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The more I look at the curriculum, the more I am questioning the placement. I am mainly worried about my oldest son. I am afraid that the Little Hearts Book will be too young for him. I have been looking at the placement charts and my oldest (G) is definitely placing in Beyond. Also looking at the samples of Little, drawing numbers one through 5, is way too easy for him. He is an emergent reader, and doing very well in math. I would like to keep them together. But not at the expense of him being behind and doing 'baby' work. I will have 3 of them next year to teach, and no sure I want to do 3 books. We are switching to HOD next year. I am confused...

You can keep them together on the left side of LHFHG and use the right side of Beyond for math, English and spelling for your 7 year old if you would like to keep them somewhat combined. Several people on the board do this. Beyond also has emerging readers schedule. I am not sure if LHFHG does. I have not used LHFHG yet with a reader (but I will be this year). I have the Beyond book also from older siblings so I knew I had a list. My 6/7 year old somewhat emerging reader will be combined with her 4/5 year old sister, but the older one will do the work I listed out of Beyond.

I agree that if you do combine your 7 year old in LHFHG, you'll want to add the spelling lists from Beyond, the gentle grammar lessons every 5th day from Beyond, the higher level math in Beyond, and the Emerging Reader's Set from the Appendix of Beyond. You'd also want the higher level handwriting workbook. This will really raise the level of the 3R's so that your older child is being challenged in all of those areas.

Plus, if you get going in combining with the younger sibling for the rest of LHFHG and feel like your older needs more, you can always up your oldest child to doing all of Beyond quite easily as you'll already have the manual (giving you a great back-up plan).

If you get a chance to refresh us on the ages of your kiddos, we can advise even better!

Blessings,
Carrie

My kids are 7, 5 and 3. When we start next year, they will be 7.5, 6 and almost 4 (Sept). I would love to keep the older 2 children together. I am just afraid that it will be too 'easy' for my oldest.

Garrett (7) is an emerging reader, can easily read level 2 and 3's with some help. He is currently doing a Language Arts program that is daily work and knows many spelling rules, and grammar rules. He isn't quite writing sentences on his own yet. His math is good, I slowed down the program we are using, but so far he has memorized addition and subtraction to 8, can do story problems, can tell time with some help, can skip count by 5's, 2's and 10's to 100. He knows money values, and some beginning fractions. I am considering keeping our Reading program, LA and math with the same company we are currently using. But they do not suggest literary choices for read alouds. That is why I am so excited about HOD.

Colton (6), will just be finishing preschool. He attended our church's preschool. He still needs work with handwriting, but is ready for phonics, and early math skills.

Nolan (3), will be doing the preschool book for 3/4 year olds,then next year I plan on repeating it, with the 4/5 year old supplements.

I guess my question is, if I will be doing so many thing from the Bigger book, why not just do them all for Garrett? How does it all work together? I keep hearing that placement is key, but what if you are combining your kids?

It sounds like Colton is a perfect fit for LHFHG and Garrett is a perfect fit for Beyond. So that leaves two main choices: do separate guides or combine them in LHFHG. (Combining them in Beyond sounds like too much for Colton IMHO.) I have heard it suggested to not do back to back guides, otherwise you will be repeating guides every year and that might get old. So that sounds like combining is the way to go! (Plus Carrie suggested to combine them!)

We are combining my kiddos as Carrie described. We combine for LHFHG left side plus story time and handwriting/thinking skills. Then my younger son does LHFHG level reading and math. My older son does spelling/grammar (LA box minus copywork because he's doing the higher handwriting book for LHFHG), ERs for reading, and math on his level. There are other book suggestions in the back that you could use to beef things up if you felt that was necessary although we haven't used these. Even though my older was reading before we started, it was great to work on his comprehension and the questions that Carrie provides also makes them think! It is definitely growing him and helping him read aloud with more expression and inflection.

My suggestion is to give it a try and see how it goes. As long as he is working on his 3Rs at his level, I think it will be great. Here's a link to a thread that shows what I will be working on each year (theoretically assuming everyone progresses well). viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8843. Another possibility for beefing it up would be to buy a science curriculum to go with it specifically for Garrett. Younger son could tag along for that easily. Even if you do the extra science, you can continue with the LHFHG science as well (since it is easy, fun and matches the history).

Just my 2 cents. Hope something in here helps!
P.S. Oops. I just saw that your last post said Bigger at the end. Are you thinking Bigger or Beyond for Garrett? If Bigger, and you think your boys are 2 guides apart, then you could give them their own guide.

I meant to say Beyond, its the blue book...

housefullofboys wrote:The more I look at the curriculum, the more I am questioning the placement. I am mainly worried about my oldest son. I am afraid that the Little Hearts Book will be too young for him. I have been looking at the placement charts and my oldest (G) is definitely placing in Beyond. Also looking at the samples of Little, drawing numbers one through 5, is way too easy for him. He is an emergent reader, and doing very well in math. I would like to keep them together. But not at the expense of him being behind and doing 'baby' work. I will have 3 of them next year to teach, and no sure I want to do 3 books. We are switching to HOD next year. I am confused...

