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Hello, My son is a young five... he turns five in July... I would be holding him back from kindergarten if he was in the school system, but he needs structured school, and wants structured school like his older brothers (8) and (7) I have looked at little hearts and I feel for some reason that the material will be over his head and although it seems fairly simple I think it might be hard to understand... my question is would you go down a level, which seems really easy for him.. or would you plug along at this letting him absorb what he can... I am going to lay very low on the phonics instruction( I know he cant do that) but the "language" he would be able to pick up from the rest of the curriculum ??? Not sure what to do in the fall... any ideas?

Mom4boys,

Welcome to the board and to HOD! I'll just move this post over to the Main Board, so more ladies can see it. All new posts begin on the Main Board.

Blessings,
Carrie

MOM4BOYS wrote:Hello, My son is a young five... he turns five in July... I would be holding him back from kindergarten if he was in the school system, but he needs structured school, and wants structured school like his older brothers (8) and (7) I have looked at little hearts and I feel for some reason that the material will be over his head and although it seems fairly simple I think it might be hard to understand... my question is would you go down a level, which seems really easy for him.. or would you plug along at this letting him absorb what he can... I am going to lay very low on the phonics instruction( I know he cant do that) but the "language" he would be able to pick up from the rest of the curriculum ??? Not sure what to do in the fall... any ideas?

Welcome to the HOD Board, MOM4BOYS! I would love to help you out with placing your ds in HOD. So we can all give you the very best advice possible, could you please check out the placement chart and share a bit about your ds? The placement chart is very accurate and easy to use too. If you just check out the first page of it - the reading, writing, and math - and share a bit about those subjects, we'll be on the way to getting a great HOD fit for you! Here's a link to the chart:
http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

In Christ,
Julie

Hi,
I'm going to leave placement advise to the rest of the ladies since I have so little HOD experience myself. I just wanted to ask you had you tried Leap Frog's The Letter Factory? They have 3 more dvd's after that Talking Words Factory (CVC words), Code Word Caper (Long vowels silent e), and Storybook one (read story of 3 little pigs reading through words and sentences smoothly). My son also had trouble with phonics through books and such. He wasn't making progress and got so down on himself and then didn't even want to try. These dvd's were so helpful. He didn't even realise he was learning reading. We would watch each video until I noticed him doing all of it with the video then we would introduce a new video until we had went through them all. After going through these dvd's, we picked back up our phonics program and actually made progress and he is doing so much better now.
Leap Frog also has 2 math dvd's. I don't know where your son is with math, but you might want to try these dvd's along with whatever HOD program you fit in.
This game is also one that got us into phonics with my son. http://cgi.ebay.com/JUNIOR-PHONICS-Educ ... 7C294%3A50 I had to buy mine off ebay too. It was the only place you could get it at. It is really good and my son loved it. I don't think they make it anymore.
My older daughters would play this with us to help out their younger brother too. I did our videos and the game during summer before he went back to school and it made a huge difference. I didn't stress it and I didn't do it every day, but he would ask for the videos and the game and we would do them.
These are just some thoughts to get him back liking reading without him realising it is "school". We did Hooked on Phonics beginning reading after he got back to liking reading. He loved sitting with the cd player and getting to the "books" to read. It also had a cd for the computer with games that went with it that he loved.
My son also is very immature for his age and we held him back in regular school for that reason. I have been doing LHTH and LHFHG this year with my 2 sons. I know that my oldest son (the immature one) probably would have needed LHTH with some add ons when he was 4 turning 5. Maybe that is a thought. Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten has a 1a and 1b edition that you can still find at exodus books. It is going out of print so I went ahead and got my copies for my younger son for the future. I'm sure the other ladies with more experience will help out a lot more than me on HOD placement. I just thought I would share about our phonics lifesavers that were the turning point in our learning to read.
Val

