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Hi!

I would love some advice from one of the experts.

My oldest turned 12 in January. She did LHFHG for K, Beyond for 1st, then we took a break exploring all the things. We came back for about 10 units of Preparing at one point and got bit by the exploration bug yet again. Now, she is almost done with 6th grade. I decided at the beginning of January that it was time to buckle down and stick with a program through high school for consistency. With me working from home, I needed something that fostered independence but didn't want something with a ton of online learning. I couldn't shake the feeling of being led back to Heart of Dakota, so here we are. My initial plan when choosing placement was for my 10 and 12 year old to use CTC together with my oldest using the extensions. While my youngest could keep up with the work, she was having issues due to outside activities and was really feeling worn down on her days that included dance. Due to that, I moved her down to Preparing. Had I foreseen this issue, I might have chosen Res to Ref for my oldest (that's my disclaimer before asking my question ).

My 12 year old is about 10 units in to CTC. The writing prompts and questions used for the written narrations have definitely been so crucial in building those written narration skills. She has grown so much through them! After 10 units, she's writing about 12 sentences per narration and doing them independently. Well, she looked up the guides herself and found that if she kept moving forward as written, she wouldn't reach the "high school guides" by high school. She now has this goal set in her head of wanting to advance to World Geography by 9th. I know skipping guides is not encouraged at all. My question is though, would bumping her to Res to Ref in the fall be a bad thing? That would have her starting the guide at the beginning of the year and get her closer to her "grade level" guide. She starts 7th grade in July or August. She will have completed about 17-18 units of CTC by that point. I'm really torn at this point. Part of me wants her to complete CTC, but the other part of me wants to help her work at least a little bit towards her goal.

Thoughts? Opinions?

I'm attaching a copy of her most recent written narration so you all can see how she is currently doing. We talked about her needing to spell out 12,000 at the beginning of a sentence. I also forgot to draw lines in her box, so it's definitely crooked.

Wow, that picture is really big when posted like that.

First off, I think your daughter's written narration for CTC is great! You can feel really good about what she has written. Secondly, I am wondering how she is doing in CTC overall. Does she seem to be excelling? Is she being stretched in some areas in CTC? We usually tell moms that you want about 1/3 of the guide to stretch your child, 1/3 to be right on for your child's level, and 1/3 to be fairly easy. This will give your child a good mix in her day. If you move away from that balance, you will quickly overwhelm your daughter.

As far as high school goes, it is definitely possible to skip a guide if needed prior to high school. The reason to skip a guide would be if a child is on the older end for a guide and experiences a huge growth in skills which allows that child to catapult forward to a guide more in his/her age range.

It is possible that CTC is the best placement for your daughter now, but she could catapult forward later. Or, maybe with the combining factor out of the way, it would be possible for her to catapult forward in the fall to RTR.

I look forward to you sharing a bit more about how your daughter is doing in CTC overall. If you get a chance to answer the few questions I posed in the first paragraph above that would help us advise you better.

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 22, 2020 6:42 pm

First off, I think your daughter's written narration for CTC is great! You can feel really good about what she has written. Secondly, I am wondering how she is doing in CTC overall. Does she seem to be excelling? Is she being stretched in some areas in CTC? We usually tell moms that you want about 1/3 of the guide to stretch your child, 1/3 to be right on for your child's level, and 1/3 to be fairly easy. This will give your child a good mix in her day. If you move away from that balance, you will quickly overwhelm your daughter.

As far as high school goes, it is definitely possible to skip a guide if needed prior to high school. The reason to skip a guide would be if a child is on the older end for a guide and experiences a huge growth in skills which allows that child to catapult forward to a guide more in his/her age range.

It is possible that CTC is the best placement for your daughter now, but she could catapult forward later. Or, maybe with the combining factor out of the way, it would be possible for her to catapult forward in the fall to RTR.

I look forward to you sharing a bit more about how your daughter is doing in CTC overall. If you get a chance to answer the few questions I posed in the first paragraph above that would help us advise you better.

