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For those who are more seasoned than I... ShariCA's post got me thinking. Right now my two oldest are one guide apart. I think LHFHG is the perfect place for DS to be. DD, while she LOVES LHTH, keeps telling me that she wants "more school". She already recognizes her letters and knows all of her consonant and short vowel sounds. So I have decided to do TRL with her. I have also been reading the LHFHG story with her, only at a separate time from DS because otherwise neither of them listen. But she's able to follow along and answer the questions.

Ultimately I would love to combine the two of them. I'm wondering if it would be too much to have her proceed at double time with LHTH and then to have her do LHFHG at normal speed, combining the two of them in Beyond. OR if it would make more sense to wait a while, have DS do Bigger at half-speed, and then combine the two on Preparing. I believe it was Julie who told me at one point that Bigger is easy to do at half-speed, but the lower guides were not as simple.

Any advice?

Edit: Now that I'm thinking about this, I'm not sure my math is adding up here. Maybe I should ask this way: If I wanted to speed her up now, when could I feasibly catch her up to her brother? Would it work if DS did LHFHG 4 days/week?

I think she is going to be a little young for Beyond any time real soon. When you were thinking of beginning it?

I don't really know for sure. I guess if we did LHTH double-time, and then did LHFHG with her at regular speed, that would put us at starting Beyond in January of 2012 and she would be just turning 6. Technically then she would be within the age range for Beyond.

Then I'm thinking, okay, if I continue doing LHFHG with DS at regular speed, he would be ready for Beyond starting August 2011. But if I do LHFHG at 4 days/week, I could feasibly stretch it out to January, when he will be almost 8.

Would that work?

I'm not sure where in the guides you are, but when DD2 was 4.5 I could have easily doubled up on LHTH with her. The thing that would be an issue would be that *I* would want to slow it down enough that my younger would be squarely in the age range by Beyond.

I can't remember how many weeks are in LHTH and LHFHG? Going off of 34 weeks... If you did LHFHG 4 days per week it would be about 42 weeks to finish it. And if you doubled up on LHTH it would take you 17 weeks. So just saying if you were starting at the beginning.... When you finished LHTH you would have 25 4-day weeks left of LHFHG.... Then you could easily plan out how quickly you would be able to combine them.

With all the interruptions it took me forever to type that... I think your plan with starting everyone on Beyond in January 2012 is a fine idea!

MomtoJGJE wrote:I'm not sure where in the guides you are, but when DD2 was 4.5 I could have easily doubled up on LHTH with her. The thing that would be an issue would be that *I* would want to slow it down enough that my younger would be squarely in the age range by Beyond.

I can't remember how many weeks are in LHTH and LHFHG? Going off of 34 weeks... If you did LHFHG 4 days per week it would be about 42 weeks to finish it. And if you doubled up on LHTH it would take you 17 weeks. So just saying if you were starting at the beginning.... When you finished LHTH you would have 25 4-day weeks left of LHFHG.... Then you could easily plan out how quickly you would be able to combine them.

With all the interruptions it took me forever to type that... I think your plan with starting everyone on Beyond in January 2012 is a fine idea!

Thanks for taking the time to do that! To answer your question, we JUST finished Unit 1 of both LHFHG and LHTH today. I think I'll sit down later and figure out all the details and what it would take to get us to that goal of January 2012. I keep feeling afraid to hold DS back, but then I remember that we don't have to slow down the 3 Rs. I could use that 5th day every week to really focus on those things.

Thanks for letting me bounce my thoughts off of you all!

Okay, another question, I guess. Does anyone else have their children doing each guide from January-December? That thought is messing with my head, but I don't suppose it's the strangest thing anyone's ever done....

After sitting down and working the numbers I've figured out that if I sped up DD and slowed down DS now I could get them to meet up in Beyond in January 2012. BUT that would mean that DD would start Beyond in the last half of her Kindergarten year. However, since she has a January birthday, it would basically be the same as a child who has an August birthday starting Beyond at the beginning of their 1st grade year.

I'm wondering if it would just be easier to have DS do one year at half-speed so they could just start fresh together at the beginning of a school year. Now which year is the easiest to do that, if we decide to go that route? He's doing so well in LHFHG that I really don't want to slow him all the way down to half-speed, and plus there are no extensions for a 2nd grader doing the last half of LHFHG. Is half-speed in Beyond too difficult? Would it be easier to have him to half-speed in Bigger in his 3rd and 4th grade years, with extensions for 4th? That would put them both beginning Preparing in their 3rd and 5th grade years, and DS could use the extensions.

