Review your past year with HOD!

[MamaMary]

What did you learn this year? What are your highlights? What will you do differently and what will you keep the same?

We are probably not going to complete "Beyond". With my dads cancer and the travel involved, my first year learning curve as chairperson for our homeschool organization, my moms surgery and Seth's seizures we had many unusual interruptions. I plan to go through unit 20 before we stop. We are on unit 16.

We will start "Bigger" Monday July 6th w/ my 13 year old son.

Colton (my 13 year old son with APD) finally began reading this year using the emerging reader set. He feels so confident in his reading. I really love how HOD uses real books as the readers and not the simple phonics books. We tried several times to use Singapore and I can say with certainty that this is not a good fit for this son. He is THRIVING in Time4learning and so we will stick with that. I do plan on using HOD's Rod and Staff English and will continue with the spelling and possibly even move into dictation. He LOVES his cheerful cursive and because of our interruptions it got pushed to the side so we will finish that up. I still don't love doing poetry but Julie posted something several months ago about how she used to feel that way, but what she has found to be true. (Julie can you share that again so I can print it?) I am VERY excited about the character traits we will be doing in our "Bigger" and plan to pull those into our family time. I also cannot wait to use the music and bible.

We also plan to add DITHOR in. I bought the stuff for that last year but never began it. I'm very excited!


This year I am planning on hitting the Three R's HARD with my 7 & 9 year old sons. They will use our co-op, Time4Learning and participate in our read a louds. I think we will take the semester off of history and science and jump back in, in January by finishing up Beyond. We will probably do some FIAR units every now and then during the Fall, but our main goal for these guys is their reading and basic math. Now I still have to go to Convention and I don't close the door to changing my mind until after June 1st. This is what I am thinking right now at this time.

What are you planning on doing? What did you learn? What were YOUR highlights?

[crlacey]

We used LHFHG and really enjoyed the Bible portion. Enough to repeat that portion while notebooking it the second time around. After puttering around with other programs since Jan (when we finished LHFHG), I have found flashy is not always better. So we plan to finish our second tour through the Bible notebooking it while doing the 3 R's. Then we'll plan to use Beyond in the fall as written. Though we'll probably not push memorizing the verses (reading through them and discussing them of course just not memorizing) since DD will be memorizing through our church's program with her friends.

[Jessi]

Our past year was a roller coaster. We started with LHTH in the fall and it started great but then a combination of things made us shelve that program In October (though we plan to pick it back up with my little man in a year or two) and we kind of did our own thing with 100 EZ lessons, math workbook, and other pre-K/K workbooks through Christmas. We started LHFHG at half speed in January and are LOVING it! It is just right for us and Emma really likes the structure. We are using Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading for phonics as 100 EZ lessons frustrated her to tears. She loves her phonics now. And we just recently transitioned back to HWOT after using A Reason for Handwriting. Singapore works great for us! I think we have found our fit.

We'll be using LHFHG half speed for awhile through summer and into the fall. Going half speed should take us through her K year. We'll take next summer off (doing math workbooks and phonics review) and then begin Beyond that fall as well as LHTH for my pre-Ker.

[annaz]

Our past year was a roller coaster as well. The grass is not greener and as a matter of fact, the grass is pretty darn green here.
We had a problem w/a history book and since I couldn't figure out a way to fix it, we shelved it as well. I went on to a textbook route, which proved to be oh so boring, so rote. Sold that, then moved to MFW Adventures because I had bought it and found she wasn't ready for it before Beyond. Even though it was a good program I found out it's just not "it".

We are back and continuing Beyond from where we left off from the past year, starting with Unit 27. We did everything up till then subject wise. Several other issues changed for us as well which makes this program more workable for us. We missed the Bible portion and the wonderful discussions it gave us.

We look forward to Bigger soon. Mom looks forward less stress, fun, more doable activities and less computer time!!!
I pray this upcoming year that I don't get the grass is greener thoughts. In fact, I'm thinking of deleting those forums and truly making an effort to not look unless I seriously need to make a change. And with that, I'm impatiently waiting for my HOD catalog!
Ann

[LeAnna]

Our past year, and first year of homeschooling, has been wonderful!! I had two dc using Little Hearts For His Glory, and one using Little Hands to Heaven. We stopped with LHTH half way through, due to moving, etc. But, we are going to start fresh again this year.

I love the Reading Lesson!!! The kids have learned to read so fast! I stressed a little about teaching them to read, but TRL was so hassle free!!! One of my kids will be doing it through the summer, while the other one will just free read until we pick up the Emerging Readers in the fall.

