanks everyone

[Jennymommy]

Welcome Regardless of which guide seems good, or whether or not to combine kids, could you first let us know where each one fits according to the charts here http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php? Also, it would be helpful to know what has been done up to now for math, grammar, writing, etc. We are looking forward to joining you in this endeavor

[4CsMama]

Thanks, Jennymommy for your response!! It means a lot! I looked at the chart you suggested and my 12-year old falls into several different categories, that's what is making this hard. She reads indecently, has mastered cursive and has had some exposure to short paragraph dictation through our spelling programs. She recognizes most parts of speech and has begun division in math. She is independent in Bible studies and just completed "Seamless" by Angie Smith, a girls Bible study group this summer. It feels like in some areas, one book would be appropriate, and another book would be better suited in other areas. I want to gain the full benefits of the program, but also don't want to leave gaps. My hope, unless the Lord directs otherwise, is to continue with this curriculum throughout the rest of her homeschooling.

[StephanieU]

Where does the 8yo place? Many 8yos place into Bigger. Some placece into Beyond, and some into Preparing.

Also, what sort of dictations was your 12yo doing? IN HOD, dictations come from their readings. They read (or listen) to something and then dictate about what they read. It is somewhat similar to summarizing, although the focus doesn't have to be a summary.

[Gwenny]

StephanieU, I think you mean narrations, instead of dictations.

[4CsMama]

Hi everyone So I compared "skills" and my 8-year old definitely falls into the "Beyond" category (he just turned 8 last Sunday). My 12-year old used a spelling program where I would read a paragraph to her, pausing between sentences, and she would write them down. Does that qualify as "dictation"? I was hoping to be able to have my two "youngers" work together - my other two are high schoolers, but now looking at it, it looks like I most definitely need to pursue the "Beyond" curriculum for my little guy. Also, please forgive me as I am new, but I'm trying to figure out some of the abbreviations - lol! What does DD, or DS mean? With highschoolers, are you able to use all the curriculum to meet graduation requirements or are you needing to use outside sources as well?

[Nealewill]

Ds means dear son and dd means dear daughter.

One the component I haven't hear you mention yet with your 12 year old is how much writing they are used to. In HOD, they will write something in several subjects each day. If they aren't used to doing much writing, then that would also affect the level that they are able to go into. Also, when you say that your 12 year old is reading independently, how long during the day are they reading and what level books? At a minimum, I think your 12 year old would place into CTC but may even place into RtR. Have they done narrations before? Narrations are similar to summaries but they add a bit more flair and personalization than a summary. CTC has a lot more help and hand holding than RtR in this area. In addition, in RtR, you are doing 2 narrations a week as opposed to 1. On other area of change is that in CTC, you do research orally where as in RtR, you write it down. It sounds like with spelling your child is used to dictation. HOD uses dictation and it is given in the back of the guide. You can easily transition over and wouldn't need to stay with your current program. As for math, you can complete this at any level and isn't really tied to a HOD level. What program do you use now? Do you like it? Many times, if you have a math program that you like, switching is not always recommended, at least not until they are ready for pre-algebra or algebra. But if you hate it, you can always look and see where they place in Singapore. And finally, if your child starts in CTC or RtR, that will place them in RevtoRev or MTMM for 9th grade, there tons of great help on how to make both of those programs high school worthy and help you get all of your high school credits that you need using either RevtoRev through WH or MTMM through AH guide (AH guide is just getting ready to be released and is the 3rd high school guide. Carrie will be writing a 4th high school guide next year).