What to do, what to do? Do I go by grade or age? I feel like I really need to decide because I don't want to slow DS down for nothing since we already moved from Beyond to Little Hearts!

Another question, since DD is doing TRL this year in preK, I imagine she could be ready for the ERs in Kindergarten. What does she do after that for 1st grade? Is DITHOR 2/3 the next step, or is that specifically for 2nd and 3rd graders?

Starting in January is no big deal really.... DD1 will be starting Bigger in probably late September or maybe early october... Or if we are enjoying our cooking lessons and other stuff I have planned to do in between Beyond and Bigger then I might just wait and start her with Bigger in January... right now DD2 and DD3 will be starting LHFHG in January... that's assuming I get done wtih LHTH before then.... Their's might be pushed back a little more...

Okay, I've come to terms with starting in January. However my biggest issue now is figuring out how on earth I could stretch LHFHG out over a year and a half and still work in all 180 required school days. I realize most of those days can be focused on math and reading, and some can be field trips and what not, but it still leaves quite a large gap to fill. Doing school at 2/3-time is not as easy as 1/2-time. How do I coordinate my days?

I'm just not sure if this is worth it or not. If I try to combine them by speeding DD up by half a year, she will be at the extreme young age of the spectrum. If I combine them by slowing DS down a full year later on, he will be at the extreme old age of the spectrum. I'm wondering if it's really worth it to go through the trouble, or if I should just keep them one guide apart.

Any advice is welcome! I'd love Carrie or Julie's advice on this too!

We do LHFHG at half speed and it's really not that hard to stretch it out. Some things that we do are check out library books on the science topics each week, read the extra history books listed in the appendix, add in some extras like art, music, hymn study, and nature study. There are lots of different things you can do to stretch it out. Hope that helps!

If you were to take 3 years from now to do go through LHFHG and Beyond at 4 days a week, you could be starting Bigger with a 7.5 and 9.5 yo, I think. We started LHFHG with a 4.5 yo 5 days a week and he did great. It would have been even better 4 days a week, I think, because that would leave time for extras and outings without messing with the "school schedule". You could just finish LHTH as an "extra", or table it until the next dc gets there.

I was approaching it from a standpoint of finishing LHTH with your DD....

FWIW, we will be starting LHFHG sometime after Christmas with DD2 and DD3.... DD3 will have just turned 4 in October. We will be going half speed. So if you didn't care if she did LHTH (or just thought about maybe doing that with both of them for fun, not school time) you could combine both of them in LHFHG now... DD2 will be 6 when we start LHFHG, and I don't think it's going to be bad at all going half speed....

MamaPajama wrote:Is half-speed in Beyond too difficult?

I don't think half-speed Beyond would be difficult. You could do the History Reading one day and the "Rotating 2nd Box" the next day, adding the poem, verse, music, and devotional with which day you thought it fit best. Do your Math, Phonics/Reading, and Copywork/Grammar everyday and your Storytime could either be everyday or every other (probably everyday if your kids love storytime as much as mine ).

MamaPajama wrote: Another question, since DD is doing TRL this year in preK, I imagine she could be ready for the ERs in Kindergarten. What does she do after that for 1st grade? Is DITHOR 2/3 the next step, or is that specifically for 2nd and 3rd graders?

The TRL may take you longer with your DD than you're expecting. My oldest DS completed it in 9 months when he was 6/7. My youngest DS started TRL 7 months ago just after his 5th birthday and is on Lesson 7. He needs a month to work on each Lesson before he's ready to move on. I'm not sure if it's the fact that he's younger than his brother was or just that he's learning differently.

If your daughter is ready for the ERs in K, you could have her read both Bibles and the supplemental titles along with the original ones.

I'm not sure if DITHoR is recommended before 2nd grade (please correct me if I'm wrong ).

Anyway, those are just some thoughts. I would combine my oldest two if I could, but they are just too far apart academically to make it work well. My youngest son really needs my individual time/attention in order to thrive. We will begin LHFHG half-speed with him this fall.

I look forward to hearing what you decide!

Thanks for all of the responses, everyone! I talked to DH about it and he put me at ease about a lot of my worries. Normally I would hesitate to have a conversation like that with him, because I figured he would want me to stick as strictly to a public school type schedule as possible, but he agreed that DD is ready to move forward more quickly, especially since she'll technically be Kindergarten age in January. In fact, he suggested just combining the two of them now, but I know I don't want to go that far. I think double time on LHTH is plenty, especially since she's enjoying it so much. So it looks like we're shooting for then meeting up on Beyond in January of 2012!