heartofdakota.com

Hi!

We have been doing LHFHG and loving it this year... both of my children love the science experiments. I had purchased both Our Father's World (OFW) and God's Wonderful Works (GWW) because I wasn't sure which would fit my son. I decided to go with OFW after reading that GWW would be used in Beyond, which we are looking forward to doing next year.

OFW has been ok, but not that challenging/engaging for my son. So I was thinking about moving on to GWW instead... but then what would we do for science next year? Maybe just do the experiments from the guide and then do journaling?

Have any of you done God's Wonderful Works for Little Hearts and then something else for Beyond? I was looking at the science books for Bigger, but it looks like those will work best when used with the history in Bigger.

Thanks in advance for any insights you have!

I would hold God's Wonderful Works for Beyond. We had to start without it and I found we really needed it to fully understand everything in the activity box that goes with history. You could some library books as you go through Little Hearts if you wanted a little more.

Thanks, Countrymom. It's very helpful to know that God's Wonderful Works is a key part of understanding the science in Beyond. Makes sense to hold off.

We have been supplementing with library books, a children's encyclopedia, and having him do simple journaling for some of the LHFHG experiments. We'll continue doing that.

Out of curiosity, has anyone chosen God's Wonderful Works for Little Hearts as the science option and then continued on to Beyond?

Beyond was written before Bigger Hearts, and at that time HOD was just taking it year to year. About that time, HOD decided to publish a core guide a year through eighth grade, which meant thinking long term. GWW probably wouldn't have been used in Beyond otherwise. I'd definitely save it for BHFHG as pp suggested. The science in the younger guides is fitting for the target age ranges in scope and sequence, however, if you have little science buff on your hands, and it sounds like you may , adding things can be fun! We did a nature journal years back, and enjoyed that, as well as frequent walks enjoying the outdoors. We loved to come back and go to enature.com, type in our zip code, and see what we could identify that we'd seen on our walks or outdoor time together - great fun! But as far as academics goes, HOD covers your bases with the science in the guides, adding more is not necessary, but can be a blast to do if you have a little scientist in the making!

In Christ,
Julie

Thanks for the enature.com suggestion. What a fun website!

I think we will save GWW until next year as suggested. In the meantime, we'll keep on delighting in HOD as written and follow our son's science interests as they lead after that. Gotta love homeschooling!