As for keeping the two younger kids together, you will probably find that they will thrive better being in separate levels. Before I found HOD I could never understand how and why anyone would want to do school this way! But, when I found HOD, I didn't realize that the older levels were meant to be done more independently. You will still be working with your child on language arts and math lessons plus reading one or two more things to them but in general, it is mean that mom is only spending 1-1.5 hours with each child each day. Also, all of the guides from Preparing and up are written to 4 days a week instead of 5. This saves time too because you have either a free day or you have a day play catch-up. My first year with HOD I combine my youngest and middle child in Beyond. My youngest was 5 and my middle child 7. My oldest placed in Preparing and so she had her own level. I was so surprised at how easy it was to run both levels! Since my youngest was definitely not ready for Bigger at 6, I ended up splitting up my two younger kids. My youngest moved down to Little Hearts and my middle child moved to Bigger. That was also the best decision I ever made! While my two younger kids do still complete grammar, cursive (from Bigger) and Latin (the only thing we add) together, they are separate. This works for me. With your 12 year old, you will find that you can run a separate level than you do with the 8 year old and your day will get done very well.

As for your high school students, you will need to look at graduation requirements for your state to see what they need. I am sure we help can recommend a level for them but it would be highly contingent upon their past volume on reading and writing. Also - even once they place in a level, we may recommend a few ways to modify the guides to meet your children's needs. What is their grammar experience? How much writing have they done in the past? How much reading have they done? Have you looked at the placement chart for each of them? If you go through the list and circle each area where they place, where do they line up? I would also think that they could both probably do the same guide as well.

[rumkimom]

I agree with Daneale about placing your 8 & 12 year old together. I tried to place my 7 & 9 year old boys together in Beyond and it did not even last a week!! One ended up moving up to Bigger and the other down to Little Hearts and now both are SO much happier and at their perfect levels. I have a third child started HOD next week so will be running 3 guides.

[4CsMama]

After a long day of reading, cross-referencing, etc, my brain is on overload!! Doesn't take much for me this time of year! I am now wondering, since this is our first year, and to make it most successful, I am contemplating putting my DD 12-year old in "Preparing". She has not had a lot of experience in writing, except that which she does on her own, and no experience with diagramming. Yet, my other thought, is that I don't want her to not be challenged either. Sigh...is it better to start with something in the younger age group while transitioning? Just came across a post about transitioning kiddos mid-high school - something else I need to decide. Coffee!!! I need coffee - and prayer

[Nealewill]

I can send you lots of prayer!

For your 12 year old child, I personally think she may be underchallenged in Preparing even with the extensions. And furthermore, I fear that you will then not enjoy using the program. CTC is the first level where kids actually have formal writing assignments from a creative writing curriculum. In addition, with your dd's age, she can go into R&S 4 without any formal grammar instruction. It will move a bit a fast but she should have no problem. R&S 4 is covered over 2 years in the levels CTC and RtR. If you are concerned though about starting her in R&S 4, you can easily have her do R&S 3 in CtC (go full speed in the R&S book with 1 lesson per day) and then have her do all of the R&S 4 book in RtR. That puts her right back on track to complete R&S 5 in RevtoRev and R&S 6 in MTMM. A lot more goes into each level other than diagraming sentences and written narrations. Other families have also come to HOD midstream in their kids education and they have started in CTC without prior written narration experience along with no formal grammar study and those families have been fine.

