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We're LOVING it all!!!!

My 3yo and 5yo have one week of Little Hands under their belts.


My 7yo has two days of Little Hearts in. Reddy Fox is definitely his favorite part! The math is easy right now, but I'm hoping to go through some of the early review stuff at a quicker pace until we get to newer stuff. I'm using the Beyond guide with the activities for 1a.


The Bigger manual and Singapore (2a) arrived yesterday, and my 8yo has pulled all the books that she needs for the first two weeks and arranged them in her section of the bookcase. She also begged to start the math yesterday (on SATURDAY!), so I let her. She has her dictation notebook labeled and ready to go. (BTW... Do I start with passage 1 even if it would be really easy for her, or should I find one that's more at her level? Placement-wise, she could have started with Preparing, but I opted to go with Bigger and start it now, rather than wait for Preparing in the fall) She has a three ring binder with page protectors ready for science. I did notice that I don't have any of the biographies listed (for storytime) that are in the list in the back. I did find Jed Smith by Christian Liberty Press (I think that's listed somewhere on the HOD site), so I think I'll go ahead and use that rather than wait for something from the library. Other than that, I think we have everything we need to use the program as is. I am wondering if I should have her start Rod & Staff English 4 when she finishes 3, or if I should have her wait til the fall (when she'd officially be a fourth grader).


I sure am thankful for all the help and support that you all have given me here on the bb as we make this transition.


Oh, and another question: Is Cheerful Cursive a consumable? I'm assuming it is. It seems that the edition used is out of print, so I am considering ordering a few copies when I place my next HOD order. I just wanted to double check that it is indeed a consumable, so that I don't over order. Would you recommend having my oldest use it if she's doing A Reason for Handwriting already? I like that it has practice reading cursive. I thought of just using it for those parts while still having her finish up the book we already have.

Hip! Hip! Hooray! Julie, I'm so glad to hear you are off and running with LHTH and LHFHG, that's wonderful to know! As far as your questions...
For math, it gets harder after the initial beginning, so you'll get to harder math soon enough, IMO.

For the dictation, just start her wherever you think she places best. If that is the middle of the passages, that's just fine. You just may end up ordering PHFHG for the next level of dictation sooner if she finished the Bigger dictation passages before the end of Bigger.

I think you may want to start R & S 4 at a S L O W speed. That way her learning English will be seamless, but not at too fast a pace. It would be great to get a jump on that anyway - we're thinking we might go half-speed through R & S 4 next year anyway because it is quite a bit more difficult than 3.

Cheerful Cursive is consumable. I don't think you'd want to double up with 2 cursive programs. You may want to just finish A Reason for HW, and then just have her go through Cheerful Cursive independently, doing a page a day or so until she finishes it. We loved that it taught how to both read and write cursive, as well as print to cursive, and cursive to print.

In Christ,
Julie