lisaha1 wrote:How does your day go with multiple guides with 6 or more children? I have 3 school age, 3 not yet school age and I so hope the Lord will bless us with more! It does make school a challenge at times though! LOL! How does HOD work for you, and have you used other cirriculums-why didn't they work so well?
I'm praying about HOD! I LOVE the CHrist base of it, bc I am homeschooling for HIM!
We use three guides, and this coming year may be using four. The older guides (CTC and up) only take as much individual time as you choose. The child can read all the material themselves if they are able or you can do the teacher-directed boxes with them. I try to do this as much as possible because I like to spend one-on-one time with each child (or in my case two on two sometimes) no matter what the age. High school level science, English and math can take additional teaching time with mom no matter if you use HOD or something else. I haven't spent much extra time with my hs age girls in science and math thus far since they are doing well in those areas, but I have spent some extra time teaching writing. I wish I could hit fast-forward and have HOD's high school guides here now...sigh...
Yes there are DVD programs for math. Teaching Textbooks and Videotext are two big ones right now. We have been enjoying TT for several years now with my olders and is working for us. There are many different ways to get help with upper level math if necessary so don't be intimidated! Also, I believe that a child who is allowed to get a strong math foundation through one-on-one tutoring at home, with a good math program, will have drastically fewer problems understanding advanced math when they are in high school. Rather than being pushed through the grades with poor understanding, like I was. I know of homeschoolers who even successfully "teach themsevles" calculus in high school because they've always understood math, and calculus is no different. Not saying this automatically happens of course, just saying don't be afraid of high school math!
We start schoolwork at about 8:00. We actually get up at 6, because our family enjoys having a fairly long devotional and family read-aloud book first thing in the morning. Also, my oldest three are girls, and rushing them through their morning primping does not make for happy campers.
Things go much smoother when they are having a good hair day.
So all this, plus breakfast, takes a good two hours in the morning for our family.
Then I have the oldest two help me by taking 45 min with my two in Little Hearts, while I work with my middle two on their dictation, English, and Dithor. My two year old watches a video (this is the only time during school that she gets to watch TV) and my baby naps.
Then I take over and finish 45 min with Little Hearts. The others move on to their individual work, and each child takes 30-45 min turns with the 2 yo throughout the rest of the morning. My baby is blessedly a wonderful sleeper and sleeps all morning through school right now.
However this will change of course as she gets older so I will have to change up our schedule when that happens.
Then I meet back with my middlers and do history, science, Bible, and I try to do the read-aloud from Bigger with them too. This isn't necessary (you can combine everyone into one read-aloud even when doing multiple guides) but we are weird that way and I like to do this. This is another 45 min to 1 hour chunk.
Then I move onto time with my olders, and we do the teacher-led parts of CTC (which we are about done with) and read with them, and check their science, math, and writing if there is time. This takes about an hour as well. Sometimes I have to do work-checking at another time.
This takes us to lunchtime at 12:30 or 1. I hand out snacks at about 11, and this makes everyone happy. Everyone is done, with the exception of my olders often have some reading to do after lunch.
I'm not sure how old your dc are, but you may have to do things differently if your oldest aren't old enough to help much with the youngers. In that case naptime is your best frined. Use naptime for the littles to do teacher-led wwork with the olders. If they are nap age but don't like to nap, I still make mine be in the habit of stayig in their room or crib/bed quietly when they should be sleeping.
So I want to encourage yo that multiple guides is nothing to be afraid of. It really is true that the guides are written to be used this way. I will say that when I first started HOD, my days were very long and I struggled for quite a while, until I realized that the problem was I wasn't organizing my time well. I was opening the guides and just starting at the first box and moving through with one pair and then starting with the next guide. I also didn't have a rotation where the kids were helping me with the two year old. So when I looked critically with a problem-solving eye, I realized I needed to group the boxes into independent work and teacher-led work, and stagger independent work for one child with teacher-led work with another child, and rotate help with my 2 yo (which my kids love to do anyway). In short, I needed an organized time schedule for me and each child to follow. I'm not naturally organized so this kind of stuff comes slowly to me.
But once I did this it was smooth sailing. So a schedule will be your best friend. Now I am amazed at how much gets done in each day and how accomplished I feel at the rich education my children are getting, all on their level, in such a relatively small amount of time each day. This is because of the genius (not exaggerating here, it is truly genius) with which the guides were written, thought through, and laid out. We are blessed indeed to be benefitting from Carrie's talent. I shudder to think what my homeschool would look like without HOD.
Hope something here helps!