As for starting a child off on the younger end of the age range vs older end of the age, it really depends on the child, the parent, family dynamics, and balance. Carrie had written up a long message to someone at one point describing how her kids are placed. Some of her kids are on the younger end and some on the older end. In most families, that is the trend. I can really only speak for myself and others can chime in too on their kids placement I came to HOD 2 years ago. With that, I was able to start on the lower end of the age range for my oldest and youngest but my son started in the middle of the age range. My times, people with kids on longer end of the age range have come to HOD early on but not always. Likewise, sometimes kids who start young have difficulty with reading or writing at some point, they end up going slower in that guide and this puts them at a higher age in future guides. Because many skills build on each other, once you start a guide, it isn't advised to skip a guide or two unless you find that your child wasn't challenged at all and needed a bump. In addition, once you finish a guide, moving to the next one is usually fairly seamless. The guides are all about skills. Many times a skill introduced in one guide, practiced more in the following guide and then mastered in the 3rd guide. Skipping a guide can happen for kids that are combine with younger siblings or for kids who start HOD and the parent had a hard time placing them. Once the year is over, you will be able to tell if your 12 year old is perfectly placed or if she needs to be bumped. From what you have described, I think CTC will provide a nice placement for her. Grammar can be introduced in CTC just fine using either R&S 3 or 4 and creative writing can be introduced in CTC as well. You wouldn't expect your 12 year old to really be in the mastery phase of creative writing until high school (10th or 11th grade) anyway. And even at that, you are always learning new styles of writing. Introducing written narrations in CTC will go just fine. There is plenty of instruction still in that manual. I would say that instruction for written narrations in CTC and Preparing is fairly similar. With Preparing, many times kids aren't confident writers yet and may actually be physically copying what they dictate to a parent. For example, my son is in Preparing this year. He struggles a bit with language anyway but on his written narration days, he usually tells me what he wants to say first, I write it down in paper and then he copies it. However, for science questions (there are written questions each week), I make him answer the questions in complete sentences but I don't write his answers down for him to copy. He does these on his own. We still sit together while he does it but he is doing the bulk of the work. Eventually he will get the confidence to do this alone but he just isn't there yet. And finally, in Preparing, there is still quite a bit of oral activity since kids aren't writing as much. In Preparing, they do ramp up the copy work selections and this is great because it gets kids ready for CTC. But I have found that the biggest difference between CtC and Preparing is the length of the history and science reading and that the parent in CTC is no longer reading any of the history to the child. With your dd's age, I really do think that CTC would be a better fit for her. I think she could handle the reading and writing volume. I think that the creative writing book would suit her just fine. And I do think she would be fine in the R&S 4 grammar book. One nice thing with CTC is that R&S 4 is scheduled every other day. If you were concerned about your dd not understanding the books, you could do review on the days that R&S 4 isn't covered just to make sure she understands. But other parents have started their kids in R&S 4 and their kids have done well.

I know that HOD may seem intimidating in some ways because it is so different from anything out there. I had never considered a literature based program for education my children until finding HOD. I had started off classical and that was a terrible fail. In that time I started with traditional using Abeka and went eclectic for a couple years. After that was obviously not my kids learning style, I took a different route and tried MFW. The first year went well but none of my kids were in the same level together as I had one child in K, one in 1st and my oldest was in 3rd grade at the time. It wasn't prefect but it was much better than what I had experienced in prior years. At that point, I had every intention of sticking with them but then the following year I had two kids placed in the same level. Epic fail again! I had never heard of HOD before but somehow came across their curriculum as I was trying to figure out how to modify MFW to make it work. After getting the HOD catalog I remember looking at it and reading the whole thing. I quickly got into a panic because I had never really planned on switching from MFW. However, after a few days of reading and rereading the I catalog plus one phone to HOD, I seriously felt the Lord leading me to switch immediately. I ended up dropping MFW after 7 weeks of school and my oldest started in Preparing while my two youngers started Beyond. I was very nervous about this since my oldest was struggling a bit with reading at the time and my son has auditory processing disorder (it means he doesn't learn language the same as other kids and it is very delayed when compared with his peers). I was into my 5th year of homeschooling at this point and nothing seemed to be a good fit for my family. Since my oldest was struggling with reading, I honestly was feeling a bit hopeless at this point and had no expectations that this would even work out. I remember calling them and asking their return policy right before I made my purchase. I remember Mike told me that I could try for 2 months if I wanted and return it if it was not a good fit for us. Well, the rest is history! God knew what he was doing when he led me here that year. This is my third year using HOD and I have never looked back. My husband used to tease me before because I switched programs yearly - many times buying one program in the beginning of the year only to scrap some of it during the year and have to repurchase a few subjects. The year I switched to HOD was the only year I scrapped an entire curriculum in full and that year was a bit of a financial burden in some sense because both curriculums weren't cheap and I wasn't just switching one or two things. Imagine his delight to find out that I chose to do HOD a second year in a row last year (not to mention his excitement on me not wasting money by having to replace things). This coming year is our 3 year with HOD and I don't even pine over other stuff. I will say, I do still like to look around and see what is out there but honestly, every time it brings me right back to HOD. The whys on what they chose to use, the whens on when they introduce books and concepts, and the implementation of how they use their products are all factors that keep me with HOD. I love the variety and love the growth I see in my kids from using these products. I also love that they have picked things I would have never considered using or teaching. For me, I clearly have found my perfect fit.