I agree with "wigglesmom" leap frog letter factory is VERY affective:) I got it from the library the otherday and that night my 5 yo was telling me a couple sounds of letters. it's really like a light went off in his mind. I saw the reviews on that and they where all great. I have tried to teach him letter sounds before that and nothing. anyways I started him in the LHTH this week and it seems that he is really seems that he is starting to get the "idea" of letter sounds now. I'm glad to know there is another video after this one:)

what about taking 2 yrs to do LHFHG? My son turned 5 last October. that is when we started and we are taking it slow. we are taking 2 yrs to finish. you could do the Learning thru history side the first year and just start the other side when you think he is ready. we don't do scheduled handwriting, but i think we have done some without reallizing it. just a thought.
Jenn

I would reccomend starting with LIttle Hands. I know that it seems easy but he will learn lots. One thing to think about is if he is not ready for Phonics yet Little Hands will give him a good foundation and you will be able to easily add in phonics later in the year if he is ready. Another reason I would go with Little Hands is if he might not be ready for Little Hearts now how will he do when you start Beyond in a year or so. I started Little Hearts with my 4.5 year old, he was ready and did great. We had lots of fun and he learned tons, however he was still not ready to start Beyond. He was capable of the work but he was not mature enough to handle the step up in work. I have done a few units of Little Hands with my middle child, but stopped I am going to wait until fall or so when he is 4.5. From what I have done it is a really fun program. I hope this is helpful.

We're finishing up Little Hearts with my 7yo (almost 8 now) for first grade, and it was just right for him. Granted, we held him back because he was a little slower in learning than his siblings. I think it's a slightly more advanced K program. For example, one of the history books that you read aloud is a 3rd grade text from CLP. It is a great program, but you may want to hold off a year, or try spreading it out over two years, like a previous poster said. HTH!

I agree with mom2boys. We did LHFHG when my dc were 4.5 and 5.5. We are moving into Beyond in the fall, and I am a little bit worried about it being too hard for my younger. We will be moving very slowly through Beyond. I would recommend using LHTH with your 5 year old. I am going to be doing the same with my boy who turns 5 in August. That way it puts him about in the middle age range of each bracket. I might do some phonics with him and some of the K material from LHFHG, but not use the program fully unitl he's 6, and then if he's done some of the K material, we will use the first grade options for it. Are you considering him to be in K when he's 5 or 6?

LeAnna

Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten has a 1a and 1b edition that you can still find at exodus books. It is going out of print so I went ahead and got my copies for my younger son for the future.

i've spent way too much time today researching about Earlybird math going out of print, so i hope to bless sommeone with the following info....singapore will still be producing Earlybird Math, but it is now only available in the Standards Edition. the US Edition has gone out of print. i checked Exodus Books, and they only have the Standards Edition. HOD has enough copies of the US Edition of 2A and 2B available for sale until they offer their updated LHFHG at the end of this year. the new LHFHG will contain a new schedule for the new math books.

i've been looking all day online for a copy of Earlybird K Math 1A & 1B (US Edition) with absolutely no luck. i'm going to go ahead and purchase the 2A & 2B books from HOD for my younger children for later.

blessings,
katrina

We tried doing LHFHG with my 5 yr old daughter but she just wasn't into most of it. So we ended up just doing the Italic handwriting, science, math, phonics. We'll start LHFHG this Fall for grade 1 instead. I've also decided that when my son is ready for K in 2 yrs, he'll be doing Little Hands to Heaven and start phonics during that time too.

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU who have responded to my post... I have decided to plug through little hearts at 1/2 speed, he will do great I am sure he has matured in the last three months and I can see a change in his comprehension of things... since we stopped school in may, and he has gotten so much more attention from mom.... and I am not doing school with 7 and 8 year olds... I can see him blooming now.... I am loving the letter factory idea... I am going to use work boxes so that can be one of his for the computer game... but also I think the letter identification will come as well as the understanding of the concepts are going to be fine.. I have been planning and so I can see that it is not as hard as I thought originally for him... also, i am using handwritting without tears as our phonics, letter sounds instruction instead of the phonics books provided and I love how it is so hands on and active for him... meghan