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Hi! I have been loving HOD! My oldest is 10 (5th grade) and have placed him in Preparing with his 8 yr. old (3rd). Since he is on the older end of the spectrum in the guide, he will finish schooling before going through all the guides. What do you recommend? What guide would you skip or should he just forgo the last guide? i am starting to plan for next year and want to figure things out before I start buying CTC curriculum! Please advise! Thank you!

My son and youngest are exactly 1 year younger than your kids. My youngest is 7 and is doing Bigger this year for 2nd grade and my middle child is 9 and doing Bigger for 5th grade.

Honestly, I plan that my son will eventually skip the final guide. Every guide ramps up in expectations and ramps up in work load (at least this holds true of the guides up through High School). I have seen so many of the guides and reviewed them and prayed over it. For me, my current game plan is that when my son gets to MTMM, I will just make it High School worthy. He will do the advanced level of the writings in RtR and the advanced science in RevtoRev. If he does the advanced science in RevtoRev, I can count that for his physical science with lab in high school. For MtMM, I am planning to do the science as is and add in the Chemistry 101 DVDs. Even though I could count this for High School Credit, I don't plan to do that. It probably doesn't look good if I have too many high school credits. For science, I have gone round and round about it but plan to change this up after MtMM. At this point, I plan to skip the science in WG and have him the the Chemistry from AH that year instead. He will do Biology with the WH guide as planned. And when he gets to the AH guide, I will have him do the final level of science that HOD schedules. I will also make other changes when he gets to MtMM. He will use DITHOR but use 9 higher level books, one for each genre. At some point, I will need for him to take Economics and Finance. Since I won't be doing the final guide and I am guessing those 2 courses would have been included there, I plan for my son take them in his final two years. I might drop part of the art and just do either art or art history and he can take one of this courses in the offset. (Or truth be told, he hates art and I might seek that fine arts credit via another means.) And then for his senior year when he uses the AH guide, I may give him the option of not reading the living library and create room some room that way. Other than that, there isn't much modifications I will be making. For me, skipping the final guide is probably the easiest thing I could do and would make the most sense for him and me.

Personally I do not think I would skip a guide unless it is way too easy for your child. Each guide builds on the last one.

I know that at least 2 of my kids will not finish all of the guides, but both of them have special learning needs. Currently my 14 year old (8th/9th grade, mildy autistic, expressive/receptive language disorder) is in RtR and will take more than a year to finish it (she gets a Unit done in 6 days instead of 4). I am hoping to get her to complete though the WG guide, but it may take an extra year of schooling to do that. I do not think she will ever go to college due to her special learning needs, so that extra year would be good for her and give her extra time to mature so that she can get a job. My 10 year old son (just turned 10) is in Bigger and it is the right level for him. He struggles both with reading and math (is in 2nd grade math and can't seem to memorize the math facts). He is ready for a little more independence so preparing will be perfect for him in the fall when he finishes Bigger. My youngest one is in LHFHG at age 7...and he is the one that might get though all the guides as he started kinder at age 6 because of changing languages (adopted from Haiti at age 6.5 right before the school year started.....and having not English at the time, we spent most of that year learning English instead of all the normal phonics and such that they do in kinder).

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...

I agree with the others. Skipping a guide is not advised. I have two who will finish without either of the American History guides and the only thing I'm doing differently for them is upping the English as they are ready (my guy in CTC is doing R2R's Medieval History-Based Writing, for example, and R&S 5; my DD, however, is in a lower guide because of her English skills so may not ever be ahead of the guide she is in, that way) and making sure they get what they need for Science (he's doing R2R Science as well, but since he won't likely need all 4 years of HS science, we may skip something like Bio in favour of some computer science courses, since that is his bent).

Each child's path is different (I also have one who will finish both U.S. History guides by Grade 11), so just follow their requirements and interests without worrying about the label on the front of the guide. It is a rich program that will give them the skills they need.

Blessings,

Thanks everyone! I hear what you are saying.

Just to offer another option...my son is also 10 and in PHFHG this year. We are going to do 5 day weeks instead of 4 in order to get through the guides quicker and allow him to finish them all. Since Carrie writes the guides for 4 day weeks, there are only 140 days per guide. You only have to add about 20 extra days per year to finish them all before he graduates, so that's what we are doing. We school year round anyway, so its not that big a deal. You could also keep doing 4 day weeks and just do a 40 week school year instead of 35.

Caranne,
If you can, savor the guide you are in. Discussions are rich when you are not plowing through to get through. They are definitely exponentially more difficult each guide.