Hi Mama and welcome to HOD!

A few ??s for you. Do you have a HOD catalog? Have you read through it and do you understand how HOD's guides work and how to correctly place your children in a guide? When you refer to "drawing numbers one through 5" what sample were you looking at? I'm thinking it was either a sample for "Little Hands to Heaven" (which is for pre-school and quite different from Little Hearts for His Glory") OR perhaps you looked at some samples for the Kindergarten math which your older kiddo would not be doing. Thoughts there?

HOD is very flexible actually and you CAN place two children ages 6 and 7 in one guide, Little Hearts for His Glory. Is Garrett going to be in first or second grade? If you wish to combine your boys THEN you would place them in Little Hearts and do the K work with Colton. This includes choosing and using a phonics program of your choice. HOD schedules Singapore math but is flexible so you can choose your own math without disrupting the daily plans. Little Hearts gives a science option for 1st AND 2nd grade and you'd choose one of those for Garrett. Take note that the 2nd grade book is also used in the next guide Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory so you may want to choose the 1st grade book. My 7 year old will be using it and he's really excited about it. You can search samples of it on CBD. It looks great. Anyway, to put Garrett's skill work on grade level you would use either your own choices (that you mentioned for math and LA) OR you would use "right side of Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory". Each HOD guide has a 2 page spread for each day of each Unit. The left side is generally the content oriented work and the right side is generally the skill oriented work which has more flexibility for learning levels within a guide. For reading with Garrett you'd use the Emerging Readers series or Drawn Into the Heart of Reading (depending upon your boy's reading abilities). The ERS is excellent, with an easy to follow schedule for day to day, along with questions for each book that your son reads to you. Using the ERS plans gives your kiddo practice in reading aloud (fluency) and narration skills (telling back/recalling what he has read - this aids comprehension). This is all contained in the appendix of Beyond. Depending upon what you do for spelling you can use the spelling lists that are contained in Beyond as well. There is a 1st grade list and a 2nd grade list and Carrie plans a Charlotte Mason approach to teaching spelling in this manner. After kiddos complete the 2nd grade list they move on to Studied Dictation. The dictation passages begin in the Bigger guide (approximately 2nd or 3rd grade). You would also ask your kiddo to do copywork and a gentle introduction to grammar skills contained in the Beyond guide. There are quite a few ways to increase the expectations for a child who is ready for it. My 7 year old will be studying Little Hearts with his sister. He is already a strong writer with very good fine motor skills. His "weakness" (which isn't a weakness at all ) is attention span and a lack of love/patience toward that sweet girly girl. He will finish up the ERS and I will either move him to DITHOR or tread water by reading Level 2 Books for awhile. He will do copywork daily based on what we're reading in history or science. I'll also ask him to copy the weekly memory verse. There are more ideas than that but I hope you get the picture that you can certainly "beef up" a HOD Level for a youngster who needs more skill work so that you can keep two kids that close in age together in a guide. For what it's worth, the spine texts and devotional for Little Hearts are EXCELLENT! Here is a link to a lovely idea Carrie shared with me for making Little Hearts a little "meatier" for my 7 year old: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8354&start=15&st=0&sk=t&sd=a Scroll down to the middle of page 2 on that thread. Carrie has two entries and one of them contains some gems worth reading (regarding how to up that content for the older guy). In addition you may find this thread helpful. It has ideas for adding copywork for an older student using Little Hearts: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8354&start=15&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

I'm still a HOD newbie myself....though I am well-read . Please continue to ask questions until you understand every little thing! HOD is worth it.....so worth it. And once again, if you haven't ordered a catalog please do so! Here's a link to the order page....they ship FAST! viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8354&start=15&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Thanks for all the advice, and yes I do have a catalog. So if I am understanding correctly, I should purchase the Red book and the Blue book. The left side together, and the do the right side of the red book with my kindergartner, and then do the right side of the blue book with my 2nd grader?

If I do that, how would I do next year? Would I do the left side of the blue book together? Then, purchase the next book up again? That is where I am confused. How do you continue through the years?

Yes! Then, the following year, you would do the left side of the blue book (Beyond) with both kiddos and the storytime from the right side of the blue guide too with both kiddos, but you would use the right side of the yellow book (Bigger Hearts) for your older child's 3R's and math. After that in future years you will no longer need to purchase the next guide up for your older child, as the guides after that begin to have 3 levels of dictation, multiple levels of Rod and Staff English, and 3 levels of math scheduled in each guide, plus an extension schedule. So, purchasing a guide ahead is a very temporary circumstance.

Blessings,
Carrie