Schooling 4 ages 9 down to 3...scheduling the large family

[farmmom4him]

Ok, my 9 yr old is not doing HOD this year, but is following a mostly Charlotte Mason ideal. He has some special needs at this time, and I developed his curriculum choices before I discovered HOD.

My 6 yr old, non-reading, but adding and subtracting up to 10, is going to start LHFHG. My plan is to use Explode the Code, and Language Lessons (can't remember which one off the top of my head), Singapore Math Primary 1 a, 1 b, and the science and history resources for LHFHG for 1st grade. The fine motor will be Critical thinking presses Thinking Skills, and Italics.

My 4 yr old is advanced with letter sounds, writing, but really have not done any math--knows all colors and shapes, etc. I plan to combine some with the 6yr old, and then take her down to LHTH with her 3 yr old brother who really only knows his colors.

We also have a 19 mo and a 5 mo. Our 5 mo has some special needs also. She was a NICU baby.

Anyway, schooling 3 more then I have the last 5 years is a bit overwhelming. Thanks for your thoughts.

[momof2n2]

I have only a few minutes before I have to cook lunch
I struggled big time last year at the beginning of the year.
I lamented publically on this board.

What ended up seeing me through a season of our lives [September through January, maybe Feb] was that I started my day working with both my boys, side by side, Bible Study [non HOD], math and spelling. One did spelling while I helped the other with Math if they needed it.

Then we divided.

I sent son A upstairs with my girls to play with them. I paid them $2 a week.
Then after about an hour, the boys switched.

It was an answer to prayer for me. I was in a BAD place for about two weeks... I found I kept scolding my younger two, "Go find something to do. Go upstairs!" etc. It broke my heart and they were becoming VERY defiant. They were 2 and just-turned-four. After praying I went to my boys shared my reasoning with them, "We want homeschooling to bless our WHOLE family. For it two work, you need to serve EACH OTHER. I can do school with S. if N. plays with the girls and then I can do school with N. while S. plays with them. You will be paid for your sister-sitting." I know this wouldn't work for everyone, but I have two sets of friends who have employed this in their families after asking me what we did. Now, many would not pay their kids for that and I can understand why, but frankly, our kids aren't paid for chores and they have no other place to earn money and we wanted to start teaching them about money, tithing, saving, etc., so it worked for us.

I hope you find something that works well for your family.

My second was a 32 week NICU baby, himself. BIG HUGS and CONGRATULATIONS!! ♥

[inHistiming]

I know momof2n2 personally IRL and I can say she seems to be so organized. She suggested this to me and I'm thinking I will try her method in the fall. I think it couldn't hurt to try it. If you don't want to pay your children you could just try to implement it as part of their chores or something, but it may not be a bad idea to give them a way to earn money...just wanted to offer encouragement. We are adding our 3rd for formal schooling in the fall and it can be an intimidating thought!

[Mumkins]

I know you kind of have a plan going already. However, for simplicities sake and to make things easier for yourself, would it be possible to put the 9 and 6 year old in Beyond? Then you could put 3 and 4 y.o. in LHTH and then down the line, you could even teach the youngest two together as well.

[my3sons]

Ok, my 9 yr old is not doing HOD this year, but is following a mostly Charlotte Mason ideal. He has some special needs at this time, and I developed his curriculum choices before I discovered HOD.

My 6 yr old, non-reading, but adding and subtracting up to 10, is going to start LHFHG. My plan is to use Explode the Code, and Language Lessons (can't remember which one off the top of my head), Singapore Math Primary 1 a, 1 b, and the science and history resources for LHFHG for 1st grade. The fine motor will be Critical thinking presses Thinking Skills, and Italics.

My 4 yr old is advanced with letter sounds, writing, but really have not done any math--knows all colors and shapes, etc. I plan to combine some with the 6yr old, and then take her down to LHTH with her 3 yr old brother who really only knows his colors.

We also have a 19 mo and a 5 mo. Our 5 mo has some special needs also. She was a NICU baby.

