Placement help please

[Acholla]

Hi! I'm looking into HOD for next fall and just a little unsure about placement. I will have an 8 year old 4th grader (Nov. birthday), a 7 year old 2nd grader (Aug.), 5 year old kindergartener (Feb.) and 3 year old toddler (Dec.). So right now I have 3rd, 1st, and pre K. When I look at the placement charts, I *think* in the fall my then 4th grader will fit best into Preparing, my then 2nd grader into Beyond, and I have MFW K so I thought I'd just do that for K. I'm just concerned its going to be too much trying to do multiple guides, especially in the future when I'm adding more kiddos. The other option would to do Bigger with the extension pack for the then 4th grader, but I'm afraid that would be too much for the then 2nd grader. As far as skills, right now my 3rd grader is very strong in reading but weak in writing. Capable of copying but hates it, I usually only have him do a few sentences of anything. As far as composition, he can only do a poorly put together sentences, but he's very good at narration. Very quick mind, loves to learn all he can, just struggles to write it down! 1st grader is in the middle of learning phonics now, doing very well with his first readers, so I think he'll be finished with phonics by fall, but he's not really writing anything except handwriting practice. Thoughts? How hard would it be to do Beyond and Preparing together? MFW K only takes about a half hour, so I'm not so much concerned about that. For reference, this will be my 4th year homeschooling. We've done MFW K and then pieced together curriculum after that. Devotions, history and science as a family based on the oldest's grade level, individual reading/writing/math (we use Teaching textbooks). School is usually done in 3 hours. Looking to switch things up because I feel like my writing instruction is lacking, I struggle to choose good living books, and mostly, I really want God to be more in focus throughout our school day. Thanks in advance for any help!!

[StephanieU]

Your kids sound similar to mine. I will be honest and say we skip things in the guides, but running multiple guides is mentally easier for me. I don't have to question if I am at track with skill progression for each kid. I don't have to alter the assignments to make it easier or harder for one child. I can use the guides as written, doing as much as we can. In LHTH, I focus on the Bible and devotional plus let recognition. In LHFHG, it is the basics (math, reading, and writing) as well as the history and storytime. Come Beyond we do more of the guide, getting to the Bible questions and poetry. Come Bigger we skip very little, an occasional project or combine a few days of hymns or Poetry as necessary. With my oldest in Preparing, there are times we don't complete a project, or we take a few weeks off of DITHOR. But otherwise we are getting it all in! The nice thing about HOD is that it builds in independence. Starting in Preparing, boxes are marked independent, semi independent, and teacher led. That results in your time with a student building from LHTH through Bigger, and then dropping back down to about 60 minutes by middle school. And since there is no prep work, it is doable unless you have a very large family (I would say 3-5 guides would be the maximum a family could handle to do as written).

[Acholla]

That's very helpful, thank you!! Mind if I ask how long your school day is on average? I know its going to be different for every family, just trying to get an idea.

[StephanieU]

8-1 is a good day for us. If I give them more breaks for any reason, it can go to 4 or 5. But most days we are fine before 3 even with breaks for the baby to have my attention and Awana.

[Acholla]

Ok thank you! I appreciate your help!

[Nealewill]

I think you will be very happy with HOD and with their writing curriculum and living book selection. That was definitely a draw for us.

One thing I noticed that you mentioned about your 8 year is that he hates copywork and writing. While I have no doubt that he couldn’t keep up with the reading requirements, I worry that the writing might be a bit much. In Preparing, every week the students will complete 2 different notebooking pages (one for history and one for science), complete a creative writing activity, write down the answers to science questions once a week, complete some daily writing for grammar, and then a weekly written narration. My kids have to write things down 2 or 3 things each day. If your son hates writing, then that might be overwhelming. I personally think your 8 year old might be happier in Bigger. You could definitely add in the extensions if you wanted to (but absolutely not required) and there would be wonderful books for him to enjoy, tons of learning to be had, and he could then work on building up to the amount of writing that will be required in the following guide. In addition, the reason I recommended Bigger for writing is because in every guide, the writing increases. So if he is struggling in Preparing, he will probably be struggling in CtC, and so on and so forth.

