heartofdakota.com

I've been here before as I was looking at cirriculum for the last year. I love the look of HOD and most importantly I LOVE that it is Christ centered! I've done MFW for the last two years (Adventures and ECC), and I have enjoyed them and so has the children. There are only a few things that I wasn't crazy about with ECC, that most of the Bible readings were not explained in the teachers manual and my children stumped me a few times with thier questions! LOL! Plus the science books were secular and I had to show the children how the scientists who said these things were wrong and scientificly and Biblically speaking WHY they were wrong. Now I grew up in a secualar public school so have a only bits and pieces of Christian scientific evidance in my brain to of set these books, but thank the Lord it was enough that my children can't believe how silly those secular scientists are and they feel bad for them as they are missing Christ's salvation. I would really like to have some science books that show science from a christian prospective so I can grow in MY knowledge as they are growing in THIERS! Does that make sence? My children are young, so the questions are only going to get deeper! Now I LOVE keeping the children together in MFW(one teachers manual, one set of books) and they sure have growen in having a heart for missions. I have seen the benifits and struggles with keeping them all together. My young ones have picked up cool things (my 3 year old doesn't know his ABC's but know what a snow lepard, bald eagle, robin, grackle ex... is). It's cool to hear a 7 year old talk about decidious forests ex... But my young ones tend to glaze over when we read most of the books bc they are over thier heads. I like that it's easy to do together but I don't know how much my younger is really getting. Plusses and minuses. I have no idea how the books work in history and science for CTG in MFW next-if there is more Biblically based or have alot I need to discuss with them. We liked PLL and ILL mixed with a cheap LA's workbook and a workbook for math. I don't do any experaments or many art projects this year bc we either didn't have the stuff or the baby started to cry! LOL! In summery, I do like MFW, but I keep looking back at this bc it looks like it explains so much more in the teachers manual for Biblically based discussion in every subject. I shied away at the last moment last year bc I'm nervous about how many teachers manuals we may end up doing. Here is what we have for children and ages for 2011-2012: Abigail 10, 5th grade, Joshua 8, 3rd grade, James 6, 1st/2nd grade, Toby 4, Levi 3, Emma Grace will be 1 in Nov (5 months old now! ) Abby is advanced at this point-begging me to do reports on countries, reads classic books! LOL! Joshua is a typical, busy, low attention span currently 7 year old, he reads but I listen in bc he needs help with some words, James is 5 right now, finished K by Jan and is doing 1st grade work-some with help now. He reads short vowel words and is doing ok with long vowel words. Toby and Levi love to listen to the books, and we do Bible, science and social around Emma's morning naps! I worry about burn-out if we take on too much school work, and someday the Lord may bless us with more-I'd be thrilled with that! I do know Abby is totally ready for independant work as she does writing strands, reports, extra papers, reading, LA's, spelling and math independantly. I do like that in HOD, that they have them work independantly earlier so I could focus some more on the younger children that need one on one help. What do you all think for placement, would it be too much to do with all of the little ones? How do you think they do would go with HOD and these wonderful blessings from above? Do you have many secular books in HOD? How are the explainations in the teachers books for Bible verses, christian based science and social? My oldest asked me why the Bible said not to wear wool mixed with linin and why our fabics are mixed! LOL! I did what I could then took it to the pastor! They have great questions! Ok, thats enough of a book! LOL!
Lisa
Abby 10
Joshua 7
James 5
Toby 3
Levi 2
Emma Grace 5 months old!

Ok so you will need to look over the placement chart and see where they all place skill wise. From what you have said I would think that you could place them as follows: Oldest dd in CTC, next two ds 8, and ds 6 in Beyond(and place them separately for math and language arts. You can add R&S 2 for your 8 year old, and then your younger could do the emergent readers and your older DITHR 2/3), and if your feeling adventurous do Little Hands with the two preschoolers. If you do not want to combine the boys then you could do Bigger with the older, and Little Hearts with the younger. HTH

I was thinking Preparing and Beyond and LHTH for the littles as well (but you could wait another year on that if you needed to).