This fall, I will doing Beyond with 2 dc as well.

It has been a great year, and I can't wait to begin our 2nd year with Heart of Dakota!!!:)

LeAnna

[spidermansmum]

Our past year Oh wow .We had good points and bad in our year.Last May I put Nathan back into school after just four months of homeschooling.So I came to Heart of Dakota as a failed homeschooler.He lasted all of a month in school [and that was part time] before I realised why we had removed him the previous January.Darci recommended Heart Of Dakota and We bought Heart of Dakota in July ?? and we started late July -early August with Little Hearts For His Glory.
Ive made some mistakes.I should have started with The reading lesson instead what we picked.I should have got the K handwriting book instead of the A but I was worried I wasnt doing enough-especially as he would be in Year 1 here.I really struggled at times with the whole homeschool thing.It really wasnt something I thought I would ever be doing ,Nathan- although a wonderful blessing -is not the easiest to teach .His Adhd and aspergers make for a sometimes challenging day.It got to about January this year and I seriously wanted out.
Then in the last month or two we have seen some amazing changes in Nathan.He followed a directed activity.He had to paint a picture from a descriptive piece from History Stories for Children and up till that point it happened with some negotiation[you draw x and then you can do free expression] .Nathan just painting something as directed was a huge developmental step.Being able to direct his focus was amazing.
A couple of weeks ago he read a whole sentence.Now he can decode words perfectly well but up till then it was an enormous task of patience to get him to read.He would read a word or part of a word,lose focus..need to be brought back to the word,sometimes I would re read part of the sentance to help him keep it in context..his mind would wander,I would need to bring him back to the task...Nathan reading a whole sentance was something that got this whole family cheering him on.
Today we started back on our school timetable after a break over easter.I was somewhat nervous about starting up again because its a change of routine and because he fought so hard not to do structured schooling at first.We started Little Hearts at almost half speed.Each 'box' had to be added in gradually .Every time we took a break meant starting that process again from the beginning.Today he started back to a full timetable with minimal fuss.Again its another huge leap forward.
Nathan has learnt to read.He is on lesson 17 of the Reading Lesson.He is on Singapore 1 b for Math.He solved a tangram puzzle that had me baffled[and he loves that he did that].We have read lots of Thornton burgess and thats not something I would have picked except for LHFHG.We have enjoyed lots of hands on busy learning that fitted my son so well.We have had a whistle stop tour through history.
At the end of our first full year of homeschooling -almost -I still have my doubts that I am up to the job.I am still not sure how long we will do this homeschooling lark.I do know however know that and I am seeing his 'firsts' and I am delighted that I am getting to see them not a teacher.

[Amey]

Our year has been great, with a few minor set-backs. I originally started my 6 yr old first grader in LHFHG thinking that I could beef it up and bring my 4 yr old son in on some of our activities. Several weeks in, my four year old was not interested (VERY active boy) and my six year old was really more on level with Beyond and a little bored.
So, I ordered Beyond and we got started. I already had CLE for our math and Learning To Read and those were going fine. Beyond has been GREAT! He is loving school and so is Mom. We finished our CLE phonics and started the Emerging Reader's Schedule which we are both really enjoying.
Unfortunately we are only on Unit 17 of Beyond since we started off the year with Little Hearts, so I am trying to figure out how to complete 17 weeks of school when I have a baby due in 15 weeks! Yikes! I don't want to skip ANYTHING! It's too much fun But, like Mary, I will most likely have to tweak here and there and read ahead in some places and skip some activities. We are using the schedule for Bigger next year AS IS, and I am thrilled to not mess with it anymore. We are keeping our CLE math after trying Singapore for a stint. CLE just works better for ME as teacher although my son really enjoyed Singapore. He is just a math guy, and loves CLE as well, so I figure I can't go wrong in that area at least.
My rambunctious four year old recently seemed "ready" to "do a little school" with Mom, so I purchased Little Hands and it has been going great. He loves HIS school time and I find that it makes spending time with him a priority for me. It is easy to do, lots of fun and just enough for where he is developmentally! So, we are trucking along in Beyond now..using all the plans minus math and enjoying the journey. My only regret is not having started out the year with Beyond so we would be on track. We school year round, so it's not too terribly off, but nonetheless I will have to make some decisions. SO glad we found HOD! Looking forward to Bigger for 2ND grade and Little Hearts for K this coming school year!

