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I just asked Julie this question in another thread, but I thought I'd ask the general board as well. Has anyone done Beyond full time for 1st grade and moved your child into Bigger for 2nd, Preparing for 3rd, etc.? I know my son is ready to begin Beyond, but the more I read posts about Bigger in 3rd and Preparing in 4th, I get nervous about how to approach our 1st grade year in Beyond.

If it is really advisable to stretch Beyond over two years, I can reasonably see doing the left side of Beyond every other day, but not the right. I would want my son to do all of the right side activities every day. Is it possible/practical to do half of the left side and and all of the right side every day, alternating left side activities every other day? If I did that, I could use the spelling list 1 the first year and list 2 the second year, keep up on our math and reading, and complete two sets of read-alouds over the course of the two years.

I don't want to make things more complicated than they need to be, but I don't want to push my 2nd grader into Bigger next year if it will be too advanced for him. Any advice?

I don't have any advice for you, but I just wanted to let you know what I have done with my dd. We used Little Hearts for K, Beyond for 1st grade, and Bigger for 2nd grade. She has done very well with all 3 programs and I am planning on using Preparing for 3rd grade. If I need to slow the pace down of Preparing I will, but so far I have not had to do that with the other guides. I just think you need to go at a pace that works for your child. HTH!

Gina

Thanks! That makes me feel better, just knowing that someone else has done it the way I'd planned. I would have selected Little Hearts for 1st, but I just can't get past the fact that he has done so much of it already. I would rather the year be challenging and/or have to slow it down than for it to be too repetative and boring for him. I plan on doing LHTH for PreK with my oldest DD this coming year as well, which would put her in Little Hearts next year for K, and then into the same position as my DS is in now, going into Beyond for 1st. I'm not sure how I'll handle things with my younger two since they have/will have June and September birthdays. I will just have to see where they are maturity-wise when we get ready to cross that bridge.

I would think taking Bigger slower if you felt the need would be better than taking Beyond slower (unless you needed to, of course!). Beyond is an excellent program, but I don't think I could have stretched out the history topics much longer and still held the interest of my child. The topics were not boring by any means...we loved it! But we learned about pilgrims for a while, and it would have become a little much to do it for twice as long.

Now with BIgger, that's not the case at all. I would flow very well to take it at less than full speed. And you could do the spelling list 2 the first year, and dictation the next year. Just do Math every day, and maybe cursive as well, and grammar if you wanted. Then you'd hit R&S 3 in 3rd grade for the 2nd half of Bigger, and hit R&S 4 at the start of PHFHG (which is also planned in the guide). Doing Bigger in 3rd was the perfect fit for my very bright dd. She'll be 9 next month, and we're almost half way through Bigger. We love it!!

We are going to be using Bigger for a 2nd grader next year. I'm planning on doing it half speed in the fall and then full speed after the new year... if she's getting it before then (I'm going to be training her to do it a good deal independently, with her bringing the guide and whatever i need to teach on the things I need to teach) we'll move into full speed earlier...

We did inadvertantly slow Beyond down, but it's not going to change when we start Bigger at all. I would have started in the fall even if we would have ended on time....

Thanks for asking, since we are in the same boat and will have a second grader doing Bigger in the fall. Good to know we will not be alone.

Just chiming in to say that I did Bigger with my daughter this year for 2nd grade, and it was perfect! She was more than ready for the challenge, and we never had to go halfspeed. I plan on using Preparing for 3rd grade, and may slow it down if I need to, but I think she's ready for a little extra harder work!

MamaPajama,

We have done a guide a year every year with our second son and had no problems. He is just finishing CTC! We did do a year of Ambleside in between LHFHG and Beyond (because I didn't have Beyond written yet back then - and Oh! How I wish we had!), but it does work very well to do one HOD guide each year. One guide prepares a child well for the next guide in line.

Blessings,
Carrie

I'm doing Bigger next year for 2nd grade and after talking to Carrie about it at Arlington I feel good about our choice. We will likely be doing it 4 days a week, simply because of things we have going on one day each week, so that will stretch it a bit.

MamaPajama,
I did move my children through a guide a year, including 2nd grade in Bigger. I didn't slow down unless a child was struggling with skills in a guide. Doing Preparing this year (for 3rd grade) proved to be very difficult for my 8 year old. We did it half speed and never were able to speed up. But, I'll just continue on into 4th grade and probably start CTC in Feb. of 4th grade. I don't think you or your children would enjoy slowing down in Beyond, unless it's necessary for your child. Just keep going and you'll find a place to slow if needed. Tailor homeschool to meet your kids. Sometimes you need to challenge them with the skills and sometimes they need time to mature in an area. The Lord provides for us as moms the ability to know our children and meet their needs, when we trust in Him.

We did LHFHG for K with my youngest and are finishing up Beyond this year. We will be doing Bigger next year and following along. She has done really well and really she is a year ahead of herself since technically she should just be finishing up K instead of first. She just turned six. I think if they are progressing well through the guide it really is just a smooth transition to the next guide since each guide builds the skill levels needed for the next. You always have the option of slowing down and that works really well too. But if they are just going through the guide they are really going to be ready for the next level. The key seems really to just get them initially placed right then after that it just flows from one program to the next.