Anyone else used or using Bigger with a 7 year old?

[John'smom]

I'm just going to ask here to put my worries to rest one way or another. My dd just turned 7 at the beginning of July. We start school in the middle of August. She is a new 7 year old. Last year we successfully used Beyond. She was doing everything that was scheduled in the guide (writing the whole poem, LA component, etc.). I had her combined with her older brother who was a new 8 yr. old. With that being said, she could do everything in Beyond. Yes, her brother's narrations were better, his drawings etc., but that's expected as he's 2 years older than her. I guess I'm just concerned as it seems like I'm reading a lot that most people save Bigger until their dc are 8. Am I expecting too much of her? I'm guessing, she'll be able to do the work, but her again her drawings (for notebooking) may not look as nice as her bro.'s. It may take her longer to write things as obviously ds writes faster than her. I've thought I've read on here that if they do a guide as scheduled, then they are prepared for the next guide in line. Right?

[momtofive]

I wouldn't worry too much about her if you think that she can handle the workload. The writing portion would be the area that I would want to be sure about. If she handled everything well in Beyond, then there is no reason to believe that she can't handle Bigger. Just start her out with it and if she struggles, maybe back her up to doing it at half speed until her skills mature for that guide.

Last year I did Beyond with my 8yr old son and my 6 yr old daughter, together. I realized through last year that my son was ready for a lot more work and my daughter needed a little more time for some activities. So this year, my son is doing Bigger at full speed and my daughter is doing it at half speed. It may seem like a headache to split them up in this way, but she isn't ready for full speed Bigger yet. . . . .but that's where she's at skill wise, so it's a good fit. It actually will work out great for both of them, and when she's ready she can go full speed.

The most important thing is to meet your daughter where she's at and adjust to that. If she seems to be doing great with Bigger, then keep on going! If she seems to struggle with the new skill level, then just give her a little time to grow into it! You're her mom and will know best what she's able to do, and what is too much. You sound like you've done a great job so far!

Blessings!

[water2wine]

Just finishing up the year with Bigger and my 7 year old who actually was 6 when we started. She is ahead of herself in general. I do think though Beyond prepares them perfectly for Bigger. We start Preparing this coming year and she will turn 8 half way through. I feel confident we will be fine and if we hit a bump I know we can always go half speed. So if you did well with Beyond I think you are fine. If it starts feeling like too much just slow it down for a while. The great thing about HOD is it really hits them at their capabilities and that does not always match age. I have it in both directions in my house and HOD works for all.

[abrightmom]

From all that I have read on these boards over these past few months it seems that your child is ready for Bigger if she finished Beyond. The worst that happens is you slow her down.

With the vocabulary I'd ask my 7 year old to choose one word; my 9 year old does 2-3 depending upon the kid. In the science notebooking I may ask my 7 year old to simply label what he's drawn as the drawing and coloring is a big job (and copying a verse). But my 9 year old can do all of that and write something about his drawings as Carrie has directed in the guide. I would just modify up or down as needed as long as my kiddo places in the guide or has completed the previous guide. Technically, my new 7 year old places in Bigger except for math . I'm not sweating perfect placement anymore.....I almost did myself in trying to tweak and adjust for perfect placement. I went so far as to buy another curriculum altogether because I was over the top with concern about placement (and multiple guides). We miss Bigger....it was working here and it was soooo doable for me. I am reconsidering putting both of my boys in Bigger together so we can stay with HOD! I remember Carrie telling me that children will take from a guide what they are ready for....so if a child places in a guide at age 7 his or her experience may be different than if they placed in that guide at 9. I suppose it will always be that way in life....we are not always going to be perfectly placed. Learning to adjust and tweak is part of life! If she places then you should go for it and adjust/slow down/beef up as needed. I hope we end up in the same boat....praying this week about this very thing!! In fact, I almost posted a thread just this morning about putting a young 7 year old in Bigger!!

[Tracee]

I'm interested in this also. I have twins that I plan on keeping together, but I'm a little worried that even though they are the same age, their skill level seems to be different. How would you do half speed with one and full speed with the other? Has anyone ever done that with the same guide?