I truly will pray for you. I pray God lead you to the level he wants your dd to do and pray that you have peace once you come to your conclusion.

[my3sons]

Good morning! The ladies are doing a wonderful job of helping you here, and some very good thoughts have been shared! It sounds like you have referenced the placement chart, and from that you have decided that Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory is the right fit for your ds. So, you are 50% of the way there! Placement is so worth the time and prayer, as it is an entire year of each of your lives. With HOD, placement is important because HOD is concerned about making sure each student receives what is best.

One thing to consider is each guide is written specifically to meet the needs of a target age range. For PHFHG, the target age range is ages 8-10 yo. So, ideally, PHFHG is the best match for those ages. With extensions, history can be extended, and higher level LA and math choices can be chosen, but overall, the PHFHG guide is written with the ages 8-10 in mind. So, I am wondering if you could please share a little more about your 12 yo. Specifically, what level of books does she read approximately? Is she an avid reader or is reading not her thing? Is she used to reading her own history and science, or have these been read aloud to her? How much is she used to writing each day in a setting (i.e. 1-3 sentences, 5-7 sentences, 8-10 sentences, multiple paragraphs, etc.)? Does she write on notebook paper? Has she had a formal writing program and/or a formal reading program she's used? Has she had cursive? How long each day is she used to doing school? How well does she work independently? How well does she follow directions? What grammar has she done? What math has she done? I know these are a lot of questions, but they will make clearer what guide she would place best in. Just from target age ranges, for a 12 yo, the guides you'd more than likely consider would be RTR, RevtoRev, or MTMM. However, the answers to some of these questions may point to a different guide, and if so, then that would be the guide to do.

WHEW! I know I asked a lot of questions, but when we are trying to help with placement advice, we are shooting in the dark without quite a bit of clear information. Especially by 12 yo, dc's skills and abilities and needs can vary greatly! More information helps us give better advice, and then after all that, the final decision is yours - the mom who knows your dd the best. So, if you could please share about your 12 yo with these questions in mind, that would truly help us help you more. In the meantime, here is a link to some wonderful posts where Carrie has some excellent thoughts in regard to some of the questions you are pondering, like:

What are we considering, when you ask us which guide your family should use?
Why do we ask you to look at the placement chart for each of your individual children when considering the best placement for your family?
Why can’t I just place my children in HOD where they would fit next in the history cycle?
Why don’t you recommend having children younger than the target age range of the HOD guide simply listen in with the older student’s guide?
What would my child be missing out on if I did choose to combine him/her in a guide that doesn’t fit him/her well on the placement chart?
How will we be learning as a family, if we do separate guides?
How can I get my different-aged children into the same guide, or how do I know if I should try to combine them?

Within the link below, you can click on any of the above questions to read Carrie's responses, which I have found to be so true with our dc, 2 of which are exactly the same ages as your precious duo (8 yo and 12 yo; and then we also have an almost 16 yo). HOD is worth this time spent. 12 years of using it and loving it with our own dc is my testimony. I want that for you too.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9344

In Christ,
Julie

[MomtoJGJE]

I also agree that Preparing would be too low for your 12yo. You can choose which level of grammar you think she'd need. I'd probably start a 12yo who wasn't strong in grammar in R&S4. You would also choose which math level she places in. If you choose Singapore Math, they have a placement test on their website. I don't know about other maths because all we have used is Singapore.

I'll wait for the answers to Julie's questions for any other placement advice.

But as for starting, what *I* personally like to do and advise doing, is to start the oldest one half speed for a few weeks. Let them get used to the guide and used to using the guide to do their work. Once that is going smoothly, start the younger off half speed. Again, mainly to get the flow of the guide. Then move your older one to full speed, while still doing half speed with the younger. When that is going smoothly, have your younger start full speed.

And once you get to where everything is running smoothly, I can typically get Beyond done while my olders are doing their independent work. Especially CTC and up.