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This is my first year homeschooling, an 8th grader and a 2nd grader, I am trying to make decisions for next year and am thinking of trying HOD for the first time with my younger one using bigger hearts. I see that it is geared for a 5 day school week but I also work part time and we have a four day school week. So my question is can bigger hearts be easily made to fit into 4 days and what would be your advise on how to do that. Thanks for your help.

You can do Bigger 4 days/week. It would just extend your school year by about another 7 weeks. I'm currently reading through Bigger and I don't think I'd double up on days. There's a good amount of work in there.

Yes what the previous poster said only I believe it adds 9 weeks to your school year. If your dc is just going to be in 2nd grade when you do it I think that might be a good idea anyways, since Preparing is a step up.

My younger one will be 9 in mid September and will be in 3rd grade. I am really hoping to not add weeks to our school year any ideas how to fit 5 days into 4? Is it possible?

Is that 9 weeks in the sense of seven day weeks? or is that 9 weeks of actual school days?? Does that make sense? Would I mark 9 traditional weeks on the calendar or would I count out 9 weeks worth of work days.. I think I'm trying too hard here..... lol

A lot of families just stop at the end of their school year and pick up where they were in the fall. So you could just do those extra 9 weeks at the beginning of your next school year and proceed. The whole idea of being "off" takes a little getting used to, but once you are there it makes you feel so liberated. You are free to school your kids as is best for them. I would hesitate to try to double up in Bigger. I have the manual already and there is a lot there. I am afraid you would sacrifice something in order to do it.

Here's my 2 cents. I would not, especially in the beginning, try to cram Bigger into 4 days. It is a good challenge. What the previous posters said about doing it 4 days a week and finshing the 5th day the next week, and so on. This does take getting used to the idea. I have been homeschooling for 8 yrs and this is the first year I am comfortable with it. I have to admit it is freeing. One of the beautiful things about homeschooling is the flexiblitity. Just had a thought, wondering if you have a set number of days of school you must complete? If you do then doing Bigger at the suggesting of 4 days a week then complete day 5, well it works. Bigger is 170 days of school, at 4 days a week that is 43 weeks. If you plan to accomplish at least 170 days of school, regardless of how many days a week you do then all is fine.

twoxcell wrote:Yes what the previous poster said only I believe it adds 9 weeks to your school year. If your dc is just going to be in 2nd grade when you do it I think that might be a good idea anyways, since Preparing is a step up.

Yes, I figured wrong. It is 9 extra weeks. To the op, it would be another 9 weeks of a 4 day week. Not a regular 7 day week. I hope that makes sense.

LivinHim, I think they mean 9 more 4 day weeks when they say it take 9 more weeks to finish. So instead of doing 34, 5 day weeks, you would do 43, 4 day weeks. Actually I think it would actually be 42.5, 4 day weeks.

Bigger is a full program and I wouldn't recommend trying to do all 5 days each week in 4 days every week especially at the beginning. If you had to compress the 5 days into 4 days, it can be done, but it's not recommended. What you could do is one day do 2 days of history reading and activities that will probably add another 30 minutes to your day. One day you could do 2 days of science perhaps combining a narration day with a notebooking day which would add an additional 30 minutes that day. One day you could do 2 of the poetry activities, double up on the Bible study, and double up the storytime adding an additional 30-40 minutes. Another day you could double up on grammar and math adding an additional 30-40 minutes. You would have to figure out your schedule for DITHR probably doing 2 less genres in the year. You would be missing doing the music a 5th day. It can be done, but you would be adding an additional 30-40 minutes each day to your schedule and it wouldn't feel quite the same. It's better if you can just try the schedule as written to begin with just carrying over the next day to the next week. After you get a feel for the program and get in your groove, you can figure out what is going to work best for you. HTH!

I do actually squish Bigger's 5 days of work into 4 days a week, but it is quite intense. I'm very comfortable with where my dd is in math, reading, and grammar, so we only do those 4 days a week (still, she is almost done with Singapore 3B and half-way through R&S English 3). I really prefer to keep each unit together because I like how everything works together so well between the Bible study, the history and the science. It feels right to finish a unit in one week, tying things up with the notebooking and timeline in history. (Sometimes I feel like the rest of my life has gotten into sync with my HOD guide! The real-life lessons we learn each week are amazingly fitting - probably just because of my awareness!) I would rather not carry the scripture memory verse over to the next week, so she copies it out on the first day rather than the fourth. (She memorizes FAST, usually by the second day!) For science we do day one and two on Monday. For History, we just combine one day of reading with another (usually whatever makes the most sense - chapter-wise), sneak vocab into whichever day works and otherwise follow the bottom left hand box in order.

Our days are a bit intense sometimes, but then again, most of what we combine only adds a few minutes, really. This is our third guide in HOD, so we are both very comfortable in what we are doing with it. We are able to add in some of the extension readings, as well. We do all of this because dd REALLY wants to do a Friday co-op and have time with kids her age. I have to do some advance planning that otherwise wouldn't be necessary (it only takes me about 20 minutes a week now), but I feel like we have handled it well! If we need to, we finish things up on Friday afternoon (like today!) In my state, we have a requirement of 1000 school hours, and we have logged at least 950 hours with 6 weeks to go.

That being said, I will re-emphasize the fact that this is very intense for a 7-year-old! My dd is rather intense herself. I don't know that I would recommend this to everyone. My life has not had much flexibility in it this year, but we've made our choices.

We also have found that school during the summer does not happen, so lengthening our school year is not really a choice. My husband teaches ps choir, and we stick to his schedule simply because I have a riot on my hands if we have to do school when daddy doesn't have to. I feel a lack of motivation myself on those days!

So you know it can be done, but it's definitely not easy!

Pam