Stepping back on LHFHG

[Jaimejac]

Well, I started my DS5 1/2 on LHFHG last month for kindergarten. But even going half-speed, I don't think he's ready for it. It was a perfect guide for Kindergarten for my DS7 (who finishes Beyond this week), but now I'm seeing why many people use LHFHG for 1st grade. My little guy will be six in Dec and I think he's one of the ones that CM was referring to when she said to hold off on formal education until 6 years old. For my older two, they were ready, so this is a new experience for me that I am having to adapt to.

It's interesting because my two sons are only 19 months apart in age, but so much further apart in skills and attention span. I know many would combine with that close of an age range, but there is no way I could do that with these two. I thought they would be two guides apart (i.e. the older one doing Bigger, when the younger one was doing LHFHG), but now I'm thinking they might even be 3 guides apart! I've dropped down to doing the 3r's and Storytime with him with the K options for LHFHG, with the thought that next year I will do the full guide with the 1st grade options. It is a struggle to even get him to sit still and focus on the 3r's for 30 min. He is just an active guy who would rather be outside playing. It doesn't seem like he wants to do his best with the handwriting pages, he still doesn't like to cut. Which was a struggle with Little Hearts too.

I'm doing Reading Made Easy with him, and it seems like he's trying to "read" from memory (as in, remembering what I said) rather than looking at the words in the book. And when he does look he throws his hands in the air and says he doesn't know. But I know he's picking something up because later in the day, he knew that CAT was spelled c-a-t when talking to his brother and sister.

Anyways, I know this is the benefit of homeschooling, going at their own pace. But with my older two, it's always been speeding things up to their advanced levels, I'm not accustomed to slowing things down so much, but I don't want to push him too much at such a young age and put him off of school either.

[StephanieU]

I had a similar issue with my oldest two. They are 23 months apart, and they are now 2.5 guides apart (and could easily be 3 guides apart). #2 was fine with LHFHG and even Beyond, but he struggled with reading. So although they started off 2 guides apart, I paused him for a semester while he was in Bigger.

[Jaimejac]

What did you do when you paused him for a semester? Just focus on reading?

[StephanieU]

We continued math, language arts, and storytime. We also had some Draw Write Now books that I assigned one drawing/writing from each week. Plus the middle two joined in on anything fun from my oldest's school during that time.