heartofdakota.com

A few random questions as I'm still puzzling through what is next for us (a change coming in the Spring as we'll be ready for the next "thing"):

1. Is there an academic jump from BH to PH? It seems like PH is a big step up in academic rigor. Or do you find that BH flows nicely into PH? What if my son is moving into PH from a "different" program (not HOD Bigger)? He places beautifully in PHFHG and I have BHFHG but I think it is hard to see how the work load will be without actually doing it. That probably makes no sense!

2. I want to move into HOD next and had been planning on it but I've wavered lately. It has come down to what we're doing for our language arts/English studies. We can't change course for now even though I like what HOD plans for the children. The decision that DH and I have made is to stay the course with what we're doing for spelling/grammar/literature study . . . for now. Is HOD designed so that I could use it and keep the other options for language arts for now? I really want to test run HOD here but I can't change course with the LA stuff at this point. My MAIN concern is asking too much in the way of writing and having a school day that runs too long. Are there time break downs for the different boxes on the right sides of the guides? That would help me to gauge the time.

3. Initially I'd planned to put my boys together in Bigger. BUT as the school year has moved forward we've decided that our little guy (DS6) needs to "do" first grade again. He's having a VERY gentle year and we're not going to get very much done. He needs the time to mature . . . so he'll be 7 when he starts first grade again. The oldest is the opposite . . . progressing rapidly with his academics. Bright. Great student. Way ahead of his brother. That said . . . the oldest really is in a "group" all his own (Bigger or Preparing). I'd LIKE to combine the middle boy (the one I'm holding back) with his sister in Little Hearts. Is that acceptable? Does anyone do anything "more" with their 7 year olds who use Little Hearts?

Boy . . . it's hard to ask some of these questions. I hope I'm making a little bit of sense. Thanks for any tidbits you can share or any links you can share.

I'm just starting LHFHG with my youngest. We'll start unit 3 on Monday. He'll be 7 in April. I do add more reading aloud to him- his pick of books because he loves it, and we sometimes read more about the history lesson or at least have a more in depth discussion. That's mostly because we've already covered a lot in Genesis/early OT. Once we move into more American history, which we haven't covered, I'm sure we won't need extra stuff. We also use our own Bible study. I was already doing it when we switched to HOD and I'm not willing to give it up- we both love it. We are still doing the memory verse, but not the devotional. Even with adding in calendar, pledges, our own worship time, a snack, etc we're done in 2-2.5 hrs and he's gotten a LOT from it without being overwhelmed. We are both loving HOD!!

I am doing LHFHG with our 7yo dd. She had a gentle year of K at home, so last year when I decided to put her in our Christian school, she had to attend K, because she wasn't ready for 1st. She's back home and doing Little Hearts for 1st. I would agree with the pp that 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours is about the average time to finish everything. We don't work straight through. We do a few boxes and then break for a while and then finish a little later. I hadn't been adding to it because dd has some attention issues, but I am beginning to add a page of Math and I let her choose a topic to do an animal lapbook just for fun. I think dd will thrive in the hands-on science. Since she is at the upper end of the recommeneded age range (she will be 8 in May), I believe she will benefit with some extension in that area. I think she has matured since fall and can handle a little extra. I don't think we will need to add to Beyond. I didn't want things to move too fast, so I decided to start with Little Hearts, which was a wise move for reading and writng purposes, but I am so glad for making the decision because the Bible and history are wonderful. It starts at the very beginning, so I think that will help dd understand US History, etc. better. HTH

Just to buzz in my thoughts for number 2 question:
I think you can use another LA program and still use HOD. We used a different one before R&S and it didn't really affect our lessons in Beyond.

Thoughts on question 3:
My youngest just turned 7 in August, and he was on the first grade level too. We use Beyond with him, and I have found it very do-able. He also went to a Christian school last year and is one year older than his grade level. I don't really know about Little Hearts, since this was our first year doing HOD, but I can vouch for Beyond that my son has done well with it. I am guessing that if you use Little Hearts, it would probably be good too. But I know that Beyond says for 6-8 year olds, so that one might fit better, not sure. I think Beyond is the one between Little Hearts and Bigger, right? It's one step below Bigger.

Hope that helps some!

Thanks for the thoughts ladies! I do appreciate it.

About DS6 (going on 7) that is going to have a first grade do-over . . . of course he fits beautifully into the Beyond guide but we simply can't use that one with him. There really is no way I'm going to test run HOD with 3 guides my first year!! That and a crazy toddler running around . . . There are some amazing women doing that now but I know that I'm not ready for it. (We are also using MFW Adventures this year which uses the same spine text and studies much of the same material.) So he is either in Bigger/Preparing (?) with the older (which doesn't seem to fit esp. as they move forward into Preparing/CTC after that - I think he'd sink) or in Little Hearts with the K'er. I'll just have to "beef up" Little Hearts for him with some Beyond LA suggestions since he is an emerging reader right now. In fact, he's doing the Emerging Readers and we're using the Beyond Guide for that.

Thanks for your help so far. This is a lovely board! I've had a blast perusing the archives.