[MamaMary]

Sam, I just want to tell you that you have done an amazing job. It's not about falling down, we all do that. It's about how we finish and you have done an AMAZING job! How blessed your little ones are to call you Mama!

But, like Mary, I will most likely have to tweak here and there and read ahead in some places and skip some activities. We are using the schedule for Bigger next year AS IS, and I am thrilled to not mess with it anymore.

Oh Me Too Amey! I want to just use it as is. I don't ever look at time as wasted though when in a learning curve. If I plan to stay with it long term than I see it as an investment

[MamaBear23Cubs]

After taking some time off from HOD, my oldest will be doing Preparing in the fall and then I will do the four year history cycle thing. My daughter did Bigger last spring/summer. I switched to a textbook route since my husband was deployed. Now that he is home she will do Preparing. It has the best of what we want. I want a style close to CM and he want multi subjects in history/science. So back to HOD it is for her.
My littles are on Unit 20 of LHTH. We are slowly moving forward in the book. It has been crazy for them with daddy being gone and mama doing the job of both parents. My son had to get tubes so I started back in the begining. I did just the rhymes and stories over agian w/o activies and practice saying the ABCs. He had to relearn sounds since it was muffled before. Now teaching him has gone so much better and now I am not worried about him not being ready for Little Hearts For His Glory in August. It's been amazing how much he has changed since his tubes. It's a change for the better, fingers are crossed he won't need them again because he misses swimming and we won't be swimming this year because he don't like the wax stuff in his ears.
My youngest will be doing Little Hands again in the fall. It will be our special morning time since she is the first one up and it can really be done in 30 minutes. Then she will just tag along with my son in Little Hearts, if she wants to. Just like now she mostly tags along and joins in half the time. She likes her dollar store workbook for now.
I have learned that switching curriculum isn't a good thing for me and I need to stick with what works. I also learned that homeschooling while daddy is gone for a year really bites. I was the first time homeschooling with him gone so I mostly schooled my oldest while the younger two ran wild.

[HollyinNNV]

I have two children, dd 14 and ds 9. After using SL PK, K, alt 2, 3, 4, 5, TOG 1, WP Animals and WP QMA, I have FINALLY found a curriculum that I REALLY like. This year I've been completing Bigger with ds. (I wish that HOD had been around for my dd.) Bigger has been my favorite curriculum year of the past nine years of home school. Thanks, Carrie!

So, I came to HOD pretty comfortable tweaking things to meet my kids needs. This is probably the least tweaking I've ever done. We did Rod and Staff year 2. I am aware of how challenging R&S gets in the later years so I'm very comfortable starting off a year behind. (DS is grade 3.) DS does some of R & S out loud. Other parts of R & S ds has to write. I try and have him write for R & S twice a week, minimum.

Unfortunately, math has always been an issue for ds, so we went back and did Singapore Year 1 which is not scheduled in Bigger. We also did MUS. We moved at a pretty fast clip because my goal is to reinforce the basics. We are almost done with Singapore 1 and then we'll move to Singapore 2 and use the fun games Carrie scheduled in Bigger.

I thought that spelling would be a tad easy for ds, so we worked through the spelling lists. Everytime ds got 100% we moved on to the next week's list immediately. Now we doing the dictation. That's gone a little slower than the lists of words. I've never tried dictation-based spelling, but I am happy with it so far.

I like the poetry that Carrie picked. I actually run a writing co-op and my students are required to memorize 20 poems a year. So, I thoroughly believe in poetry study.

I love the reading selections for boys. I really think this is a great idea! My ds has liked all of his books! He was not a comfortable, fluent reader last year, but boy has that changed! I decided that I would rather ds spend time reading, than responding to reading this year. So he simply reads and tells me about the books. Next year we'll begin DITHOR.

Just last year, ds hated read alouds. "Do you haaaaaaaaaaave to read aloud today?" This year has been the exact opposite. He wants to read aloud first. DS has enjoyed every read aloud. The only read aloud I haven't loved is Rascal. But, since DS likes it, I'm ok. I think the difficult thing for me is that the sentences can be so long.

I've been exceedingly happy with the history program. First, it doesn't dominate the entire day. When I've used other living book programs, it has felt so unbalanced. History just seems too overwhelming. HOD has a reasonable amount of history. I also like that the program is told through biographies. It seems like ds and I have learned more about history-by reading less. It is counter-intuitive. But, sometimes less IS more.

