heartofdakota.com

Hi, I have not started using these programs yet and had a few q's.

I have purchased preparing for my 10 year old ds (11 in nov) and soon to be 8 year old ( in oct)dd. We only started homeschooling this year, so I am still fumbling around a bit!
I intially decided that this would suit both my kids but have gone back and looked at bigger (thinking about spelling and english). We strated R &d this year but stopped. We will be picking it up with HOD again. My dd is on the second book and I have my son on book 4. Also I ahve not done much spelling this year with dd because the first program I chose was very tricky, so I stopped and the 2nd one is great but we are still in the revision stages of phonics (she is ready to jump into the spelling exercises though!!). my concern is that I may be putting my 2nd grader up too high in the areas of dictation/spelling with preparing and she may miss something! Should I purchase Bigger for her and juggle!! Or keep them together? She is a great reader, reading independantly and she writes well also. But I am just wondering if it is too big a jump! The activities look great and I am sure she can handle the science and history of preparing (just worried about the spelling stuff - developmentally).

I also have my 4 year old doing LHTH ( which we have started at her pace) and a 21 month old.

Any advice appreciated!! I would like to know what Carrie thinks too, if possible. Thanks Anne

Have you had a chance to see where they fall on the placement chart yet? You'll find it here:
http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

I had a look and she is definately at the language arts stage of bigger not preparing. I just wonder how you go managing a day with all different learning activities, with two littlies! That is why I initially thought using preparing would be best with both. I am just not sure how to timetable it all. Help welcome

I believe that preparing has the first level of dictation in the appendix, the same as your dd would be doing in Bigger. And the R&S book is just one lesson per day, so that would not be too hard to have her do. I think if she places in Preparing in everything else that she'd be fine there. if there is any hesitation on any of the other stuff then I would suggest putting her in Bigger.

It is often easier to run two programs with children who are placed correctly than combining and having to tweak the program for each child. Can you tell us where your older child placed? Was it Preparing or CTC? that would make a difference in what advice you will receive.

Hi,

Using programs back to back is ussually not recommended. If you daughter places best in Bigger and your son places well in Preparing, it might actually be best to put them both in Bigger, beefing up for your 10yo maybe? But, like netpea said, if your son places in ctc then BHFHG and CTC. Does that make sense?

Beefing up bigger for an almost 11 yo can be done, I think. Someone else will have the details on that. I just know that it is easier to make the program harder by adding the extention assignments, than it is to tweek the programs for the younger kiddos.

Hope that helps some,
Mercy

Hi,
So here is my 2 cents I have a 10 yr old boy who wil be 11 in Nov also, he started preparing at the end of this school year and is loving it. He was doing Bigger with his 9 year old sister for most of the year but I decided to split them up. I combined them in Beyond the year before and so for almost 2 years combining worked wonderfully. My son kind of "surged" ahead and it was becoming difficult to combine b/c he was so much faster then his sister in doing the projects etc... so he would be frustrated that he had to wait for her and she was frustrated b/c she felt like she wasn't as smart. He was definitely ready to be more independent. I know you said your 8 year old fits into Bigger but if you aren't excited about doing back to back curriculums you could possibly even use Beyond and "beef" it up a bit where necessary (math, language arts..) I found Beyond to be a lot less time intensive then Bigger and since you have a lot going on with a 4 year old and almost 2 year old that could help free up some time but still give your almost 8 year old a great learning experience.

My son LOVES preparing and so do I. He does a lot of the work without me. Even some of the history that is designated as "teacher led" he does without me (I look at it ahead of time and then we talk about what he can do). Because so much of it is independent that frees me up to do Bigger with my 9 year old, who works at a slower pace. I have a 4 year old who does little hands. Julie (My3sons is her screen name) had posted her homeschool schedule that she made to use with her kids who are similar ages to mine..I adapted it to our "life" and it is great! Here is the discussion with the link to her schedule. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8996 One way I adapted the schedule was to not put specific times on each scheduled block. My daughter is very perfectionist so if we start even 5 minutes off the marked time it has the potential to ruin her whole day I love how she schedules time for her older kids to be with the younger one.