Anyway, schooling 3 more then I have the last 5 years is a bit overwhelming. Thanks for your thoughts.

Welcome to the HOD Board! The ladies are doing such a nice job of chatting this through with you. I am wondering if you could please share some about your 9 yo's 3R's, after looking at the placement chart? The placement chart is easy to use and very accurate. I think after that, we'll all be able to give some good advice for you and your family. Here's a link to the chart:
http://www.heartofdakota.com/placing-your-child.php

We've done several HOD programs for years and really enjoyed it. I've found it's important to place our dc where they should be because that makes the day go great. It also helps to do quite a bit of training of those precious little ones, and we also have our olders rotate playing with the toddler. This has worked out great, and they grow closer and closer to each other this way too.

In Christ,
Julie

[farmmom4him]

My 9 yr old is finishing Singapore Math 2B, his special needs come in with handwriting, spelling and anything requiring midline crossing, his reading is AWESOME. He is dysgraphic, and has visual/ocular dysfunction. So for this year, while we do a lot of visual/ocular therapy, and since I have all his curriculum bought I am just doing what is planned. I can't afford another book right now.


Right now I have set up chore charts, one for daily chores, one for weekly chores, and one for monthly chores. If a chore is done 3 times a day in goes on the daily chart, 1-3 times a week on the weekly chart and 1-2 times a month on the monthly chart. I then covered each chart with contact paper. Then I assigned each person a color, and their chores are highlighted in their color and then there are boxes to check off that it is completed. We will start implementing this, this week. I can rearrange who does what chore by errasing the highlighting and moving it around.

My next plan is to make a list of "toddler" activities, and then assign 3 activities per day. I am in the process of making 25 file folder games, we have pattern blocks, puzzles, coloring, paint with water, tracing, and a few other various activities.
These activities will be written in our lesson plans.

I will also have the 6 and 9 yr olds trading off helping with the youngers. Also, I plan to use a lot of blanket training for them.

Baby girl will just have to stay with me. She is having some apeanic (sp) spells, and I don't feel comfortable leaving her to nap. She will nap in my front pack, or in the bouncy seat next to us.

How else woud you go about scheduling. For us routines are MUCH better and doable then say a timed schedule.

[my3sons]

It sounds like you have some great ideas for making your day flow smoothly! We do a lot of the same things in our home and have found them to be so helpful to making homeschooling go seamlessly on a consistent basis. When everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, it makes the day go great.

I am rereading what you've posted thus far, and I'm not sure if you are waiting to do HOD with your older or if "this year" means now and you're interested in a placement for him coming up. I was thinking you'd be starting HOD with him soon and that's why I asked for information about him. If this is the goal, I think he would place well in Bigger Hearts. He'd enjoy the reading so much, being the avid reader he is, and he'd love all of the hands-on components of it as well. The readings are wonderful, but they are purposefully kept shorter. We loved the pacing in Bigger Hearts! The writing is also done on a rotating basis and involved bite-sized copywork for notebooking. You can easily adjust this as needed.

For your 7 yo, LHFHG sounds like a good fit, as well as your 4 yo doing some of LHFHG as it works. Then, doing the 4 yo and younger in LHTH would fit nicely as well.

As far as scheduling, we assign times to our schedule, but we are rarely exactly on the times. It is more a general schedule to flow through. The order remains the same each day, which allows us to be off on the time somewhat and yet still have a feeling of continuity. There is a wonderful past thread about schedules I'll share here that may be helpful:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093&p=16049

In Christ,
Julie

[Mom2Monkeys]

I did a "general schedule" for my dc and have pics on my blog. It doesn't have a time set to each thing, but an order of events for school. She can remove a task from the chart once it's completed, and the same thing for ds. His is just geared toward a younger mind. It would be easy to add in chore blocks, etc. I just ran out of room
I go into great detail on my blog. Here's the link... http://thomasschooldays.blogspot.com/20 ... ystem.html

HTH!