Because we attend co-op once a week, we have only completed 19 weeks of Bigger. After reading this board, I've decided that we'll go ahead and finish Bigger next fall. Since we don't follow the math schedule, we'll just continue math. There have been a few areas where I've had to make things easier for ds, so I'm not pushing ds to get to Preparing. For example, we've only looked up one vocabulary word rather than the three scheduled. We've also done a little less copywork than is scheduled for science/history. So, we'll go ahead and bring those expectations up next fall, and be ready for Preparing eight weeks into next Fall.

[momof2n2]

What did you learn this year? What are your highlights? What will you do differently and what will you keep the same?

We did Bigger with 8 y.o. 3rd grader and LHFHG left page for 6 y.o. 1st grader.

I don't think I would use HOD again for 1st grade. I think when my girls go through first grade I will just do some Christian Liberty Press stuff, MUS and FLL.
I had to add too much to it and skip too much of it. Basically I used the history, the storytime [which he LOVED, and I hated] and the Memory Verses. He could have handled more meat. Just my opinion.

I don't know if I will use Bigger again when second son is in 3rd grade. My history LOVING 3rd grader didn't like the history for Bigger and I fear that my history HATING 1st grader will fall apart with it. I am really hoping that his feelings toward history change when we do Beyond, which my older son and I thought was AMAZING. But Bigger history was a bit of a let-down for my older son after the Beyond history. if that makes sense. I don't mean to sound negative. But much of this year we all felt like we had to make ourselves do school, where the year before we looked forward to history.

Bigger science was WONDERFUL!! It totally rocked. But my younger son did all of it with my older son and I, so I just don't know if we will do Bigger with him down the road.

My highlights were how perfectly God made it that we were invited to go to the Outer Banks last September for a week-long vacation. And lo and behold I had the Story of the Wright Brothers and their Sister and One Small Square Seashore in my pantry at the time, complete with Carrie's instructions! That was something only God could do. The Wright Bros. was the best history of the year [we had to go out of order for that. We did that before we started the year in earnest. We also did Science that way too. So for 3 weeks we did Wright Bros from lessons 28 - 32 and Seashore from 1 - ?. The perk there was that we were able to start our year without trying to fit science into our day, and right NOW my son has a 5 week break from history so he can do more math.]

My other highlight is the Pioneer Sampler for science. Like I said, the science is one of the best parts of Bigger. It comes alive from stories and my kids are responding well with that. I love it.

Another perk of HOD has been that my husband has had weeks of rolling lay-offs in his work. The weeks he is laid-off, I have worked. The way HOD is set up, HE can do school with very little input from me ahead of time. He doesn't have to decipher Mommy's lesson plans, etc. It is all there for him. My sons can walk him through the order of things.

I also do our own Math stuff and we do use R&S grammar, but I don't use the HOD schedule, because we don't do language on Wednesdays when we have CBS therefore we'd be all off track.

I don't mean to sound negative. We loved Bigger poetry, Bible, Science and Storytime. We also did the history notebooking and timeline [he learned to do that himself] and vocabulary.
We didn't like 80% of the history, however. We'd actually sit down to read it together, I'd scan it and confess to him right off the bat, "I don't care how much of this you remember, honey. Just sit respectfully and try to listen." He did, but it wasn't as captivating as Beyond was, or how Preparing appears to be.

Next year we will do Preparing with 9 y.o., 4th grader, Beyond with 7 y.o. 2nd grader, and three Rs with 5 y.o. Kindergartener.

[eazbnsmom]

This was my first year of using HOD, before this I was eclectic and put together my own stuff, this was SO MUCH EASIER!

What did I learn this year:

Lots, can't pin point anything right now.

What were my highlights:

I would definitely have to say the Medieval feast. That was so much fun and all my children enjoyed participating.

What would you do differently/same?

I would have sold PLL & ILL (great as they were) and done the recommended R&S (which is even better) at the beginning of the year instead of now. If I had to do the same.....I would do HOD all over again.

[deltagal]

We just began our journey with HOD in January. And I....Love....it! The children are all makings sure and steady progress in their skill development and we are enjoying the journey. Although, I've always pulled together our own plan I was finding that "life" events would interfere with my "planning" and it would always take me a while to get the brood back on track with whatever we were doing. HOD has enabled me to live more joyfully with our life's realities and know that a plan is already in place that truly does meet our families needs. For the first time ever, I truly feel that I'm meeting everyone's needs where they are - which is huge! All 3 of my oldest have made such tremendous progress in their skill development that I'm beginning to think we may roll into the next level for each of them in October, which was not our original plan, but which is where I'm thinking they need to be. We'll see as the summer progresses how they are doing.