There are so many great options with HOD, we really love it.

Thankyou for all of your replies. All of the advice has been really helpful and I will now spend some time considering it all.
My son does place in preparing and my daughter does place in bigger, but I really want them to be able to work at their own levels. As it is, if I have them working at their own levels then they can be quite independant workers (LA, maths, spelling, handwriting, art etc..). I am thinking that I might try the two levels and see how I go. I would hate for one to be frustrated either way, especially since my Ds needs to be kept busy and if he is bored can become difficult, he needs a challenge. And if my dd feels over her head then she gets frustrated! So I think trialling both might be a good thing for them.

I will definately be looking at scheduling it all (thanks kvmck) and hopefully it will work or I may just drop down to bigger for both or up to preparing. I have my other dd and ds coming up, so no money will be wasted!

Why is using programs back to back not recommended? I would have thought placing your children in their correct levels was most important. Is it the amount of time and juggling that can be an issue!! The one thing I am giving lots of thought too lol.

Thanks for all the responses, Anne

Why is using programs back to back not recommended? I would have thought placing your children in their correct levels was most important. Is it the amount of time and juggling that can be an issue!! The one thing I am giving lots of thought too lol.

Yep. Probably more reasons as well. I just know I have seen Carrie on many occasions mention that. Just wanted to second kvmck's thoughts that another option to ponder is to go to Beyond and beef that up. You will know best on what will work for your situation, but thought that was worth a second mention.

Mercy

I had a read through some of carries entries and I understand a little more now, thankyou for all of the wonderful advice . Lots of food for thought!

Hi Anne! The ladies here have done such a good job of talking through some of this with you. I would like to help too, and would really love to hear about each of your dc's reading, writing, grammar, and math skills - and I know Carrie would too. If you could please share about each of these areas with the first page of the placement chart in mind for each of your dc, and then I think we can give some good solid advice for your specific family. HOD is not a one size fits all curriculum, but instead takes into account each child and each family, so flexible options are available. Placement takes a bit, but it is so worth it! This is a year of you and your dc's lives, we want to get you started off on the right foot. I'll let Carrie know to watch for your response here too, and then I know she'll respond when she's able. Here's a link to the placement chart...
http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

Looking forward to chatting through this with you!
In Christ,
Julie

Hi, Thanks for your response. My dd is 7 & 3/4. She is creative and arty. She sits and listens well. She is an independent reader, capable of reading chapter books of interest - Little House in the big woods, little women etc. She is developing a love of reading since she has left school. She enjoys being read to and always begs for more ( I like this bit - the suspense!!). She has quite neat handwriting but has not started cursive yet. She has been working through R & S 2, and making good progress, scoring excellently on tests. She works well independently in english, math, spelling, handwriting and any other topics given in history or science. She notebooks well, has started on written narrations and writes stories with illustrations . She is working in MUS alpha, which we will continue with. She is picking up her maths really well. And works independently with it after watching the DVD, again scoring excellenly on the tests. I think she places in bigger, but would handle preparing just working at her level for maths, english.

My ds is 10 & 3/4. He loves to read anything to do with maps, animals, world culture/history. He is a walking animal encyclopedia/atlas! He loves visiting the library and doing projects on his interests (computer or paper). He is very much an inependent reader and comprehends really well. He enjoys being read to and reading/ sharing what he is learning. His handwriting is neat when is not being lazy and he has started cursive whilst in school. I took him back this year to repair his grip and revise the forming of some letters he had developed laziness when forming . I have purchased A reason for handwriting for both of the kids to continue practising ( recently purchasing the cursive book for Damon so he can continue to develop his cursive style. And Adele will use the transition book). He is working through R & S 4, which he hates!! I don't think we diagram in Australia. I have never seen it before. And he hates it! He seems to be learning things above what primary schools do here in Australia! So we took a break using Interemediate langauge lessons intead. But I will return to R & S after these holidays!! Much to his disgust He is a whizz at spelling, writes stories and is learning to take care in his drawing (not been his stong point - but now he is doing a great job and enjoying it!). He has been notebooking, written narrations and lots of projects on his interests! He can work independently in most things. He really enjoys maths, he is in MUS Beta ( nearly finished in two terms!) and moving onto Gamma. He feels he now understands it! At school he did well, but had obviously been a bit lost! Damon places in preparing and I think is going to really enjoy the activities.