I'll let others post on levels since they have more experience than I do. I just wanted to comment that I understand the desire you have to learn with your children about the Christian science perspective. I wanted the Christian perspective on science and history. HOD is amazing at that! Every day, in science and history... and in other subjects too... the teacher's manuals direct us right to the Bible for verses or stories that pertain to what we are learning! That isn't even the Bible study! I don't worry anymore about my children forming a biblical worldview. I don't worry about whether I will have the knowledge or ability to help give my children the worldview I desperately want them to have. HOD guides us both every step of the way!

Thats just it! The Bible should be the base for every area in our lives and I want my children to see how it affects every area of our lives and how we need God in every area of our lives!
For more on my children, James who is 5 right now, can add, subtract, skip count, read clocks to 1/2 hour bases, meassure ex... read short vowle words and some long vowel words. He has gotten things right for verbs, nouns and adj-but just learned them, copies sentences, knows puncuation caps ex... Joshua, 7, can read many words, but needs help on some, writes short stories and does copywork. He can add and subtract large numbers (regrouping ex..) money, clocks, skip counting ex... Covered nouns, verbs, adj, predicates, subjects, main idea, caps, puncuation ex... Abby 10, when I say she is a bit ahead in subjects, I meen last year she got a perfect score in the CATs. So she writes stories, 5 page reports, does all 4th grade math, reads like crazy, does ok with grammer ex...

So as I keep being confused, bare with me! LOL!
If I try HOD:
*anyone use it with 6 children or more? How do you make it work? Is it too much?
*Should I put my currently 5-soon to be 6 year old in LHFHG or Beyond for first? And if I combined my 7 year old soon to be 8 year old for 3rd grade with James, would Beyond be not enough for him? The daily lesson plans for math on day one looked way easy for both of them but they would use thier own math books for thier grade level.
*Or should I combine my 10 year old-next year 5th grader, and my next year 3rd grader in Preparing and leave James (5) in LHFHG on his own?
*My 5th grader (for next year) could do CtC mostly on her own next year, she has the ability for that.
*Or should I drag all three through Preparing?
Ok, have I confused all of you now???

Hello Lisa ,
I do not have six children, close though, we have 5 boys. I currently have 4 in "school". I was wandering after looking at the placement chart, where exactly do your oldest two children place? Placement is key in HOD... but since you have several children to work with, there are many options! So I had a couple of thoughts
1) your soon to be 6( is that right) is too young for preparing and I do not think that is a good idea
2)you could put the oldest in ctc and get her going to start being close to independent, then put the next two into beyond, then once you get those two guides going well you could have the younger 2 do LHTH??
3) My next thoughts were to do the 5th grader and the 3rd grader do Preparing (with their age level math and LA, and possibly adding extensions for the oldest?) and have the 5yr old do LHFHG with the k options and just start here... later if you are feeling like this is going well add in LHTH for the then 3 and 4 yr olds

I personally really like number 3 for a couple of reasons. This would be your first year with HOD so I think if it is and option between CTC and Preparing for the oldest I would go with Preparing... when we made the switch it took us a few months to reeeealy get things down smoothly and finishing in a timely manner (it has been well worth it though, I have used Sonlight, a mix of things, and seriously looked at MFW before coming here). You would be able to have a little time with your older dd before letting her go independently in a new ciricullum... It would be plenty for the 3rd grader and just right for the 5 yr old, i think anyway! What do you think about this?

Lisaha1,

We came over from MFW. I would really recommend doing Preparing after having finished ECC. It will give a great foundation for the skills that will be needed in CTC. I think you will find that doing more than one guide in HOD is very different than doing multiple guides in MFW. Preparing has been wonderful for my 4th grader! We had actually completed about half of MFW CTG before we switched to HOD. (And before that had done ADV & ECC all the way through).

There are some differences in HOD from MFW, primarily that HOD is more pure CM style teaching. That is one reason why I would recommend Preparing over CTC for your first year with your oldest. You should really check out the placement chart http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php. It is not so much about history topics but about skills that will determine how well your child is placed in a guide. If you are worried about doing multiple guides you can always stagger the children's start dates to allow some adjustment time per child or start some of the younger ones "half speed" (which just means do left page one day and then right page the next day).

