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Carrie,
I really wanted to use Preparing for my fifth graders, but for a number of reasons ( one being that we had already gone through Hillyer's book), I decided to shelve it. I am, however, doing Guerber's Ancient History and am wishing I could see what you have planned for the guide for next year. As it stands now, I will always have my two oldest one year ahead of your upcoming guide. I am trying to find something comparable to HOD for them, but am coming up dry.

Would you consider letting us get the newest guide in parts or as test families? I know I am probably asking the impossible. I just really love what I have found in HOD, and like so many others, I have poured over everything from MFW to TOG to Sonlight and have found HOD superior in many different ways. I am willing to just go eclectic with them if that's what I have to do. I just really like how you have thought everything out and especially for a new CMer, it helps me see how to implement the CM way of doing things.
Any thoughts or suggestions for me would be appreciated.
PS: You other ladies feel free to throw your thoughts and advice in here as well.
Thanks,
RuthAnn

I don't know if they do tester families (although wouldn't that be fun!), but you could do what we plan on doing next year. We absolutely love HOD, but my oldest son (this is his first year with HOD) has already done Ancient history twice, so we are going to use everything in the new guide except the history. We'll still do the Storytime box and all of the right side of the guide, but we will sub in American history. You could do something similar, maybe?

Thanks, mamas4bugs, I hadn't thought of that as an option. I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person, so sometimes I miss the forest for the trees. RuthAnn

RuthAnn,

Your post made me smile! You seriously wouldn't want the copy of plans I'm working through right now with my oldest son! It is not in any pretty format!

While we did consider having test/pilot families at one point, we've since determined that having test families really ties our hands in changing resources easily as needed and would slot us into sticking to more of a pre-set plan.... and as we write our guides we find they often change resource-wise and design-wise quite a bit from the original plan!

I love testing "in house" so I can change resources at will and move things around as I see issues come up in the day-to-day (without affecting other families as we go). I am always amazed at how the Lord changes each of our guides throughout the year as I write to show me His perfect plan for what He desires each guide to be.

mamas4bugs had a great suggestion about using the right side of the plans from the new ancients next year! The moms on this board are so wonderful about brainstorming options to help one another!

Blessings,
Carrie