Intro and placement questions

[busymomma]

Hi

I just wanted to introduce myself and get some advice. By the way, I did see that there was another busymomma on the boards, so don't get me confused. If I had realized that I would have chosen something different.

But anyway, I have 3 girls. This is my 6th year to homeschool, and we have always homeschooled, except for the first year my oldest went to kindergarten. I have used MANY curriculums in the past, so many that I worry I may have skipped important things with my oldest one. I have always been intrigued by Charlotte Mason and living books, but never knew how to implement it, so I became a unit study mom because I thought it was the next best thing. I have used Five In a Row, Beyond Five In a Row, Galloping the Globe, Learning Language Arts Through Literature, threw in some Abeka just for good measure, tried Homeschoolshare, and am currently using Konos: Obedience. I have also used Little Hands to Heaven many years ago. I did not realize that this was Charlotte Mason. I have used Drawn Into The Heart of Reading Level 4/5 when my daughter was in 5th grade, along with books from the library. I bought it from Rainbow Resource. This was before you were a sole source provider. I have used Apologia Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, and some Christian Liberty Press. What's so bad is, I should have sold Konos when I got it, last year after income tax return. That was when I discovered your website, and I have been patiently waiting until I can order Heart of Dakota. My husband thinks that this is just another curriculum in my long list of stuff to try and move on. But I really believe this one is it.


Now that you have some background on me, maybe you can help me with my kids. First of all, Konos is tiring and exhausting. If I do it, the way it is intended, they do enjoy it, but it has been too much for me plan and gather materials. Also, I think my oldest daughter would be better off to be separate from the other two. She is 11, and 6th grade, but I don't feel that she has the skills that a 6th grader is supposed to have. She is currently doing Teaching Textbooks 6, and doing well. She doesn't like it, but I think she will never like Math. I'm just glad she's not in tears. Times Tales was a great help with this, too. Her spelling skills are weak, which makes her language skills weak, because she is constantly asking "How do I spell such and such"? She is doing Climbing to Good English 4, which is similar to Rod and Staff, because they are both made by Amish. I assume they are all a little more advanced than the rest of society. It is a workbook, but I have used Carrie's idea of doing orally and on the markerboard for some of it, and that has worked great, too. I done some dictation with her when we did Learning Language Arts Through Literature. I thought it wasn't going well, so we stopped that. I tried Spectrum Spelling after that Now she is doing Apples Daily Spelling Drills. The jury is still out on that one. We have not done any poetry, except for what was in Learning Language Arts Through Literature. The Science and History is very hit and miss, because it all depends on how well I follow my lesson plans. : She also dawdles, takes too long, makes the school day on and on. She is so slow | Fortunately, the bright spot in all of this is she is an excellent reader. She reads everything she can get her hands on. I'm just not sure why it did not carry over into spelling and language skills. I will add that she is very creative, artistic, loves to draw and paint, create birthday cards, etc. etc. The list goes on and on. So my question is, Which program should I put her in? She would appear to place in CTC because of her age. She will be 12 in January. But with the other factors, she seems to place in PHFHG. I'm sorry this took so long. I'll post later on my other placement questions.

Toni in MS

[water2wine]

Just want to say welcome. I read all your concerns and your dh's. Let me just say that my dh is very glad that we found HOD. I used to drive him crazy with my searching and trying things. I have never done Konos but have looked at it and it seemed to me like it was going to be time consuming and hard to pull off. I think you are going to find the lay out of HOD a lot more user friendly. Here is the placement chart. http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php I would look carefully at the skills. Preparing is less independent than CTC and I have no idea how independent Konos is but I do know that Preparing has an extension pack that would cover 6th grade and my 7th grader is using CTC right now. She is fairly bright and we are finding it is still enough for her. There's a little flexibility in it. My next group of kids will use it in 6th grade and I know it will work for them as well. Anyway take a good look at the placement chart and then let us know what you think.

Welcome to HOD. For us not only has this been our greatest peace in our homeschooling, I can honestly say the search is over.

[busymomma]

Hi waterwine

Thanks so much for the welcome and assurance. I have looked and looked at the placement chart so many times. I have felt really drawn towards Preparing Hearts for her even though I know this will mainly be for 7th grade. She has just this year been introduced to diagramming. Surprisingly, she liked it. I never would have thought that would happen. I do not think she is ready for longer dictation. She misspells the simplest words like something, happening, birthday. She frequently forgets grammar terms. I know that she knows what a noun, verb, and adjective is. I am not sure about the rest. She has never done narration and very little poetry. She can write in cursive or print, but has probably never wrote more than a paragraph or two at a time, like one sheet of notebook paper. I am just now trying to get her to write a paragraphs that support the main idea, and not stray from the main topic to rabbit trails. She is extremely worried about misspelled words, and it takes her forever to write the simplest things. I feel that writing, grammar, dictation, and narration may all be tough for her as well as learning to manage her time. Even though her age makes it seem as if she should do CTC, I wonder if it would be better served for her to go through Preparing Hearts with extensions first. If I did that, would that be ok to finish all the HOD guides with extensions from then on? Or would she be considered behind? I do feel that she places mostly in Preparing Hearts, due to weak spelling and language skills.She can read well, which would put her in CTC. I also think that she probably could do CTC, but it would be a huge jump from what she is doing now. It probably would be stressful. I also feel bad that she has already missed out on so much of HOD. Does any of this make sense at all? Do you see any reason to skip Preparing Hearts and go to CTC? Or should she go straight to CTC? I don't want to make the mistake of placing her in the wrong one. I have read past posts of using Preparing for 7th graders and how to beef it up for her. I could certainly do that, if needed.

