heartofdakota.com

Our World History resources arrived a while ago and have been waiting to be unboxed and placed on our bookshelf for this school year. As I was looking through the items, my daughter came into the room and joined me. I commented on how interesting it all looked. She agreed and said, "I like doing Heart of Dakota, It makes me feel like am in a prestigious private school."

I am not sure how she came to this conclusion; she can only compare it to her few years in public school and the other homeschool programs we have tried in the past. I didn't ask her what she meant, I just savored the fact that she does, in fact , enjoy the program very much.

Last year she commented that she had learned more in the first few weeks using the World Geography guide than she learned in an entire year in public school.

These programs are deep, rich and thought provoking. They inspire my daughter to dig deeper, work harder and ask tough questions. I don't know if that equates to "a prestigious private school" experience, but I will never question the potential that lies between the covers of each of these well designed Highschool guides.

Thank you, Mrs. Austin, for listening to God's calling to share your gifts with other homeschooling families and for your excellent execution of this monumental task.

God Bless.

Prestigious Private School -- I love it!

And I couldn't agree more

She summed it up pretty good!

Love that your dd is enjoying it so much. I do think HOD is very rich and highly educational. That is why I chose it as our homeschool path 4 years ago. And love that my kids love it too!

This is great!

Another funny, if I can share here. My oldest dd's BFF goes to a private Catholic High School. She is taking AP American History this year. She had her book over the other day studied inbetween watching a show and my girls caught a glimpse of "Bloody Mary" in it. My upcoming 9th grader spilled the beans and told her the whole history of "Bloody Mary." The BFF was shocked. She has never studied her before and could not believe my dd knew so much. My oldest was like "I learned that 3-4 years ago...where have you been?"

Oh, some school jokes were shared.

I'm thinking, AP American History and she didn't know.... Yeah, we're not doing so bad after all!

Absolutely you can share. Thanks Tabitha.

That is very ironic. My dd was just telling me about bloody Mary yesterday. She encountered it in her World History reading along with various people who were burned at the stake for their christian beliefs. She was very animated while telling me all about it. She really loves this stuff. I just wish I had found HOD when we first started homeschooling!

That is great! And I agree that HOD is thought-provoking and deep. When I needed something different than what we had been using for years, I looked through samples and such, and I wondered if HOD was either of these things. The guide is laid out so simply. I even asked if people thought it was thought-provoking and fostered a think-for-myself attitude, because I doubted it.

Let me be the first one to say I was so very wrong in those assumptions. In our 2nd guide, HOD is all of the things mentioned above, and I get excited nearly every day on what our girls are learning! Yes, the guide is simple, and it makes our school day run so much more smoothly. The lessons are more than complete, and my girls are always coming to me nearly every day with things they are learning. They take a co-op class this year for American History that focuses on team history activities, and the teacher mentioned that barely any of the kids ages 6th-8th answer her questions except about 4 kids, 2 of them being our girls. They understand the material and remember it. Seriously, I was amazed when we started HOD, and it has been over a year, and I'm still amazed.

I love reading this! Prestigious private school - LOVE that!!! That is especially a compliment as your daughter has previous school experience to compare it to, which mine don't. Sometimes I want to attempt to explain how very blessed our dc are to be able to receiving this kind of education because with nothing else to personally compare it to, I think they miss the WOW factor of it. However, I see as my dc get older, they don't need me to point it out - they are seeing it themselves and thankful for the way we are able to choose how to plan our days, to choose to have a Christian education, to choose to be together as a family, and to choose HOD which is full of exciting living books/meaningful discussions/fun projects/activities. I was thinking the other day how great it is that my dc get to do every experiment personally! Science is a hands-on subject, and back when I used to teach in public school, I remember the school couldn't afford many science kit type materials (or even kitchen type materials because we had no kitchen to use). I would have to demonstrate the experiment with as many students doing it as possible. I remember trying to change out the experiments whenever I could for more home-based materials type experiments, and I'd just try to buy these less expensive materials in bulk, so every one could be involved. I found the same to be true with good quality living books! We had no funds for books such as these, other than the library which was having more and more books with questionable material. So, I'd save all my book club points from kiddos ordering those, and slowly try to line my shelves with books I bought secondhand that were more living. I'd try to buy them on all the history/science/health etc. type topics I was teaching each year. Anyway, I digress! The HOD education our kiddos are receiving is precious to me! It is a blessing - and I do believe I will picture myself as a prestigious teacher at a prestigious private school today (a stretch now as I sip my coffee in my pjs - but give me time to get myself together- and then - look out!) Wait until I talk to the principal (a.k.a. my dh) about my 'salary' not being enough! Thanks for the boost this AM ladies - off to my prestigious private school down the stairs to make some special memories with my favorite class!

In Christ,
Julie