I know that you mentioned that your 7 year old is still finishing phonics instructions. If you look the level that your 8 year old and 5 year old are at, which level is your 7 year old more similar too? If he is more similar to your 8 year old, then I would probably put him in Bigger and just go a little slower with it. You can definitely take longer than a year to do a guide. This will give you time before those two kids make it to Preparing. Your oldest would then be on the oldest end of the age range but if he loves to read, then he would just keep doing the extensions and you can then combine those two kids. If your 7 year old is more similar to your 5 year old, you could always combine those two kids in Little Hearts. I actually used MFW myself before finding HOD. And I do know that MFW K is very fun. But Little Hearts is also a ton of fun. My youngest is the only one of my children to complete that guide and she LOVED it!!!! She especially loved the Burgess book used for story time.

As for running multiple guides, I can understand your hesitation. I was SCARED to death to start HOD because I knew I would need multiple guides. But I was shocked at how well it went. We came from MFW and by switching to HOD, I was running Preparing and Beyond at the time and I was getting my day done faster than when I was doing MFW! I couldn’t believe it. But it made a big difference. My kids seemed to like the books more. I liked the structure of HOD over MFW, and I found it was just a better fit for us. You definitely don’t need to combine but that will make your day and teaching time a little bit less. Some of the things that you can do to make it more to your kids level would be give them the grammar that is for their level and to update their math to their level no matter which guide you use. Other than that, you can use the guides as are. With HOD, the great thing is that if your child(ren) are on the oldest end of the age range, they really don’t necessarily need to finish every level to graduate. You can see that my oldest is in her own guide and that my two younger kids are combine. My son won’t complete the last guide and that is okay. We will make a few adjustments in some of the guides he completes for high school because he will need some classes for graduation requirements that are only offered in the final guide. But it is very easy to do those things, especially for kiddos who have used HOD for a long time.

I am not sure if you actually looked at the placement chart or not. If not, I would encourage you to do so. Do it with fresh eyes. And truth be told, I might not even worry too much about placement until you are ready to start. A lot can change in a small amount of time with younger kids. But when you are ready to start, I would look at the chart, pick the levels that your kids are at, and consider those levels. One last thing to think about is that I would probably not have kids doing levels back to back. I can honestly say that I have tried it and found that I didn’t like repeating the same thing year to year. It got boring. Have at least level in between guides is nice. Plus, I found that I could just add the extensions to extend my sons learning rather than trying to teach all 3 kids something different. My son and youngest learn very well together. It just doesn’t make sense for me to separate them. Plus, my son is much better at reading than writing. Doing the extensions is great because I just don’t think he has the fine motor skills he would need to make CtC as roaring successful. Preparing has been a huge blessing for him.

[Acholla]

Thats a lot of food for thought, thank you!! That is more writing in Preparing than I was thinking... I did go through the placement guide, but I will do as you suggested and go through it again as we get closer. 8 year old is really wanting to do world history next year, so I told him its a lot more writing and he'll have to prove himself if thats what he wants! So we'll see where he ends up! Might be the motivation he needs lol. I didn't really consider putting the middle two together... he's really smack dab in the middle. But that might change, she's really working on her letters now. So pretty much I need to stop trying to have everything figured out 8 months in advance!! Lol. I love to know exactly where I'm headed, but with kids thats not always possible! Thanks again for your help, it will give me more to consider when I'm closer.

[my3sons]

Hello Acholla! The ladies have already done such a wonderful job of helping here! I'll just link you to a few threads that come to mind that may be helpful...

Amount of writing in Bigger vs. PHFHG:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3602

Common Questions About Placement Answered by Carrie:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9338
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9339
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9340

Having enjoyed using HOD for nearly 15 years now, I can say proper placement makes all the difference! I hope something here helps as you ponder placement!

In Christ,
Julie