[dale1088]

Well, I can't report on the "year" because I just pulled dd from ps in Dec and started with Bigger in Jan. We started at unit 1 and are now only in Unit 13. We do plan to school through the summer but I may skip ahead some. I can't decide. I REALLY want to start Preparing in Fall. She's ready for it and I think we are both really excited to get to a world history overview. But Bigger has been great. Every time I think I'll skip a box in order to move ahead I'll read through it and think "no, this is too great!" - especially science. We are LOVING John Audubon right now. We actually have an owl family nesting in a tree in our backyard and have been studying them as we read about how John Audubon became so fascinated by birds and nature. What a great connection!!! History has been pretty good. There are times when I have thought that we should not be reading about so many misc people in history when we should have spent more time on say, the founding fathers, but that's okay. It's a good overview.

I have struggled with Singapore and done hours of research to find a better fit, but ultimately chose to stay with Singapore. And once we moved into to multiplication, things are easier. We seem to be trucking right along, however I do supplement. She doesn't have her math facts down and I'd like to keep working to cement those. I am hoping to finish 2A shortly, and hopefully 2B by the end of summer so we ca get into 3A when we start Preparing.

We have both loved R&S. I started her in book 2 and it's been a little easy, but we are doing much of it verbally, so that's fun, and my hope is to finish it in the next month, move on to 3 so that I can move into 4 with the goal of finishing it at the same time we finish Preparing next Spring. Then I'll feel "on track". It's good to keep her challenged.

My DS is going to begin LHTH for his Pre-K year this fall. He just hasn't been ready and I have honestly felt like I needed to pour my focus into dd in starting this journey. He'll be ready in fall and is excited to have his own school to do.

What have I learned? Hmmmm...I am not what you'd call experienced yet, so I can't impart words of wisdom. I think I have learned to trust where God led me in my choices. There were some bad moments of tears and time-outs when I would look to the materials as failing, and that was SO NOT IT. We had to slow down and look at some heart issues, for both of us, to work out. When I focused on the heart, things smoothed out and the wonderful materials from HoD again proved to be a perfect fit for us.

The only thing I will do differently this coming Fall is working to keep my school hours sacred. There are so many interruptions that come up and if I allow it too often then we get off track and "behind" and that stresses me out. I also want to be more flexible in where school takes place. I'd like for my dd to stop being so easily distracted so that we can spread a blanket outside on a beautiful spring day to read. We're getting there!!

Preparing and LHTH...Here we come!!!!

[momof4]

We are finishing up Week 21 of LHFHG. We've had such a great year! We'll go a few more weeks and then break for Summer. We'll finish LHFHG in the Fall and then move into Beyond.

We will finish RME before we break! I don't know if some of you remember, but my HUGE worry about teaching reading has been put away. It was so easy to with RME and he is reading Level 1 books from the library with just alittle bit of help. YEAH! We'll start the emerging readers schedule in the Fall when we start up again.

We do a different math - Horizons and we have just a couple lessons left. I've heard sooo many good things about Singapore and thought about switching, but hubby said, "Don't fix what's not broken." We will continue with Horizons 1 next year.

Thus, we will be ahead on Math and Reading, but if we get stuck at all we'll have some wiggle room.

Andy loved reading the Bible stories and doing all the activities this year soooo much. When we finished the Bible portion a few weeks ago, he was very sad and actually cried. I assured him we would keep reading it outside of class work, but he wants it part of class. I bought the Early Reader Bible and let him start that and he is much happier now.

The biggest thing that our family has received this year is Andy's love for the Lord. He asked Christ into his heart last year during discussions in Little Hands. His understanding of the stories and the concepts this year is just amazing me! We read the story where Peter said that they needed to "Repent, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit." Andy told me later, "I know everything I need to know." I said, "Really?" He continued, "I know everything I need to know to be baptized. I want to receive the Holy Spirit. I want God to tell me what He wants me to do." After I picked myself off the floor, I started thinking about whether he is actually ready for this commitment. He is only 6! After praying about it for a couple of weeks and Andy asking me everyday when he can be baptized, we have decided to let him do it. If he is ready, who knows what God will do with him? If he is too young, what is to stop him from being baptized later again? Who am I to stand in his way?

So the 3R's are coming along nicely, but more so his heart has been cultivated, planted and growing.

Thanks Carrie for giving us such a wonderful program to instill a love of God in their hearts at such a young age!

Laurie