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I'm considering trying Bigger half-speed for awhile. My son is doing well with Bigger, but I'd like to give him some time to grow into the amount of writing after having the summer off. Also, I feel like Julie discussed in another thread, that I am rushing him in some of his assignments. He is doing a beautiful job on his science notebooking page right now, but it is taking way longer than I like. He's a details man.

If I use Bigger half-speed for a time, I can't just do left one day and right the next day. He needs to be doing math and LA everyday. He also reads aloud the DITHOR books to us everyday, even though we aren't currently using DITHOR.

How do YOU do Bigger half-speed? or is there a thread like this already?

Have you considered doing half of the left side Bigger pages (plus Math and English) on day and then the rest of the left side pages (plus math and English) the next day? I would also give a full two weeks for the spelling words or dictations too. I have not done a program at half speed, but I am holding Bigger in my hands right now and this is how I would split it if I had to. The goal, I think, is to make the activities and readings take 10 days to do 1 unit.

We're doing Bigger right now at full-speed so I haven't done half-speed. I was just thinking based on time and the way things connect that I would probably do Bible, Music, History, and History Activity one day and maybe the poetry. Then on the other day I would repeat the Bible verse and listen to the music then do the Science and Storytime. I think time wise that would make the two days about the same length since Science tends to take about the same amount of time as the History reading and activity combined. Also the science and storytime aren't really related that closely to the history so it wouldn't hurt too much to do it separately. I think I would want to repeat the Bible verse and the music just to keep those fresh in my dc's minds and it would only take about 10 minutes on the second day so I would include it. The poetry connects more with the History so I would probably try to keep it with that, but if that made that day run too long, then I would consider moving it to the day with science. If you are copying the poem, you could include it on both days to make the amount of copywork 1/2 of what it would normally be. Just thinking through it, I think that is how I would try it and adjust as needed. I hope that helps a little. Hopefully someone who has actually done it 1/2 speed will chime in to and offer suggestions.

I am doing Bigger at half-speed with my 9 yo dd. We do the left page one day and the right page the next. She does math (our own program) every day. When we do the right page, for LA I add in a different spelling program and Ignite Your Writing. We do dictation, cheerful cursive, and our own grammar program too. If we are short on time (ie - Dr's appt), we do what we can on that page and either finish when we return, or finish the rest of that page the next day. This has worked for us.

I'll paste below one option of a way to do Bigger half-speed that I shared previously. There are many ways to do this and no one "right" way, but this is one option to ponder that I shared with Florence awhile ago :

As far as Bigger Hearts at half-speed goes, I'd lean toward doing the Reading About History, History Activity, and Bible Study (along with poetry too if possible) together on one day. Then, the next day, I'd do the Corresponding Music, Storytime, and Science Exploration.

Every day (or 4 days a week), I'd do math, and language arts. Depending on how much literature instruction your kiddos are ready to do, I'd lean toward DITHR 3-4 days a week.

Depending on the ages of your kiddos, on the second year of Bigger, you may wish to move up to a 4 day plan for all subjects, as you hit your stride.

Blessings,
Carrie

We did Bigger half-speed last year and enjoyed that so much. Here is the schedule I used last year:

Bigger Hearts for His Glory (half-speed):
We alternate between these two schedules, spreading 1 day's of plans out over 2 days.

First day:
*Corresponding Music, Bible Study, Poetry Activity, Poetry copywork
*Reading about History, Rotating History Activity (bottom left box), DITHOR 2/3 (just read to me today), Storytime (with the lesson today)
*Math flashcards, book on tape, chores

Second day:
*Science, R & S English 2, Storytime (just read today)
*DITHOR 2/3 (he reads and we do the lesson today), Singapore Math, Dictation
*Cursive, book on tape, chores

Because my ds is on the young side of BHFHG, I do not want to get through LA or Math too quickly. This is why we are going half-speed with these as well, and also why I added in math flashcards, just so he gets a little math but isn't moving ahead too fast with Singapore. I also decided I want to hear him read every day, and I also want to read our Storytime book every day. But, I only do the lesson one of the days. In this way, the pages we both read can be less each day, we can move forward each day, but we are not doubling up on the lessons of Storytime or DITHOR.

