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I am looking seriously at buying HOD next month, Feb or March. This will be for next year's school year which starts in June for us.

I looked very carefully at the Placement Charts, and spent much time looking at all 3 charts. It looks like my 4th grader would place in Preparing, and my 2nd grader would place in Bigger. They both are very advanced readers with excellent comprehension.

But here are two issues:

A. I know Carrie's philosophy is to try not to combine kids, but that is not my philosophy. Our family harmony, joy, and sanity are better when our children work, and learn, together. Mommy ends up feeling completely scattered going back and forth between two kids for every subject. I don't know how some of you do it with 3 or four. I would lose my mind. Of course, in the 3R's they have always been separate.
B. My son has mild dysgraphia, so he will continue with Sequential SPelling... and he is sticking with Saxon Math. Also, he has not had enough grammar background to jump into Rod and Staff English 4. Therefore the English, Math, and Spelling in Preparing would need to be different from the Preparing manual. So I would only be using the content areas for him from Preparing.

Therefore, wouldn't it make sense, to put both of them in Bigger? My 2nd grade dd could use it completely As-Is, and my 4th grader would combine with her for Bible, history, Geography, Art, and even maybe dictation. But he would just continue with his own 3R's.

This was the suggestion given to me on another message board, and after I looked it over it made A LOT of sense to me. But I'm new to HOD and want to hear ideas.

That is what I would do. I would combine them in Bigger and use the extensions for your son since he is a good reader. It sounds like it would fit both of their needs.

I'll have to take another look. I didn't realize Bigger had extensions. THat would be great!

OK You are right! It does have extensions. That's awesome. I am so excited. I will have to think and pray a little more but that's a huge plus.

I just wanted to add that i am doing a 2nd and 4th grader in BIGGER and it is just right for us. I originally wanted to do preparing and bigger, but decided to put them together and it is working perfectly... there are extensions for bigger for your 4th grader, but if you are having to change the other things around (the math and stuff not in the guide) you might consider doing it just as is or letting them do the extensions just for fun?? just my thought. My fourth grader is VERY smart and could do more, but I think he is really getting just what he needs and this is best for us now. I also have two others in CTC and LHTH and a baby so i felt the need to combine. Oh and i want to add that my 4th grader is doing Rod and Staff level 3, because this will get him in level 7 by the 9th grade as Carrie had suggested (i think somewhere in another post for highschool). this is also just fine for him, he could do more, but again he is learning and retaining it all so well.

I was thinking about that. I like ROd and Staff but he was not ready for the Grade 3 Rod and Staff this year. He had to spend time cementing his spelling and sentence writing so much. I would consider Rod and Staff 3 next year, as Carrie suggested to you. Going forward, will your son eventually then separate out from your dd later on, or continue to combine all the way through? How would that work with high school?

OK I've Got it~!

I plan to order:

HOD BIgger exactly as recommended for my 2nd grade dd, and the Classic Interest storytime set (though we read a few of those already so I might skip the extra storytime or find substitutes.)

For my 4th grader:
Combine with Bigger and add the extension pack (He has read half of those as well but I might find replacements or just encourage re-reading the ones he forgot about.)
Rod and Staff 3 English
Saxon 5/4, he will start 6/5 halfway through
Sequential Spelling

They will both continue with their Greek, and this means both will cover art and music as well as Bible, together. This will be fantastic.

My only question is about DITHOR. I think I will put that off until they are older. Does anyone else using HOD skip DiTHOR? Why or why not?

To be honest, I bought DITHOR because I loved the way it looked, then I was super nervous about implementing. However after about a month and a half of school, we started DITHOR, and we love it!!! I would definitely do DITHOR with a 4th grader. Maybe you could run Bigger for awhile and then add in DITHOR after you felt fine with Bigger. Just an idea. Oh, welcome to the boards too.

Oops, I just saw where you asked why. We use it 5x's a week (it could be used less, say 3x). You can use any book with it as long as it's on the child's reading level. I've just picked the books for John. What I love is that we're reading genres I would never choose. For example, I would rarely pick a fantasy book, but we've read 2 so far and liked both of them really well. There's vocabulary work (3x's in a 20 day period), not a ton, where it's overwhelming, but this is something I've never done with John. There's several different formats to use, synonyms, contextual clues, etc.

We love the kickoff for the genres. It's where you do fun activities to introduce the genre. It really has a unit study feel. Then there's a wrap up to the genre too. For example, for the Fantasy genre, my ds made a large mural of the book that he read.

