heartofdakota.com

Hello ladies. I am going to be using BLHFHG this upcoming school year with my two oldest girls. For the purpose of reporting to our board of education, I must include health studies, art, music, etc regularly. I have seen samples of art on the week in review board and obviously the BLHFHG offers a cd of music to be used in conjunction with the guide, but I guess I'm wondering if they are included regularly or if any of you supplement. I do have one particularly artsy dd. Just want to cover my bases and I'm curious to hear from others who have/are using this guide. I think for music it could be along the lines of music appreciation at this point and my girls do participate twice per year in a musical at church that includes weeks of practice. I would prefer to use the guide as is b/c dd1 is easily over loaded. Less is definately more as far as she is concerned. Anyway, thanks to all of you ladies you have all been such an encouragement to me. Gina

Hi Gina,

We did Beyond this year. There is quite a bit of art in the guide (once a week), so I don't think you would need anything to supplement that. Our state also has a health requirement, so I just got a used Abeka 2nd grade health book to use for that (we only read it every so often), and include "daily physical activity" (aka playing outside ) and record the sports they are in. The music CD used in Beyond has several musical styles, so with your musical at church, that should be good. You are right about wanting to use the guide as written...we have done that this year, and it has been a blessing!

Health is a required subject in our state too. I've wondered if Carrie or Julie have thoughts or recommendations for that.

I'm happy with the art and music contained in the guides I've seen.

Our state requires health, and I've always just listed some topics I'm sure we'll cover with day-to-day activities. World Book's website has a great scope and sequence for each grade to get an idea of what schools cover. This is a great place to start and you can see most of what's listed is probably already covered. Nutrition, safety, hygiene, etc. are pretty easily covered just from daily discussions and practice. I use the scope and sequence as a guide on the report and I make a point to talk about each topic throughout the year. I've debated using a "real" curriculum, but it seems a little unnecessary to me...and I've never heard otherwise from whoever I report to.

Art and music seem much the same. You could listen and discuss CDs in the car...art is pretty much a daily activity with my kids, plus I think there's a weekly project in the HOD guide. I don't think they would require too much at this age.

Days 2, 3, and 4 of Beyond have students do basic calisthenics to motivate them to do their Bible verse memorization. My dc have LOVED this! They do jumping jacks, sit-ups, alternate hopping on different feet, push-ups, skipping, running in place (or around the living room/dining room in our case ), toe touches, bicycle peddling, galloping, windmills, squats, and hopping backward and forward. I thought this was great fun, and a neat way to teach basic calisthenics to our kiddos. They say their Bible verse, and then do some calisthenics, and then say their Bible verse, and do some more, etc. Just to make clear they are not doing the calisthenics WHILE they say their Bible verse! In the freezing cold months of winter here, I actually just took those calisthenics and made a circuit rotation of them for my dc to get some good in-home exercise. Here's a post where I described that, in case anyone would enjoy that:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5530&p=40566&hilit= ... uit#p40566

Another year, when I felt my dc needed more exercise, I took the calisthenics we'd learned in HOD and made cards for them to use them outside. For example...
Do 20 jumping jacks in your fort. Run along the fence of our backyard 3 times. Gallop around the garden. Do 10 squats by the swings, etc.

They loved this for a season as well. We've also learned about the body and healthy habits in science with HOD. My oldest has especially enjoyed the illustrated anatomy book in CTC this year, and we are right now in the process of revamping our daily menus to make them more healthy. Of course, I think the basic calisthenics are enough in the HOD guides, but if you are in a more sedentary time of year or dc need more exercise than daily playing can give or you're worried about logging physical education for them, these are a few easy ways to add physical activity into their day. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

P.S. We just do the art from the HOD guides and have found that to be enough and very enjoyable.

I don't know how much your state requires, but in PA we need to show something in those areas, also. However, it does not have to be something you do on a regular basis. They just want to see that you did something. The Beyond science book has a chapter that talks about the five senses. If you feel you need to have something more in health, you could discuss how to care for the different parts of the body that are mentioned. If your state is like PA, if you do health for one day, especially in the younger grades, that is sufficient. But, you can always record your personal daily instruction to the children about cleanliness, safety, healthy foods, etc. You don't even have to use a book. For example, my 20 yo dd was born with spina bifida. When she was homeschooling, she would have numerous doctor visits. Also, she had to learn to care for herself in different ways, compared to the ordinary person. Sometimes I would just record in the portfolio that dd was learning about her physical needs and how to care for herself. That was sufficient for health. Another example was social studies. Our district was saying we needed something in every branch of history, which is not true. But, just to keep the peace, if our history book didn't have anything in it about Pennsylvania, we would just take a field trip to a museum or somewhere in PA that we could count for our PA history. That satisfied them. Some states in the east are more stringent than the west. Make sure you know what your state laws are regarding homeschooling. The school district will sometimes add more to it than what is required. HTH