heartofdakota.com

Hi,
My son is 10 and will be in 5th grade this fall. He has gone through Little Hearts, Beyond, and Bigger. This school year we had to take a break from HOD for financial reasons and I just pieced school together for him from books I already had from my older child. Thankfully we'll be able to do HOD again this fall, we have all missed it!

I already have CTC because my eldest used it a few years ago. Looking through the CTC guide, I really don't think my son could handle it next year. I looked at the placement charts and I think he would place best in Preparing. I'm not sure if I should add in the extensions since he will be technically 5th grade. He is not a strong reader, for reference he reads the A-Z Calendar mystery series. Just for other information, he will finish R&S English 3 this year and I've also been using the level 3 dictation passages from CTC with him. He does oral narrations regularly. His handwriting is atrocious Writing of any kind (handwriting, writing required for assignments in English, dictation, etc) can easily reduce him to tears. I've been focusing on this throughout the year and he's made some good strides but it is still an issue. He is just beginning to learn cursive--we will probably not cover the whole alphabet before the end of this school year. Will he need to know cursive before starting Preparing??

Thank you!

Kendra

Extensions in Preparing are for 11-12 year olds (5th-7th grades). Preparing is fine as written for 3rd-5th grades. That being said, I ordered them for my oldest who is a huge reader, and she loved them! They were just free reading for her on her time.

Isn't it interesting to see how the Good Lord works, in hindsight?

You took a break and worked on some needed skills this year and lo and behold he's still right on track. He was making sure that your son was in Preparing next year instead of this year.

Thank you Stephanie and Mbrand,
It's good to hear that the extensions aren't absolutely necessary to make it grade level work for him. He will turn 11 a few months into the school year. Do you remember if the copywork/sentence writing in Preparing starts off right away in cursive? I'd just like to know if I need to work on cursive with him over the summer or not.

Instructions to write in cursive start at the beginning of the year . But for most of the guide, it is easy just to tell him he can do print until he has finished learning cursive. The tricky box will be independent history with the Draw and Write Through History. The text in the book is in cursive. If he can't read the customer, you will probably have to work it in print for him to copy. But if he can read cursive by that point, he might be able you do that as written.

Good to know on the reading cursive for the independent history box. I will keep that in mind!