It's about really getting to know a book rather than just devouring it. I ask him questions (that are in the manual) which help him narrate things back to me. John really likes this. On days when there were no questions, he's asked me, "

I love that we're loving different Godly charact traits, faith, fear of the Lord, brotherly love, etc. We discuss their definitions, examples of it in our lives and how we can show the trait more, what Bible character showed these traits, and whether the characters are demonstrating these traits or the opposite of the character traits. This has led to our everyday lives. Both my children have started to say things like, "You were really showing brotherly love, Momma."

It covers story element lessons too with us learning about things like characters, setting, mood, etc... John will draw pictures of the setting, or even contrast the setting with our home in a drawing. We've drawn different expressions on the dry erase board and they are suppose to point to mood being expressed when I'm reading. He loves this and wants to do it when we're not doing DITHOR. There's more, but those are a few examples.

Anyway, not sure what else I should say, as I'm sure I'm probably missing something.

I think you have a good plan in place, as long as the 2nd grader can hang with BHFHG, and it sounds like you've done your homework and he/she can! It is an outstanding program, and I think you will love it as much as we are. As far as DITHOR, I think it is very important to do. It is their reading instruction after phonics, and it takes readers so much further than just being "great readers". It teaches them an entire body of knowledge for reading that aids them all the way through their education so beautifully. There are many, many reasons for doing DITHOR, but I'll link mine I posted some time ago here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4372&p=32131#p32131

I wonder if you'd enjoy stagger starting? Many moms do that and enjoy it. You could start BHFHG, and then a few months into it, you could start DITHOR. HTH! BTW, I think Carrie would like your placement too because you checked out the placement chart and considered your family's preferences for combining too, which is precisely what she suggests. Carrie wrote her HOD books with the purpose of combining, as evidenced by the extension packages, so she likes combining, just not for larger age spans than 4-5 years. So, no worries there! BHFHG is a foundational year for teaching some important skills - I am glad it will be where your dc are starting - I wouldn't want them (or you ) to miss it.

In Christ,
Julie

I too am using Bigger with my 2nd and 4th graders. It is working very well. And of course they too do their own math and English.
Good luck, I hope you enjoy HOD as much as I have in our first year.

Thanks for all the time you put into answering my questions. I think I am going to go with MFW next year. I'm glad I finally took the time to really research HOD, and look into it, but I think a program written for the purpose of combining would end up working better for us in the end.

Calming Tea,

I'm so glad that you have gotten a chance to look over HOD! I wanted to pop-in and mention that when I write the HOD guides I definitely write them with an eye toward combining, which is why you see multiple age levels listed on each guide and also see extension pack options for the guides in Bigger Hearts on up to extend and include older learners. Our guides have a target age range with a 3 year age span for each guide, extending at least a year or more above that age range when you add the extensions.

When kiddos fall outside of the combining range, or if learners within a family are farther apart developmentally, we then encourage families to separate their learners. This would typically be for children more than 3-4 years apart in age range or 4 years apart in school. You will definitely know what is best for your family as far as what curriculum suits you best, however I did want to make a clarification on the statement you made in your initial post about me personally not desiring families to combine. Our guides are actually written with an eye toward combining smaller age increments and include multiple levels of language arts and math as well in each guide to help make combining easier. My own boys just happen to be too far apart in age to combine easily, as they each are close to 4 years apart from their next sibling in line. I currently have a freshman, a 6th grader, a 2nd grader, and a 4 year old. However, that does not mean that my philosophy is that other families should not combine. If it was, then the guides would have one level of language arts and math and no extensions, and I would never have written Drawn into the Heart of Reading for multiple ages to use together at the same time!

We have many families that combine within HOD within the suggested age spans for each guide and find it works well. If you did desire to combine within HOD, we would recommend Bigger Hearts for your two children as their core history/science/Bible/geography etc. program, with a higher level math and grammar and recommend that your 4th grader do the Extension Package to extend the history and science. The target age range for Bigger Hearts is ages 7-9 with extensions for 4th and 5th graders.

We pray you will find the fit you're seeking whether it be through HOD or not.

Blessings,
Carrie

Wow thank you so much Carrie. I suppose I had been misled, by some posts on another board. I seemed to understand that combining was less than the ideal with HOD. I can see now that I was totally wrong. Bigger would be a great program for us...

I will really just have to pray about it. Today I got a lovely PM from HOD board members, and this personal note of explanation and encouragement. I can't just easily mark HOD off my list. You have done an amazing job, and I know my kids would be better off using HOD than my current eclectic plans. I'll have to just pray over the next month and see where God leads on this, between HOD and MFW. And, just like in the Book, "Just Do Something," I might have to just pick one over the other and see how it goes.

Thank you again for your time and ministry to homeschoolers and Christian children.