heartofdakota.com

My son will be turning 9 and going into 4th grade. He shows on the placement chart that he should be in PHFHG for almost everything. But as this is our first year homeschooling (Lord willing) and we are changing from one style of learning to another (Abeka format to CM style of teaching), I thought about putting him in BHFHG because I like the history/geography, reading, science, and maths available. My problem is this: he absolutely needs English 3 (and possibly 4), as well as the dictation spelling level 2 and neither one is offered in the BHFHG level. If I put him in the lower level, he will definetly not be challenged in those areas. I know that I could order the English by itself, but the BHFHG guide won't be compatible, nor will it offer the higher level dictation material in the appendix. Am I forced to go with PHFHG? Or should I order the BHFHG curriculum and then just order the guide and English book for PHFHG?

Thanks!!

It's true that R&S3 isn't scheduled in Bigger, but it is no big deal just to do one lesson each day. That's what we have done this year and it's worked out great. I actually think I read in another post someone mention that if you schedule it 4 days each week, that works out perfectly. We have from time to time, skipped a day so it has balanced out for us. You would just order the R&S3 books instead of the R&S2 books with your package.

As far as dictation, level 2 dictation is scheduled in the appendix of Bigger. If you feel that your son needs level 3 or level 4 of dictation, then you would need to get the Preparing guide for that. If you did get the Preparing guide, you would have the schedule for R&S3 and R&S4 English also. It really isn't a big deal if you need to use the other guide for a couple of things like math schedule or English schedule or dictation. The core of your day is still going to scheduled in your main guide and the bonus is that you will already have your core guide for the next year in hand. That's always a wonderful thing!

All that is in the guide for English is the schedule for when to do each lesson. It is really not necessary to buy the next guide for that. Also, I think I was the one that suggested getting preparing for the dictation, but I saw someone else mention that you could just find various sentences to do your own dictation with, if you'd like. Otherwise, if you do decide to buy the next tm it has three levels within it. So, once you get to preparing, you will just use the next level that is already in there. You won't be behind and have to buy the following year or anything. Hope that makes sense...

Mercy

I can't comment on PHFHG since we haven't gotten to it yet, but we're using Bigger for my oldest dd 9. She was ahead in her language arts and math, so I just put a sticky note on top of those boxes in the Bigger manual and write in her lessons. She's in R&S English 4 and we are using Spelling Wisdom for dictation, she does one R&S lesson a day and at least 1 new dictation per week. Same for math, I just write down the next lesson #. It's not difficult at all to make those adjustments. If we didn't already have Spelling Wisdom I would just use quotes from the reading as well. If you're interested in Spelling Wisdom you can find it here: (link removed by board moderator per board rules). Level 1 is for grades 4 and 5.

HTH,
Caryn

PS I'm really glad I placed my dd in Bigger. Even though she also placed into PHFHG I didn't think she would be ready for CTC in one year. This gives us time to really work on her narration skills (and finish American History....we've always stopped at the 1800's for some reason.....). We are using the Extension books as well and it's going fine.