Just curious, I don't mean to hijack the thread.
Tracy

[Heart_Mom]

My 2nd oldest just turned 7 in April and we'll be starting Bigger with her in the fall. I think she'll do fine. I'll require more of my 10 year old, and less of my 7 year old. And I think they'll both enjoy it. (We just got our box this week, and the books look great!!!)

[momtofive]

Tracy,

I posted above about doing one of my children half speed with Bigger, and the other at full speed. I have looked at Carrie and Julie's half speed schedules and kind of made up my own from theirs.

First day:
Reading About History Box
Rotating Box (Bottom Left)
Bible Study Box

Second day:
Science Exploration Box
Corresponding Music Box
Poetry Box

And every day we'll do reading, handwriting, spelling, copywork, math, r&s english, and storytime. My younger will still sit in with my older for storytime (just like when they were combined), and we'll do storytime as is. We can always use different storytime books after those if need be.

Being that Bigger is a foundational year for developing important skills, and the fact that my younger child needs more time to mature into those skills, we've chosen to take Bigger at half speed for now. It's something we've given much prayer to, and feel that, for this child, it's the best way to go. As time goes on, if she shows she's ready for more, we'll give her more!

For my older child, he'll just go full speed through Bigger, as originally planned. I have two bookmarks with their names on, to keep track of where each child is in the guide. I hope this helps in some way and doesn't confuse anyone. It's just what we've settled on for our situation this year.

Blessings as you begin Bigger!

[jen_good]

Hi!

We will be using Bigger this year with my dd (turning 7 in Nov) and her older brother. We also had some concerns, but felt she placed better in Bigger. We are going to give it a try full-speed and adjust as needed.

It's nice to know that there are others in the "same boat"

I pray you have a blessed year!

Jen

[Mommamo]

We did Bigger just fine with a young 7 year old. In fact, she turned 7 about a month after we started. Because of life we are finishing up Bigger this year before moving on to Preparing, but that is really just because so much ended up happening this last school year and has nothing whatsoever to do with her not being able to do the work or anything like that. Since your kiddo has done Beyond, then you will be perfectly prepared for Bigger. I was worried too, and asked WAY too many of this same question, but really, it went well and we have loved it. We're starting back to school in 2 weeks and are excited to get back going and finish up Bigger! It's a fun program -- you'll love it.

[my3sons]

Wyatt was 7 yo and did great with Bigger Hearts from the very first day of it! Riley was not quite yet 7 yo and needed to go half-speed with Bigger Hearts to start with. Both are success stories and are flourishing. I don't foresee Riley needing to go half-speed again with the rest of the HOD guides. His writing and time management skills needed to catch up with his reading and comprehending skills. Half-speed for awhile with Bigger Hearts accomplished that beautifully. I'd start full-speed with your dd and give it a few good weeks to see how that goes. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[John'smom]

I appreciate everyone taking time to reply. Since my post, I've spent some time reading through the manual more and I honestly can't see where it will be a problem for my dd.

With that said, Julie, can you be more specific on his writing and time management skills needing to catch up? My dd writes fine, but I know she does not write as fast as my ds (which is natural, he's 2 years older). I know this could cause a notebooking assignment to take her longer than it would take him.

I have the estimated times for how long each box should take in Bigger. How many weeks does it take to whittle your time down to what the suggestions are? I know I've read on here that it usually takes a few weeks to get everything running smoothly and those times to be what's suggested. How many weeks is that usually?

[my3sons]

...With that said, Julie, can you be more specific on his writing and time management skills needing to catch up?

Well, keep in mind that I'm referring to my sweet Riley, who is very creative and would be quite fine if school took from sunup to sundown to complete. For his writing skills, it took him about a month to become skilled at doing 1 vocabulary card. This involved many new wonderful skills - using contextual clues, using a dictionary, copying definitions, applying all of that knowledge to using that word in a sentence of his own, and finally filing the card alphabetically in a card file.

Learning to write well on lined notebook paper for R & S English took him a few weeks to figure out. I limited his writing to 3 things. The rest we did orally or on marker board. For DITHOR, I first wrote his dictated answers for him in his DITHOR Student Book. I did this for about a month. I then wrote half for him in his Student Book, and wrote the other half on a markerboard which he was responsible for copying into his Student Book. We did this for another month. Around the 3rd or 4th month of DITHOR, I believe, he was doing all of the writing, and I sat near him to jot any words he needed help spelling on a markerboard for him.

