heartofdakota.com

Hello everyone! I'm new here and so thrilled to have discovered HOD (what a blessing from God!) I am very excited to be in the planning stages for the next school year. Currently my oldest is a kindergartner in a public charter school. I believe that God is calling us to homeschool our boys though and HOD seems like it will be the perfect fit for our family. After reading through the placement chart, I'm pretty sure that BLHHG will be the best fit for ds. He is 6 now but will turn 7 about a month into our school year. He is a very quick learner and is already reading emerging readers but still needs phonics instruction. In Math, he can add/subtract through 20 and can count money (he practices a lot with his piggy bank ) He can also tell time to the half-hour (most of the time anyway). He can copy sentences and writes his own sentences pretty well (with invented spelling). He will be receiving some spelling instruction at school before the year is over. Does that sound right to put him in BLHHG? I am a little disappointed that he will miss the chronological history from Bible times to present day that is in LHHG though. I do have a 3 year old (who will be 4 when we start in the fall) that will be using LHH so maybe my older ds can join him in listening to the history portion of LHH.

I'm sure this has come up before, but has anyone taught these two programs together? (with a 7 year old and a 4 year old...and also an infant). How did you schedule your day? I am a little nervous as my older ds is rather high strung, but I know that if the Lord has called me to it, He will give me the strength to do it.

Thanks so much for your time! I am so excited to be on this journey with you all!

In Christ,
Jenae
mommy (and soon to be teacher ) to Nathan (6), Noah (3), and Isaac (9 mo.)

Jenae,

I only have a minute, but I wanted to pop-in and welcome you! We're glad to have you here! I'm going to move your post over to the main board where more moms will have a chance to respond to it. All new posts start on the main board!

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you Carrie for your kind welcome and for moving me to the right place! I'm not sure how I ended up in the wrong area...probably because it was late and I was tired. I'm looking forward to gleaning as much information as I can from all the wise women on this board! TIA!

Jenae
mommy to Nathan (6), Noah (3), and Isaac (9 mo.)

Welcome Jenae!

Within the past month or two I also have been called by God to homeschool starting next fall...and He led me to HOD...what a WONDERFUL curriculum!

I have 3 kids, too: a first grade dd (in public school right now) who will be 7 in the summer, a ds who will be 5 in the summer, and a 2.5 year old dd.

I haven't started the programs yet, so I can't really answer your questions about placement, but I can tell you what our plans are for next year.

I will use Beyond for my oldest and call it her second grade year. We will use the Drawn into the Heart of Reading program because reading and writing are her strengths. I considered using Bigger HFHG with her because she is very bright, but I feel like Beyond will be a better fit since we are all new to this. It will give us a little more time to figure this homeschooling thing out! And, like you, I didn't want to miss out on a whole program!

I plan to use LHTH for my two younger kids (who will be 5 and 3), but for my 5 year old I am adding the Kindergarten level math, handwriting, phonics, and thinking skills from Little Hearts for His Glory.

I would like to try to keep my younger two together through school, and just have them in their own levels of math and language arts. To do that, I may do Little Hearts for His His Glory at half speed so it takes about 2 years to complete. But that is in the future, so we will figure that out when it comes.

I love how you mentioned the Lord will equip you for what He has called you to do! I, too, am counting on that for next year!!

hmmm, I thought I had replied?? Sorry!
anyway, I am using LHTH and BLHFHG with two of my boys. LHTH is set up nicely to "school on the fly" as we call it! my 2 yr old that uses it (an honestly, all my boys that have used it) have short attention spans-so we can do a box now, a box later, and so on, as they are interested. I find that it's difficult to ask them to sit and do the whole page in one sitting. Maybe that's a boy thing!;) The readings in BLHFHG are interesting enough to keep both of their attentions; and when the younger one is ready to start that curric he will be passingly familiar with the topics after having listened in on big brother's lessons a bit.

Thanks Tammy and Darci for sharing your plans. I am so excited to begin HOD and I haven't even put in my order yet!

Jenae,

The ladies have done a great job of popping in to encourage you. I just wanted to let you know that I agree that Beyond sounds like the right placement for your oldest son.

Beyond takes about 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours a day to do. LHTH takes 30 min. a day to do. So, even with both programs, you'll be at about 3 hours of school each day. The "boxes" in the guides lend themselves well to the short attention span of young kiddos.

I have taught Beyond and LHTH together in a year, and it worked out well. You'll be suprised how quickly it all flows together once you get underway!

We look forward to getting to know you better.

Blessings,
Carrie

Welcome to the boards! I've taught Beyond and LHTH together as well, and you will find it is not hard to do. I'm currently teaching Beyond and Preparing at the same time, and we start at 8:15 and are still done by noon - or 12:30 PM once and awhile. Don't sweat it - you are going to have a WONDERFUL year doing Beyond and LHTH! It always takes me about 3-4 weeks to really get things down pat though - so give yourself a bit to get a routine down pat before judging how long it will take you to do each day. Everything just keeps getting faster and more terrific as you go!

In Christ,
Julie