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Let me start by giving out a big, HUGE! "Thank You" to Julie and all the ladies who have been so very patient and kind in answering my questions and helping to think through my concerns. It has been wonderful advice and has helped lead me to our decision as to how to place our DD 4.5 in the coming year.

I think I will be following Julie's original advice and will drive on with LHTH through the summer and then in fall (when she's 5.5 yo) we will start LHFHG for her officially. I'd really like to keep doing the guides as written but these are the options I've come up with:

1.) Make Little Hearts span 2 years and cover her for kindergarten and 1st grade. That would put her entering Beyond about 7.5.

2.) Do Little Hearts for one year as written in the guide like I am doing for DS (kindy math and science, 1st grade Thinking Skills) and then move her to Beyond at age 6.5 and either do that as written or slow it to 1/2 speed depending on where she is when we cross that bridge.

If we go with option #1 and span Little Hearts for 2 years, do we do left side every other day and then right side everyday so that K is covered the first year and 1st is covered the second year? Then does that mean we would be doing the 1a/1b math from the Beyond guide the second year of LHFHG? And how would the Storytime work in that scenerio? Sorry I'm still so confused about this!

A million thank yous!

This has been asked many times on the board and if you do a search you will probably find several thread with ideas of how to make this work. I started out going 1/2 speed with my little guy with intentions to do it for 2 years, but he was ready for more so after a year we bumped up to full speed. We did pretty much what you said, but we did not do math full speed. This was the schedule we used:

Day 1:
Rhymes in Motion
Reading About History
Handwriting/FMS - daily K options one year, 1st options the next
Review memory verse
Phonics - daily
Math - activity only
Rotating Box

Day 2
Rhymes in Motion
Handwriting/FMS
Bible Study Box
Phonics
Math - reviewed activity & did worksheet
Storytime

We also checked out as many of the supplemental history books listed in the appendix as we could find at the library and read those. We would also check out additional books on whatever science topic was covered in the unit. We had a lot of fun!

Thank you Stephanie for sharing your schedule. It helps to "see" it laid out like that. I have a feeling that it won't take DD long to move into Little Hearts full speed like your son. But I think it might be better to err on the side of "less is more" in the beginning. So I'll go with the idea that we'll span it for 2 years and then adjust accordingly to her progress.