This year I started out Bigger Hearts full-speed, and while my ds definitely can do the work and is ready, I found I am rushing him through his notebooking assignments, art projects, vocabulary cards, and science procedure drawings especially. He is very creative, and I was squashing his creativity. So, we're back to half-speed, where I've given him double the time than usually needed for whatever is "artistic" for the day. He's in heaven! We still do Storytime daily, and DITHOR is 4 times a week with big brother. Math we spread over 2 days, and he works on illustrating his poetry copywork too. Here's our new schedule for hmmm... 3/4 Bigger Hearts, maybe?


HOD is super flexible, so have fun making your own "half-speed", but maybe some of these ideas give a starting point for your creation!
In Christ,
Julie

Julie,

I've been studying your schedules. They have been so helpful for me in developing a schedule for my dc doing Bigger this year. Thanks!!! I was looking over your new schedule and comparing it to your old one and I'm wondering when are you doing the Cheerful cursive and dictation now? I'm wondering how you are fitting everything in with a child who likes to take extra time on drawing or art. I'm finding that on the days we are doing any sort of notebook activity, we are running over our allotted times. I have been having them finish some things after school time, but on others (like painting), I can't really do that. I'm wondering how to best adjust our schedule so that I'm not rushing my dc too much or punishing them for taking extra time on the activity by always making it homework. I could just increase that block of time, but then on days when we don't have notebooking or an art activity, we would run way ahead of time. We also have 2 days a week that we have an outside activity to go to so we need to finish on time. Since the art and notebooking activities are not scheduled for the same day each week, that's making it a little more difficult for me to figure out how to incorporate the extra time. Any suggestions?

Edit: Bramble, I hope you don't mind me asking this here. I didn't mean to hijack your thread.

Thanks! I'm so glad you asked this! It made me realize I pasted our old schedule instead of the revised one! Anyway, I swapped it out for the revised one now. I try to add 15-20 minutes to the alloted times for any assignments my ds is wanting to be more creative in, but I still say "no" sometimes. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

That does help. Thanks! I've been thinking about it more since I posted and realized that the History notebooking and Science notebooking each have their own day each week and not the same day as each other. So it's more the art box on the same day as Science notebooking that ran us long one day and I'm sure that won't happen often. I realized as I studied on it that the R&S3 grammar is more what has caused us to be off schedule lately. It's taken us more like 30 minutes instead of 10. I'm guessing since it is 3 instead of 2 that I probably shouldn't have allotted just 10 minutes. The first few days that we were reviewing, 10 minutes was fine, but now that we're into new things, it's taking us much longer. I think I need to revise that block and possibly move things around a bit to try to accommodate more time for grammar.

I really appreciate you sharing your schedules! I really don't like schedules and don't like following one, but my dh and I decided that our dc really needed the structure. So I've used your schedules and times to develop our schedule and overall it's working really well. My dc are thriving on the schedule and I'm adapting.

pjdobro wrote:That does help. Thanks! I've been thinking about it more since I posted and realized that the History notebooking and Science notebooking each have their own day each week and not the same day as each other. So it's more the art box on the same day as Science notebooking that ran us long one day and I'm sure that won't happen often. I realized as I studied on it that the R&S3 grammar is more what has caused us to be off schedule lately. It's taken us more like 30 minutes instead of 10. I'm guessing since it is 3 instead of 2 that I probably shouldn't have allotted just 10 minutes. The first few days that we were reviewing, 10 minutes was fine, but now that we're into new things, it's taking us much longer. I think I need to revise that block and possibly move things around a bit to try to accommodate more time for grammar.

I really appreciate you sharing your schedules! I really don't like schedules and don't like following one, but my dh and I decided that our dc really needed the structure. So I've used your schedules and times to develop our schedule and overall it's working really well. My dc are thriving on the schedule and I'm adapting.

