Learning as I go!
I know you have heard me say this again and again, but in 11 years of home education I have never enjoyed a program as much I do "Heart Of Dakota". Don't get me wrong I have used and loved many programs, but there was always something missing. When I used
Five In A Row I loved how it covered history/science and had wonderfully fun, hands-on activities. However,
I had to add so many subjects to make it truly complete and though it was not anti-christian in anyway it was
not from a biblical worldview. For me and my home, I've never enjoyed programs where I felt like bible was an add-on subject? I want it to be integrated. I don't think you can separate Christ from history or science. He is the originator of everything! Heart Of Dakota answered those prayers for me. It has all the FUN hands on Activities. Actually I have never found a program where I've enjoyed the hands on as much I as do with HOD, But it also adds in the biblical worldview and is a complete program.
On a side note, I love that Carrie made it possible to use all of her suggestions, but if you don't, and want to use your own math/language arts you don't have to re-write her lesson plans to make it happen. HOD is very easy to take and use it in a way that works best for YOUR family 
This week I learned an important lesson as I finished up my 6th month with HOD. I found in the past, when I couldn't get to hands on activities I would take a week off of HOD and just do our math/reading/bible/lang arts. This week I went ahead and did all our reading and discussion and though my best scenerio is always to do the hands on project we skipped those and had wonderful discussion about what we read and even discussed the hands on projects we were skipping. I simply had too much the Lord had put in my life that trumped the hands on portion, priority wise. (ministry) However, because HOD is a Unit Study/Literature based program we could keep moving forward.
This week was our review week for all of our memory verses and I laughed as the boys became irritated with one another trying to be FIRST to say theirs. Because we were doing review we went back and not only reviewed the verses but I read a loud the whole chapter in the bible and we discussed it. This week we learned more about living in Holland and what that looks like. We learned about scrubbing day, wooden shoes, milk and water carts. We talked about how the whole city shuts down on the first ICE day so the whole town can skate. In science, we learned about storks and how incredible God is in designing their web feet.
I cannot wait to get back to our projects next week, but with HOD we still had a wonderfully FULL week using just the literature aspect.
My younger two loved having their new pencils which were Spiderman and Tinkerbell. We did circle time and table time and that's when DS and I had a disagreement. After that incident we finished off our lessons and went to lunch. There was no schooling done in the afternoon. My younger ones stayed with my parents while my oldest and I did some running around. We was suppose to go to the library to take books back but came home with tons (not unusal for us). My daughter was looking at the science section of the library and I asked if she wanted to look at the other side (picture books). Her reply-these books are much more interesting. 
I actually did read that post but didn't understand it all that well obviously. Is there any way to move my post over there?