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I've been "devouring" my HOD catalog as I wait for our CTC to arrive, and as I look at all the wonderful boxes on the planner, I wondered how many of you do them--like in what order each day? Do you always do it the same way or do you vary it from day-to-day? What does your day "look like" with HOD (especially the upper levels)?

Also, for the independent boxes--do you have your child just read from the manual with you on what they are supposed to do each day, or do you tell them or write it out somewhere for them?

(Can you tell I'm a "visual learner" and really need to "see" how things work?! LOL)

HI and welcome to HOD!
My dd has been doing CTC this year and we have been loving it! I've watched so much growth, spiritually, cognitively, and most importantly the joy of learning blooming once again in my dd just from using CTC.
One thing I've learned this year is no one's schedule is ever the same. I started out this year wanting the perfect day..lol 15min here, 20min there, etc..etc..lol. Nope God threw the change-up pitch and my perfect schedule was benched!
So for now I pretty much have the rule of thumb of approach each day, work steady through each box, and what isn't finished is done the next day...but we do not start another unit/day until the pervious one is finished. Ironically its actually been the incentive to encouarge my dd to work harder to finish each day. Yesterday she didn't finish every thing and was champing at the bit because we didn't get to the Language Arts box and ....get this..totally awesome..because my dd used to hate the idea of having to read..was asking could we just go ahead and start the next DITHOR book...please... wow!
Well anyways, thats our approach at the moment. We should hopefully be ready to move into RTR by October.

oh and here's a link for a similar thread for schedule/day sharing

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093#p16049

Once again welcome to HOD! I know you and your family will be loving CTC!

We did Preparing this year and will start CTC in August. I used this year as a year to get my ds to the point where he could do the independent things independently. I made sure to have him read the boxes. I think things are explained well and he tends to like to breeze through instructions without paying attention to all the details, so to me reading the boxes was a learning experience itself. By half way through the year he was doing the independent boxes fairly independently and some of the semi-independent boxes independently. The exception for us is the science experiments. He has mild Cerebral Palsy that causes his hands to shake so physically he needs help sometimes with the science experiments.

As far as what order to do the boxes, almost always the right side of the guide was done in the mornings and the left side in the afternoon. Other than that I left the order completely up to him. He would look each morning at what each box entailed and he would number them. His hands get tired with writing so he would alternate writing intensive activities with those that were not writing intensive. He was great at figuring this out.

With CTC I plan on taking the first day of school and letting him sit down with the guide and figure out how this year is different from last year and just familiarize himself with some of the activities so he can do the same thing with setting his own schedule each day. I will have a highschooler home this year that will make things a little different, but I think if he understands each box, then if I am tied up with her he will be able to pick one of the independent boxes to move on to.

Heather,

This past scheduling thread may be of help to you as you ponder. I've posted my own kiddos schedules over several years on the thread too, listing the order that we did the boxes in each day. Link: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks Carrie!! That will give me lots of great ideas to get started!!