Art and science on the same day takes my creative lovin' little guy longer too, but like you said, it's not often. Are you doing a portion of R & S English 3 orally? We did that with our oldest ds - about 2/3 orally and about 1/3 written - and it made it go much more quickly. It has not hurt his retention (he's doing the second half of 4 now). Maybe you could try that if you aren't already? Otherwise, I wonder if you could do it half-speed? They could finish it during PHFHG then, which is the guide it's scheduled in anyway. However, I do know everyone has different grammar goals, so maybe that isn't an option you'd want to consider. I'm so glad your dc are thriving on the schedule - and that you are adapting too! The truth is, I don't like to be on a schedule always either, but I do need it to get done with school and get to the rest of my responsibilities in life - so, it's a must for me to stay cheerful and to keep all those plates spinning at once. Thanks!

In Christ,
Julie

I do try to do as much of R&S orally as possible, but the last few days, we've been diagramming and I couldn't figure out anyway that could be done orally. I did write some of the diagrams on the white board to lessen the amount of writing, but I figured I couldn't do that all the time because they have to figure out which way to draw the diagrams. I haven't looked ahead yet to see what is coming up this week. When we are having to do more writing, it might be helpful to slow the pace down a bit. I'll take a look at that and see if that seems like a good option. I hadn't really thought about going half-speed, but I think we would still be on track grammar wise, so that is an option. We really like grammar though and they might miss it if we don't do it everyday. I was telling my dh that our dc really like grammar and I think a lot of the reason they like it so well is the fact that we do it orally. We try to get some action into it as well. For example, if we're figuring out which group of words is a sentence and which is a fragment, we'll do something like stand up for the sentence and fall down for the fragment. They like this and have fun with it. Now that I think about, maybe we have too much fun with it! They do sometimes ask to do more, but we have pretty much stayed right with the book. We'll give it another week or two and see how it goes and make adjustments as needed. Thanks for your suggestions!

Thanks, everyone! I will read and ponder all of this info.

pjdobro wrote:...We really like grammar though and they might miss it if we don't do it everyday. I was telling my dh that our dc really like grammar and I think a lot of the reason they like it so well is the fact that we do it orally...

I thought I may be alone in being such a lover of grammar! I have always enjoyed grammar, but R & S English takes the cake. It is just the most solidly written, God-honoring grammar program I've ever seen. For what it's worth, I do the first about 1/3 of the diagramming ones on the markerboard as examples, then I draw the lines for the next 1/3 and he dictates what to write while I write it on the marker board, and finally he does the last 1/3 totally independently writing it in his composition book. That's just one way to do it though. If you are loving grammar and you don't mind the extra time it is taking, I'd just keep doing it the same way. But if you want to shave some time off your day, you could do something like that. I want to come to grammar at your house though - it sounds like fun!

In Christ,
Julie

This thread has been super helpful!

I had been contemplating doing Bigger at half-speed with my dd, but really wasn't sure how to go about it. She is on the younger side of Bigger and while she did well with Beyond, I think Bigger looks a bit meatier and have been thinking that we might end up rushing through things just to "get them done". I would rather be able to savor the lessons we do and have her really understand and retain the lessons we do.

Carrie, thank you for always having great ideas to share! It is amazing how much of your self you put into this...the guides as well as the forum. I don't know how you do it, but I sure am thankful you do!

Julie, thank you for sharing your schedule (again!!! ), I think I am going to try to use that as my model once we get started. I had written up one schedule with ds using LHFHG (I had already decided we would do that half-speed) and Bigger full speed. But to get it all done, we would have to rush through things faster than I think she could handle. Also with occupying the 2 year old (also using ideas that I had gotten from your schedules posted in the past as well as some of the other wonderful and insightful ladies on this board!) and nursing the baby, and adjusting to the new house/unpacking, I was getting overwhelmed! This seems like it will be less stressful for me and more benificial to my dd.

I love it! Thank you Bramble for bringing it up!

That's great to hear, Kelly! I do think it sounds like half-speed Bigger would be a great fit all-around. We liked our full-speed Bigger Hearts days, but we LOVE our half-speed ones! My ds is really getting into it and enjoying letting his creative juices flow. I am enjoying it as well! I bet you will too, and I hope your little baby is doing well and you're adjusting to your expanded family.

In Christ,
Julie