Placement for my 5 and 6 year olds

[Lindykay99]

Hi Everyone,

I am so excited to have found Heart of Dakota. I will be using it next fall with my boys who will be 5 in September and my 6 and a half year old. I am wondering if you can help me out with placement. When I read the placement chart it is clear to me that my youngest son would do well in Little Hearts and my older son would do well in Beyond. They are both spot on for those, so my question is would it be best to do two separate guides or combine them and beef up Little Hearts for my 6 year old? My 6 year old is very interested in school and love, love, loves being read to, is nearly done with The Reading Lesson, but still does not enjoy reading himself, and excels in Math, and can copy sentences. My will be 5 year old would be on the younger side of the guide, is very imaginative, not as interested in school, but he has taught himself to read quite well-it just came naturally to him.

Looking down the road would it be difficult to do two guides? I will have another group of boys coming up behind this first "set". My next son will be 3 next summer and our baby is 20 months younger than him. So thats 4 boys I will eventually be schooling. If I separate now I could be using three guides eventually? Not sure and really it doesn't matter too much. I will cross the bridge when we come to it, but would love input, especially for the 5 and 6 year old!

Thank you all so much!

[StephanieU]

So your younger one is just turning 5 when you start, right? If so, doing 2 guides would work okay. I would first start with the 6.5yo in Beyond. It might take a couple of weeks to get going well with that full speed. Once you are comfortable with Beyond, start LHFHG. Since your boys will be at the younger end of the age ranges, you could do 4 days a week and spread everything out a little bit to get them closer to the middle age range for the guides (which is normally better for most kids). On the 5th day, you could do things like co-ops, nature studies, or field trips.

One thing you will have to watch out for is when the oldest is in Preparing. From everything I have read, you don't want to start Preparing and Bigger at the same time. These are the only two guides you don't want to do together full speed, as they are teacher-intensive. Each guide adds time/work as the kids get older. Through Bigger, nothing is completely independent (some could be considered semi-independent though like copy work). Starting at Preparing, independent boxes in the guide start. By the time they are in RtR (middle school), over half of the work is independent. And by high school, it is basically independent with the students coming to the parent for discussion and reporting (oral narration). You could spend some time with the younger one at half speed in LHFHG and Beyond though to make it so that there is at least 1/2 of a guide between them (if not a full guide).

Or you could combine. If the 6.5 yo is ready for Beyond, you could buy that guide as well for the right side (language arts and math). Then you could combine for the left side of LHFHG (history, Bible, storytime, rhymes, and activities related to history). You would be working out of two guides, but about half the time would be together. But before considering combining, decide if the boys work well together. Would there be issues with them working together? Would it frustrate one of them?

[Lindykay99]

Just to clarify my sons will be 5 and 6 1/2 in the fall when we would start schooling for their K and 1st grade years.

I was describing their skills now, but thinking about their ages and needs for fall. Hope that is clear.

[Lindykay99]

Thanks for the advice. That is helpful. I never thought about doing half pace to help with the amount of work for me and for helping them mature into the guide they are doing. Thanks!

[The2youngs]

I might suggest a slightly different alternative. I have two boys, currently 5.5 and nearly 7. We began Little Hearts back in October with both, after beginning a 1st grade curriculum with my 6yo that I ended up not being comfortable with. My older son is significantly "advanced" for a 1st grader and my Kinder is (I think) pretty typical. My older son definitely could have done Beyond. He is actually probably ready for Bigger at this point, but I really wanted to keep them together. They're best friends and love doing all the activities, rhymes, dramas, etc. together.

What I've done is beef up Little Hearts quite a bit for my older son, in keeping with his abilities. It's definitely doable. He does math at his own level, I have him narrate the Bible story daily (while little brother gets the comprehension questions in the book), I give him daily copywork (either our weekly verse, a sentence from our current Burgess chapter, or a line from a poem we've been reading (non-HOD, but added in). He reads voraciously outside of school so I make sure to provide quality books at his level. My younger son does everything in the guide pretty much as written (he's a bit ahead in the math book, but that's not a problem to adjust).

We only do HOD 4 days each week (but combine much of the last two days into one to finish out the unit each week). That's optional. You could just as easily do what was suggested earlier and do each day as written and continue the unit into the following week - this extends the guide by, I think, about 8 weeks. Fridays we take a nature walk, draw in our journals, and do extra Charlotte Mason-y things that I want to include but wouldn't have time for otherwise!

My thought is unless you would really prefer to have them separated, it would be very enjoyable to have them working together. It's really a fun year, the science, while very light, is really a lot of fun, and my boys have just plain had a good time together!

[Lindykay99]

Thanks Heather. I really like that idea. I have 106 days of creation from Simply Charlotte Mason I could add and then just read and narrate. I think I will do that. My boys love to do things together as well. I appreciate you sharing!

[MomtoJGJE]

I know it seems like you've made your decision But I'm going to add in my two cents anyway

Running multiple guides is not hard at all if they are properly placed. Running multiple guides OR combining is way more difficult if they are not properly placed.

With that said, with the ages you've mentioned, and abilities you have said I see two options.

1.) combine them in LHFHG.

Even if you go full speed you could do the extra things from the appendix, and add in higher level reading/writing/math from the right side of the Beyond guide. I would also do the fine motor skills books from LHFHG because my kids love them These extra things would be for your older son with doing LHFHG as written for the younger.

2.)have them in separate guides.

Here is where my suggestion is different. You would put your older in Beyond and do it as is. Your younger you could put in LHTH and add in FMS, math, handwriting from LHFHG and since he's reading already you could go ahead and do the Emerging Readers from the Beyond guide. This would put them with more time separating them (not doing back to back guides), would have them at the level they are, and still be short, sweet and fun for everyone. It would also let them have together time with any extra stuff you do, but separate time to allow them to grow as well.