gracelikerain wrote:Hi Juliekaye,
I will be starting Bigger in August with my 2 dd's. My older dd will be 12 in Oct. & in 6th grade level. May I ask you what you add to beef up Bigger for your 12ds? I already have level 4 in R & S which I feel will be fine for her. I am thinking about igniting your writing & we have Saxon math. I was just wondering if you use a more difficult spine for history & how you plan that into your day? I am thinking I will add in Apologia Botany to challenge her in science.
Thanks in advance!
Hey gracelikerain! (I like that!)
I know that you already know this, but boys are different than girls so it looks like water2wine's link may be more beneficial to you as it is also suggestions from Carrie. Here's what we did last year:
The extensions as written and LOVED it!
My boys enjoy science and math.... so we join local group competitions for both.
Math = Math Olympiads. Go to
http://www.moems.org; We also did TT Math 7 for both boys. Next year my 12 1/2 year old will do TT Pre- Algebra and my 11 1/2 year old will do Algebra 1.... My 11 1/2 year old is just good at math. (Writing and spelling - another issue altogether!
)
Science - We compete in the local Envirothon Competition - This is a N. American competition so ask around at your local homeschooling co-ops and groups. Environmental sciences including local plants, trees, animals, aquatics, conservation, etc. The competition only ran from Jan- March so in the Fall we did one of the God's Design Science Books, but my boys much preferred the HOD choice - Planet Earth by Tiner. I really liked it too, but I think they liked it because it was easier for them to do as you just read the chapter and answer a few questions. No experiments, notebooking, etc., and that was fine and just what we needed as were doing a lot of notebooking and writing in history.
History - Just for fun we added some
http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com lapbook/activity book CD's just because we had them and enjoyed them in the past. The history CD's have a lot to do in them so choose 1 or 2 carefully as it could have the potential to overwhelm you and your student and pull you away from the HOD schedule. We also added other books from Carrie's list and from other curriculum lists. We just go to the library, pull the books and they read what they think looks like good reading.
We have chosen to stick to another gentle CM Grammar book that is child-lead as I am very busy with all 5 children, but we do use and enjoy HOD dictation.
We did not do DITHR last year. We plan to add this to the schedule this year.
Other things that fill up our schedule are: A local co-op 1x per month. My boys swim for a USA team 4-5 x per week. (That takes up a lot of time, but their hyper boys and that also helps with that!) A JA Business program that met 1x per week for the fall - teaching them check-writing, budgeting, interviews, job stuff, etc.
Finally, I allow my older ones more independence. We use a workbox station approach as the older 2 share books. This keeps things organized and in one place so we are not trying to "find" our school books... grrr
The older two have a time limit of 30 minutes per box and then done or not they move or and would re-visit the box until that daily assignment is done. Next year I will write out their weekly assignment and allow them to work it on in their own time schedule....
I've written too much already! Enjoy the planning and remember that this is the fun part of homeschooling. You're the teacher. Your oldest child is learning to become independent and zone in on the things that they are good at! Enjoy the journey!
But I am trying to figure out which box to use. My two oldest boys are going into 3rd and 5th. They both really want to study US History. Since BHFHG goes through the US History I thought that would be a good place to start. My only concern is that my 5th grader is pretty advanced in reading and writing. I just wanted to make sure that I was still going to give him some challenge next year. I really am hoping to keep them in the same curriculum because I already have two younger boys that will be doing LHFHG. 