I think you will be really pleased with the differences. HOD was so much less work for me as the Teacher and left me the time I really needed to work with my little guys. It also provided the independent skill building that I so needed and wanted my oldest to be developing. (Oh and we get all our science done now )


Edie

Just guessing from what you've posted, I'd do Preparing with your oldest, Beyond with the 2 older boys with math/readers at their level. Let the youngers listen in whenever interested and work on the 3Rs when the time comes.

Edie:
What are the differancews in your day from MFW to HOD? How is it to do 2 instead of just one? LOL! I skip all MFW science experiaments and most art bc I don't have the time or materials!
For Placement Abby fits right into preparing and CTC, Joshua fits into Bigger and James into Beyond, but I dop not want to do 3 differant ones right now, 2 wouls be ok if we can be done between 11 and 12 like we are now-with baby rocking breaks! LOL! I don't do preschool, they just listen in. How are days like with many in more then one book-not so much ideal schedules, but in a real day? What is it all like?

My dd fit into either Preparing or CTC on the skill chart. I am glad that I went with Preparing. With the Preparing Guide there is so much less time required of me. My dd does 75% of her work independently with check ins for questions. She will come and narrate to me when the Guide says for her to. My dh reads the read aloud Story Time books at bedtime with her. The Reading Through History you would read together but it doesn't take allot of time. We had a really full day with MFW ECC, but I did everything back then and we went til 2:30 or 3pm with lunch break and recess.

Now my dd works from about 9:30 or 10AM (yes we are late to get going right now) and then works til lunch. She takes a lunch break and recess and finishes by 2:30. But If you started early, like most, you would be done by lunch. I usually wait to do LHTH with my ds until after lunch. He doesn't nap but my youngest does and that gives me uninterrupted time to work with my middle guy. LHTH takes about 30 minutes total and it is sweet and thorough.

We never were getting the science experiments done in CTG and only partly in ECC. The science experiments are so simple and effective in HOD Preparing! And they require just the usual household supplies (no weird craft supplies or running out for something special.) My dd usually does experiments at nap time, so our littlest will not be in the way while she does it. She does it completely independently with permission. She gets out the supplies, reads the instructions, does the experiment, fills out her lab sheet, and shows me what she has done, then cleans up. HOD is so much more thorough in the instructions in the guide and all the independent boxes are written to the student. My dd has done most of the semi-independent boxes by herself completely.

I don't know if that helps or not. I am not currently doing three guides. But I will be in the future. The younger guides do require more time on your part, but that should be expected. You are building many more skills toward independence in the younger years. There are other ladies on the board who are doing three guides. You might look at some other threads and read their experiences.

The one thing that I found a little different to get used to was the layout of the guide coming from MFW. You have the grid in MFW TM. In HOD you have all the instructions for each day written out completely in a two page layout. I ended up writing out a subject check list for myself and dd, so I would be able to see what had been done and what had not. I don't like writing in my Guide. This allowed me to still check things off and give me a full visual of the day.

You might consider starting your oldest in Preparing about two weeks or more ahead to give you time to adjust. You might also look to see if you could combine Joshua and James in Beyond. That way you could do only two guides but still meet everyone's needs.

HTH


Edie

You might also like to read this post of mine

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8468&hilit=+CTG#p61804

or this one

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8557&hilit=+CTG#p62456



Edie

Hi Lisa! You are getting such good help here, aren't these ladies amazing? I wanted to encourage you that we do have many moms with larger families doing multiple HOD guides and enjoying their lives. I am doing 3 guides, but I only have 3 sons, so I realize that can be different. All I can say is HOD makes doing multiple guides easy on us moms. The younger guides do not take as long to do, and they really put our teaching time into training dc to incrementally learn skills so independence is a successful endeavor in the older guides. The older guides have an excellent balance of independent, semi-independent, and teacher-directed work within each day, as you can see by the labeled boxes (I, S, T).