Blessings,
Carrie

She begins unit 9 tomorrow. The first couple of weeks going full speed was a little rough for her, but I believe that was just from an adjustment period. We were doing much less formal work for the couple months before between Christmas and an illness. It took her a little bit to get used to the writing style in SOAW as well. At this point though, she is pretty much doing the majority of the boxes independently along with extensions and a spending about 3-3 1/2 hours on school. Part of this is due to us finally giving in to giving an ADHD med a try. She is finally able to focus. There has been such a change! I’m not having to micromanage her work and she’s even completing her written narrations without assistance. She is feeling like she has accomplished so much. If we bumped her, I wouldn’t be looking to do so until the fall when she starts 7th. That would put her about halfway through CTC at that point.

I just realized I Ieft some answers out. It was stretching her in the area of time management and written narrations before we started her on medication. Now that she is on meds though, she is flying through the work. I suppose her mind has finally slowed down enough to allow her to fly. It was a hard decision to start meds for sure, but I can already see the difference in her. I don’t mind letting her stay the course with CTC. Counting credits would just be a bit easier with the high school guides.

Thanks so much for popping back to share a bit more about your daughter. Deciding whether or not to do medication can be such a difficult choice. We have had that with our son Greyson too. I don't like to have him on Humira; but the alternative was continued ER visits and hospital stays with little quality of life in between. He also is on a host of other medications that we are slowly weaning him off of, but it takes time to see which ones are truly necessary for this time in his life. I have realized there is a time to be thankful for medication too! It allows some normalcy of life for our son, which is very important! It sounds like the same is true for you!

With what you've shared, I definitely think you can seriously consider bumping your daughter up to RTR in the fall. I wouldn't interrupt her flow right now. Just let her keep enjoying success with CTC. Then, when you get ready for fall, re-evaluate and see if she is still flourishing. By then, I think it will be readily apparent whether CTC or RTR is best for her.

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 23, 2020 4:55 pm

Thanks so much for popping back to share a bit more about your daughter. Deciding whether or not to do medication can be such a difficult choice. We have had that with our son Greyson too. I don't like to have him on Humira; but the alternative was continued ER visits and hospital stays with little quality of life in between. He also is on a host of other medications that we are slowly weaning him off of, but it takes time to see which ones are truly necessary for this time in his life. I have realized there is a time to be thankful for medication too! It allows some normalcy of life for our son, which is very important! It sounds like the same is true for you!

With what you've shared, I definitely think you can seriously consider bumping your daughter up to RTR in the fall. I wouldn't interrupt her flow right now. Just let her keep enjoying success with CTC. Then, when you get ready for fall, re-evaluate and see if she is still flourishing. By then, I think it will be readily apparent whether CTC or RTR is best for her.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you so much for responding! We will definitely evaluate again at that point.

I am so impressed with your daughter's written narration! It looks great! Written narrations are typically 5-7 sentences in CTC, and 8-12 sentences in RTR. She has shown great improvement in that area! It also sounds like she is doing the extensions - not sure if she's doing the extension follow-ups, or just the reading? I'd try doing an extension follow-up each day if she's not, rotating through them each week, and see how that goes. Also, is she doing DITHOR? If not, I'd add that and see how it goes.

If by the end of this period of time, she is comfortably handling and enjoying all of CTC (everything as assigned in the daily plans in all subject areas), with its extensions and their assignments, and with DITHOR reading/Student Book work, I think that would be a very good test run to see if she can then stop CTC and start RTR in the fall. If at any point between now and the fall, doing all that with CTC feels like overload, and you see regression, frustration, back-tracking, then you can back off some of that and rest assured it's best to finish CTC instead of start RTR in the fall.

Those are just a few ideas, but no matter what, I am totally celebrating the progress you are seeing in your daughter! You can be so proud of her effort and growth! It seems like your daughter is motivated to move ahead to RTR too, but she will have more work and it will take more time. Maybe that will prove too much right now. Moving through the guide at a steady pace is progress to be celebrated too, but if you are entertaining the idea of moving to RTR in the fall, maybe some of these ideas will help see if that's best or not. If she continues to improve and work at this level from now to the fall, I think she'd be ready for RTR, but you will know better as fall approaches!

In Christ,
Julie