[water2wine]

I am a little confused I think. Are we talking for this year or next year. In the first post I get that she is in 6th but now you are talking 7th. Are you looking ahead? At any rate I was going to do Preparing for my now 7th grader and beef it up. She has done HOD before. She is a strong reader, strong in really pretty much everything. She walks around with a book in her hand pretty much 24/7. However I did pull her out of ps in 3rd grade and she was weak in just about everything then. So a little time with the right focus can change everything. If you are looking for now then it seems to me from what you are saying that you could go with Preparing and beef it up doing the extension and what Carrie has suggested or start slowly with CTC starting at half pace for a while until she gets in the groove with it. And if you are looking for now I might, in your child's case, skip over the age and see skill wise what is the best fit and if you are talking for now. I would be inclined to go with whatever that program is that fits by skill since you are just coming into HOD and see some weak areas in the skills. I will tell you that I have just started Preparing and CTC with my kids and at least in the beginning there is a pretty big difference in skill level. In the end I know my Preparing kids after finishing would be ready for CTC but for now we would be pushing it to get them going with CTC. It is killing my competitive son that my oldest has passed him up but it really is the best fit for us.

As far as the future I am a planner too and I have to see where I am headed. So I can relate. I will tell you my plan. It is not standard. Carrie has said that there will be an extension for 9th grade in the future. I feel really confident with some help from Carrie that I could make HOD work through 10th grade. Now that is my personal decision and it is not going to be right for everyone. But HOD works really well with my head and I have an easy time beefing things up with it if need be. I love what it does for our family and I (and my oldest too) want all of it for all my kids. At this point I feel confident we can make that work for us. We would be doing different science and already are on a different path with math and LA but R&S does go up to that level certainly if we went that way with LA as well. But prior to that I had decided I just needed to go with what was best for now. God has led us to a path that way that ultimately works out. So if you can just look for now that is what is going to give you the best year.

[busymomma]

I am sorry. Let me clarify. She may very well do some of it this year, but there is no way that she will even get through half of it. I am not going to be able to order at least until February. I'm sorry if my last post confused you. I may have confused myself. Anyway, as I look at my placement chart, she places in Hearts for Him for reading and since she does know basic parts of speech and very basic diagramming, she would place in Hearts for Him for that also. For writing, dictation, narration, and poetry, she places in Preparing Hearts. For the History portion, she places in Preparing Hearts, and science is also Preparing Hearts. For math, she will continue in Teaching Textbooks, as that is going very well. Anyway, the strangest thing is that typing this out has helped me to see where she is really at. It was hard for me to look at the chart and really analyze her because she does not place neatly into in one guide. Thank you for all your help.

Toni

[pjdobro]

It sounds like to me that you have already figured out what to do, but after reading over the posts I'm thinking that whenever you can start, you would want to start with Preparing. All of the programs are so full that I would step back instead of ahead so that you can adjust to the new style and get in the groove of narration, copywork, etc. If you needed to beef it up, it is easier to add extensions than try to take something away from the basic program. You can take as long as is needed for Preparing before moving on. If it is going really well and seems very easy, you could even take it at a faster pace. I think it is written for 4 days a week so you could take it at a 5 day a week pace and finish more quickly if you wanted. When you are done with Preparing, you will have a good feel for the HOD programs and be ready to jump into the next guide which begins the first of the four year history cycle. Welcome!

[busymomma]

Yes, I think I just about have it figured out. I am not exactly sure if she should do Preparing Science or if I should do something more advanced or just add to it. But I do like the connection that would be made between the Science, History, and Bible. I am willing to adapt and change according to what she needs, but I don't want to change so much that it is really not the program that Carrie wrote, KYIM? If anyone else has any advice, I am willing to hear it. I really do want the best placement for her. Who knows? Maybe a year or two from now, I will be helping someone else with placement questions. I greatly appreciate all the help.

Thanks so much.

[my3sons]

Welcome to the HOD Board! I've enjoyed reading about your dd, and I have come to the same conclusion that you have. I would do PHFHG with the extensions. PHFHG is a one year sweep of history, so that will give her an excellent flow of history in general. The science is linked nicely to the history, and she will enjoy the weekly experiment and drawing for the lab sheets too. I wouldn't change the science, since it will help her learn the scientific method for doing experiments, and will train her to be able to do it more independently the next year in CTC. If you still feel you'd like to extend the science, you could have her use a good general science encyclopedia and possibly Wikipedia on the Internet to research a bit more on each science topic, maybe one time a week, orally reporting what she learned from these resources to you. The extension package will fill her love of reading and keep things challenging for her in that department. PHFHG does an excellent job of teaching dc how to do good written narrations. It also helps them expand their oral narration skills, dictation, and copywork skills. I would look at the focus for your dd this year to be on working on her writing skills and learning CM LA skills. This year in PHFHG will do an excellent job of getting her ready for CTC, and then she'll be ready to be independent with it. The other option would be to begin CTC half-speed. If I were you, I'd print both CTC's and PHFHG's first week's of plans and see which seems to fit her better, but from what you've said, I'm leaning toward PHFHG with a focus on LA this year for your little sweetie. I think you will love HOD! The manual is super easy to use, and there is really no prep for each school day. Keep asking questions until you feel at peace, we love to help here. You will find this a very encouraging place to be!

In Christ,
Julie