Our dc love school, and they are each thriving as they are truly able to learn so much and do all that is asked of each of them within their guides. There is no tweaking. No prep time. No planning time. No making dc listen to things they cannot understand, nor having them do subbed in skills because they can't do the activities. There's also no need to skip art projects, science experiments, and hands-on work (which BTW I had to do routinely with another program I used that was NOT HOD). The reason these things don't get skipped is because you do not have to do them. They are written so the child can do them. They also don't use strange ingredients, materials, or require trips to the grocery store or the library. You can do them right with what you have on hand in your home, and many substitutions for materials are routinely suggested making it even easier to do them. They also are a balanced part of your day. You will never have an art project that takes 2 hours or 2 weeks, and then have one that takes 5 minutes. All of the boxes of the plans of the guide are kept in balance with one another, and CM's short lesson of teaching skills in a rotating manner is used. So, you can always plan each box taking "x" amount of time. For example, here is a rundown of the suggested time allotments for PHFHG:

PHFHG the time it takes...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4244&p=31219#p31219

And here is the time BLHFHG takes...
Beyond, time it takes:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=162
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4390&p=32417

Have you gotten a chance to look at the first week of plans of the guides you are considering? That is so helpful in choosing. When choosing between CTC and PHFHG, look carefully at the "I" boxes, and see if your oldest dd can 100% do those independently. Likewise, check out the "S" boxes, and see if you can give your dd an intro to the skills in those boxes, and if she can then finish them out on her own. For the "T" boxes, you can see if she will be ready for the teaching you will be doing there. I think you will be able to see whether she places in CTC or PHFHG then, but please keep asking questions until you know for sure!
http://www.heartofdakota.com/pdf/PHFHG-sample-week.pdf
http://www.heartofdakota.com/pdf/CTC-First-Week.pdf

As far as your next 2 sons, I think you'd enjoy doing Beyond with the 2 of them, but you can up the LA/math for your 8 yo by using the right side of the Bigger Hearts guide for those subjects, as well as its Appendix for the dication. This is very easy to do, and it makes for a good combining situation for both.

Eventually, you can do LHTH with the littles, but that can be started later. It is super easy to do, and I look at it as a great way to get in my "mommy time" with the littles in an easy way that teaches them solid beginning skills like letter recognition/formation, colors, shapes, math concepts, Biblical history with comprehension questions, rhymes that get them movin', art activities, Bible activities, fun music to sing along to, etc. - BUT all within like 20 minutes a day.

We had a fantastic year this year using 3 HOD guides! I think would find it very doable to begin with 2 HOD guides, and add LHTH whenever you wanted to. In case it would be helpful, I thought I'd link my schedule here, but just disregard it if it is not helpful...


HOD is such a great way to teach dc! It lets me keep my olders challenged, yet meet my younger dc's needs too. It balances my time among my dc so well, and all are getting what they need from me in a way that we all find enjoyable. The littles are not left behind or dragged along, but rather are getting the same great early learning my oldest received from me when he was little. I love our homeschooling with HOD, and I think you will too! Please keep asking questions until you have a good fit figured out - this board is full of wise, encouraging, Christian ladies that love to help. Placement takes a bit with HOD, but then the whole year you'll be so glad you have everyone smooth sailing along! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Thank you!
I'm going to have my DH print off the week plans for CTC, Preparing and Beyond so I can look at them this summer. I'm totally in burnout for the end of the year, (last day of ECC today and then onto the CATs) the children are done and have turned off thier brains and I am ashamed to say I have not been a good homeschool mom the last two weeks. I need a break!
Is there a such thing as a homeschool cirriculum that doesn't cause May burnout? LOL! We so crash and burn every May. Bad enough that I ask what the tuition is for private school! LOL! I do want to homeschool, I just hit a wall...hard!

Is there a such thing as a homeschool cirriculum that doesn't cause May burnout? LOL! We so crash and burn every May. Bad enough that I ask what the tuition is for private school! LOL! I do want to homeschool, I just hit a wall...hard!

I think it is hard for everyone come the end of the school year coupled with the beautiful weather. With HOD though I don't feel burnt out. I admit I'm ready to be done with my schedule for a while and be out enjoying the nice weather, but I'm not burnt out on the curriculum. I'm actually looking forward to our next guide. So there is hope that come next May, you won't be burnt out!