heartofdakota.com

Our family has just journeyed through a two year period of some pretty tough trials, which included a job change for dh, a pretty severe broken leg for one dd resulting in two surgeries and many months of physical therapy, selling our house, buying our new house, and moving to a new town. I wasn't able to place my order like I normally would in early February, due to waiting on the Lord's timing in the final sale of our house, but thankfully I was able to place that order a few days ago.

God is SO faithful, and brought us through so much in the past two years. One blessing through it all was Heart of Dakota! It's brought joy and peace to our school days, and continues to bless us every day with new things to learn, in ways that are so interesting and varied.

As we approach the final year of high school with our oldest, and use the final HOD guide, it's bittersweet. He's been using HOD since Preparing Hearts and my only regret is that I wish we'd used it from the start. There were a couple points where I listened to doubts, wondering if the grass was greener with other curriculum. What I found was that Heart of Dakota was the best fit for us, and that it was truly where our heart was. I'm thankful our younger ones have been able to use the guides from earlier on, and that we have many more years of enjoying HOD ahead of us. When the final HOD guide arrives and we begin next fall, I'll have used every single guide from HOD with at least one of my kids.

We are running 5 guides here, as each of our children place in different guides, and it's going beautifully. They absolutely love what they are learning each day, and our day is filled with talk of all the fascinating things they're learning. The guides build in independence, but still allow me to be very involved exactly where I need to be. It's not stressful, but enjoyable to teach, and to see how Christ is the center of our homeschooling.

I just want to encourage others that this road is truly, truly worth every step and stumble along the way, and I also wanted to thank Heart of Dakota for helping me to have such joyful days with my children (which definitely includes the tough days, as well!). Thank you for the work and sacrifice it's taken to bless other families, and I pray that God continues to bless your family and company!

This is so good to hear! Thank you for the encouragement as I'm pretty much on the other end of the homeschool journey. I am new to HOD and will start this fall. So so so excited for this! My stuff comes tomorrow and I can hardly wait!
Question: Have you used the HOD math suggestion (Singapore)? I just started another thread asking questions about it.

mtmom9107 wrote:This is so good to hear! Thank you for the encouragement as I'm pretty much on the other end of the homeschool journey. I am new to HOD and will start this fall. So so so excited for this! My stuff comes tomorrow and I can hardly wait!
Question: Have you used the HOD math suggestion (Singapore)? I just started another thread asking questions about it.

We've used the HOD's suggestion for Singapore for a while, but it wasn't a good fit here. We've used a few different math curricula over the years and they've all worked out very well while using HOD. Singapore is their recommendation, but they realize math can be a personal decision that each family needs to make based on their needs and preferences.

Thanks for sharing Lisa. I feel the same way. HOD has been such a blessing to my family, even with them all in different guides so far. It's so easy to use and yet so thorough and helps each child grow and learn so much! It sounds like you had a stressful year, and we actually moved last year too and bought and sold a house. Enjoy box day!

[quote="We are running 5 guides here, as each of our children place in different guides, and it's going beautifully. They absolutely love what they are learning each day, and our day is filled with talk of all the fascinating things they're learning. The guides build in independence, but still allow me to be very involved exactly where I need to be. It's not stressful, but enjoyable to teach, and to see how Christ is the center of our homeschooling.quote]

Any words of advice on HOW you run so many multiple guides?!!? I will be running 3 come July...and I'm terrified

And apparently I don't know how to properly "quote" from a post!!

aecastleberry wrote:[quote="We are running 5 guides here, as each of our children place in different guides, and it's going beautifully. They absolutely love what they are learning each day, and our day is filled with talk of all the fascinating things they're learning. The guides build in independence, but still allow me to be very involved exactly where I need to be. It's not stressful, but enjoyable to teach, and to see how Christ is the center of our homeschooling.quote]

Any words of advice on HOW you run so many multiple guides?!!? I will be running 3 come July...and I'm terrified

[/quote]

Well, with five kids, I've had to learn how to juggle a lot of things! Lol! Seriously, the way the guides are designed to build independence step by step with each guide, that has made things a lot easier to handle. Every year during summer break, I spend some time going through the guides and writing down all the things we need to do together, and then all the things they do independently. I make my kids a checklist that lists each subject they need to do independently, so they can check things off each day as they go. Then during the school year, I have a time every day where I meet with each child for a "meeting" of sorts where we check work, and go over any subjects we do together. I also check work at the end of the day, too. We are routine people, so it takes a little bit to get the hang of things, but we usually fall into our groove after a little while. It's not perfect, but the Lord gives us grace, and His mercies are new each day!

I've learned a lot from Julie's posts over the years. She has offered a lot of organizational encouragement!