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I'm planning to start Beyond on Monday, Lord willing. I'm excited and a little nervous. I did not order the storytime pack because I already had some of the books. I did get the Sample Book Ideas list to help me find books for each genre. Anyway, my question is, if you choose shorter books for some of the genres, do you go through two books instead of one? and will that work with the discussion prompts? For example, if I used one of the D'Aulaire books (Buffalo Bill or George Washington, etc.) instead of the Squanto book I doubt we would take the entire 4 weeks to read it - even going at a slow pace. But I thought picking a shorter, picture book (rather than starting with Squanto) might help us ease our way into Beyond.

I'm probably making this harder than it is. I guess another way of asking is this... if you used a D'Aulaire book for biography, did you take the full 4 weeks to read it ? did that go well? if you didn't take the whole 4 weeks, what did you do after that?

I appreciate so much the help I've already received here and the sweet spirit with which it is offered. Thanks in advance for any help or experiences you might share.

Lynn

First of all...welcome to HOD and I pray you will enjoy Beyond as much as we do!!

I know for us...we have trouble making any book take the entire 4 weeks (we're still working on that) we get so excited trying to find out what is about to happen...we often keep reading...but we are working on that to help control our day....but with shorter books, we have done two different things...sometimes it is a really busy time in our life and we just doing storytime the days we can fit it in (meaning I either have to pick the storytime activity for that day or we do a few on one day)....or we have read several short books in that 20 days...and both ways have worked splendidly depending on our "season" of life at that time.

Praying for a great next week for your family!

Congratulations on starting Beyond!

We have done both...stretched the bookout to cover the 20 days and also finished faster and added another book. We did that recently with Trumpet of the Swan and added Cricket in Times Square - both are excellent! We are struggling through The Railway Children and it has taken the entire time, though we are getting more accustomed to the writing style and are looking forward to finding out the ending.

Good luck! I hope you love Beyond as much as we do. It has been a huge blessing to us. I LOVE not having to plan - just open the book and follow Carrie's lead.

Judy
dd 6 Beyond

We read Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin by M. Henry for our biography reading for the first week of Beyond. My library just happened to have a copy, and it ended up being one of our favorite books so far! It did take us about the prescribed amount of time to finish it, as the chapters are a little long. I don't know if your library has this book, but I highly recommend it!

We're trying to get back on schedule with the latter part of Beyond, which I rushed through in an attempt to get to Bigger Hearts (mistakenly... ). Beyond is such a rich program, and we have great memories of all the units we've done. I hope you have as much enjoyment as we have!

HI Lynn,

I'm fairly new to HOD as well. And I wrestled with the same question about what to do, if you finish the Storytime book early. At first, we went ahead and rolled into the next genre, and I marked the spot in the guide book for the lessons. But I've since decided to not roll into the next genre and not read another of the same genre, but to use the "extra" time to read a book aloud out of our personal stash of books I want to read. For example, we're reading through Sam Campbell's collection of books. This helps us get in more nature study!

Hi Lynn!

I don't really have any advice for you. I just wondered if you knew that there was a list of several storytime books in the appendix to choose from. I didn't notice this right away in my Bigger guide, and just wanted you to know that it's there with suggestions (besides the suggested book list).

Happy reading!
Kathleen

Hi Lynn! We did 2 D'Aulaire books, and that worked well for us. We either do several short books or 1 long book usually. I would say it's important not to rush through books though - you miss the "savoring" of a book that way.

In Christ,
Julie

Thanks all for sharing different things you've done. I feel so much better! I think we'll either do two D'Aulaire books or else just one and then fill the time with some other favorite reading.

Thanks again for all the great ideas and experiences! I love coming here for help and encouragement!

Lynn