I have purchased the books for preparing and realise now it may have been better to start in Bigger but as money speaks, I have preparing and I know my DD will also enjoy the activites of preparing but working at her level in maths and LA. Even if I repeat with her next year if she needs I won't mind. But another option is to trial and then see how she goes, and if needed buy bigger in a few weeks when I see how she goes.

Thanks for sharing about your dd and ds, Anne! I do think that it is a great idea to combine them together in PHFHG, and then if it is pushing dd too hard, drop her back to Bigger Hearts. I think you'll know by a few months into it for sure. She can just do her cursive practice along with it, a little at a time, and probably just print when the directions in PHFHG say to write in cursive. My ds really appreciated that a portion of his writing assignments were done in cursive, and a portion in manuscript in PHFHG on up. He kept up his manuscript, practiced his cursive, and neither were over the top for him. He was able to choose which he preferred in RTR. I found it interesting he printed all except for his Common Place Book, which he said, "That's so special it needs to be in cursive". Anyway, if your ds doesn't love cursive (and probably about 99% of boys/men don't ), he'll probably really appreciate the variety of the type of writing in PHFHG.

R & S English is an excellent program, but around Level 4 it amps up the writing. For this reason, HOD recommends doing 2/3 of it orally or on markerboard, reserving 1/3 of it to write. This has made R & S English manageable and doable for my ds! He would very much balk at writing it all. For our lessons for R & S English, I sit by him at the table with markerboard/marker/eraser in hand. We begin with the 5 oral review questions in the TG, which he answers orally. If he doesn't know the answers, I have him look at the teacher's guide and study them. I then ask him one more time until he can answer correctly. If he needs a visual help (i.e. naming the helping verbs), we will write them on an index card for his reference until he has them down. After clipping along with the oral review. I read the lesson out loud as he follows along, pausing for him to read anything bolded, set off, in the "Remember" box, etc. We then do the oral review orally, keeping things moving along. When we get to the written work of the lesson, I read the directions, and if there are 10 problems, he either orally answers or I write his answers on the markerboard for around 7 of the 10, he then writes the last 3 answers in his composition book. Or, he may just orally answer the entire section if the writing really doesn't further the skill being taught (i.e. if he is to write "S" for subject or "P" for predicate, writing "S" or "P" doesn't further teach the skill of identifying subjects and predicates, so simply saying "S" or "P" is just fine). If the skill being taught is further learned by the writing of it (i.e. writing a friendly letter), then I will have him write just that portion for the day's work and orally answer or me write on the markerboard the rest. If there are many diagramming problems, then I will write all the possible skeletons for the diagramming on a markerboard (usually there are just 2-4 types of skeletons for a lesson), and have him point to and say where he'd write each word on the markerboard. I reserve around 5 sentences for him to diagram on his own then, in his composition book. I try to limit his writing to 5-7 things in his composition book each day. I am just sharing all of this because I have found it to move R & S English along nicely without compromising retention. It makes doing R & S English through the years more manageable, and I feel like we can do it all the way through rather than burn out on it. It is hands-down the best English program I have ever seen, but these few tips from HOD have made it a positive experience overall for my ds. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Thankyou for your reply. I feel much better now. I think my panic was sparked by one the excitement and eagerness to get that box delivered, so we can get started, as well as I hope I have done the right thing!!! reading your post Julie, I now feel much more settled and am now patiently awaiting the box!!

I think R & S is one of the best programs I have seen too. I spent first term with the teacher in me going 'wow, this is good' and the mum in me going ' poor ds!'. He was just hating it with a passion! He has had a break now and I think with the advice you have just given me on how to teach R&S Damon will be more willing to do it.

Now I just have to wait for the books to arrive. Our term starts back in a week. I hope to join in the weekly review once we get started. I really can't wait to get started

God bless Anne