It took him awhile to write his science lab sheets well. I first set up his paper for him with the "Question", "Guess", "Procedure", "Conclusion" words written on the paper for him. I put a sticky note under the "question" in the BHFHG manual, so he could easily copy it. I helped him with his guess, and I was not hard on him about this. Any guess he'd tried to think through I accepted, even if it was totally off. We did the experiment together, and then I asked him how he could draw it for the "procedure" part. I drew a rough sketch of what he wanted to draw on a markerboard, so he could see how this could look. I asked him the question again, and I wrote this on the bottom of the markerboard, so he could copy it for the "conclusion". I often referred to the "Key Idea" to help him come up with the conclusion. After about 4 times of this, I just helped him set up his sheet, put the sticky note under the question, oversaw the experiment, and let him finish out the rest of it on his own, helping only if he needed help with spelling or a key idea conclusion.

For the notebooking, the biggest things he needed to learn were to follow step-by-step directions from the BHFHG manual and to use the entire space of the paper in a balanced way. I believe the first notebooking he did he tried to draw a very tiny something in the center and had very large writing all over the top. We talked about making the picture fill the center of the paper, using a ruler to help with the heading, writing in medium sized letters, etc. I worked the whole year to help him learn to follow step-by-step directions for notebooking. I taught him to first read the whole box through and visualize what the notebooking paper would look like. Then, I taught him to do one step carefully at a time, and last, to read through the whole box one more time at the end to make sure he'd done it all. I was always ready to help with any part of this, but more and more as the year went on, he was able to do this on his own. We started just doing a "talk-through" of the assignments. Where he'd read the box to himself, and then tell me briefly what he was going to do (i.e. pointing to paper he'd say "I write the title here, draw "X" here and color it, label "x", and write this quote at the bottom here"). This was a quick way for me to see that he understood what he would be doing without me watching his every step while he did it. We did this kind of "talk through" for art too.

Time management skills - well mainly this was just learning to be aware of time passing and that he should be wrapping things up by "x" amount of time. Mainly, it was artistic projects that he tended to take quite long to do - he'd forever be choosing which shade of pencil or crayon to use, which yarn color he liked best, whether to use glitter glue or glitter and glue, you get the idea. I finally decided to just give him more time on these types of assignments, as he loves being creative, and I didn't want to rush him. Setting the timer and giving him 10 minutes more than I used to give Wyatt helped immensely. For your dd, if she is taking longer and you want to move on, perhaps dd could set it aside to finish later, or you could plan for ds to have a 30 minute break within the middle of his day to do something independent (away from dd), and help dd finish up any loose ends. Planning for this will help dd know that you expected some things to take her longer because of her age, and help ds to know that you thought he might finish some things quicker and could then use a break instead of waiting for sister.

I have the estimated times for how long each box should take in Bigger. How many weeks does it take to whittle your time down to what the suggestions are? I know I've read on here that it usually takes a few weeks to get everything running smoothly and those times to be what's suggested. How many weeks is that usually?

For Bigger Hearts, I'd say 4 weeks for a 7 yo.

I hope that helps, but I really think your dc are going to do just fine with BHFHG! Just give them some time to learn the skills in each box of plans and the routine of the day, and I think it will go great.

In Christ,
Julie

[John'smom]

Julie, thanks so much for taking the time to write up that response. It was long so I know it took you some time. It really helps me realize that some things that are just so easy for me, may require more steps for my children to learn. I hope that makes sense. Now I won't be overwhelmed when/if they need more handholding. I'm sure the post will help others too.

[Tree House Academy]

Bigger Hearts is quite a jump from Beyond...but if you find her struggling, you can always cut back to half-speed, or cut the work load in other ways (i.e. don't write all the poem, do only one vocab word, look for pictures online to print out to go with her science notebooking, etc). Each child is different. I have a boy who will be 8 at the end of September and he is starting Bigger in a few weeks after having finished Beyond last Spring. I have no doubt that he will be able to do the work, but I am also not opposed to starting slowly and working our way into the guide at his pace.

[Busymomma1]

Good advice here! I appreciate the steps Julie gave. I wish I'd have approached it that way last year!