Which level???

[my3sons]

Welcome to the Board - it's nice to meet you! I would guess from what you've shared that LHFHG would work well. It seems like this is the consensus over all. I respect your opinion about age, and each person is certainly entitled to her own thoughts on that topic. I think age is a general guideline we can all fall back on, since we don't personally know each child being discussed on the board, which is why the topic comes up. It also helps us try to keep our advice in check in regard to maturity of content and length of time doing school. That's why we ask about age, but again, I respect your opinion in regard to this topic, think you've got a great handle on your ds and what he can do - hats off to you!

You can always start LHFHG half-speed, doing the left side of it one day, and the right side the next day. Then, you can bump him up to doing it full-speed at whatever point he's ready. This would keep him from getting frustrated or feeling overwhelmed and let him have the chance to show how long he's able to do school. I think all of HOD's programs are exciting - we've never had a second of boredom here using HOD. Our dc were both reading early and could have done harder programs than they did, but I slowed things down to half-speed because I wanted them to have time to play too, and looking down the road I also wanted them not to get to anything too heavy maturity wise in history (i.e. the Ancients ). HTH! Whatever you choose, I know you'll love HOD - it has been an incredible blessing in our home, and I know it will be in yours as well!

In Christ,
Julie

[kamariden]

Wow! So many great suggestions. I really want to thank you all for your detailed replies and sincere suggestions. Of course I did not take offense to the question about his age. It is a natural question to ask, but as I said, I wanted answers unmuddied by age generalizations. I truly appreciate those of you who pointed out looking farther down the line to see where he would be next year (or the year after) if I started him on Beyond now. That is a point I hadn't thought of- particularly in regard to which historical topics may be covered and whether he'll be at the maturity level to really get as much out of them as he could.

I didn't mention it specifically, perhaps, but I do intend to teach him money & ordinal numbers in the next 6mths...though I'm not sure to what level. In fact, we've already purchased play money for that purpose.

I took a few days off from researching this decision as daily life took over this past week, but I'm back into it now and hope to make a decision soon.

Thanks again!
Kathleen
(and no, I don't meet too many - especially not many who spell it the same way)

[crlacey]

From what you have shared, I would think that LHFHG would be his best placement. This would allow you time to finish phonics with him so he can move into the emerging readers in the Beyond manual. This would also give him time to practice and memorize those basic math facts and then you can move at his pace through the math books adding any of the activities that look like fun as a great review. Since you mention that 2-3 pages with no pictures is his max, this seems to match the storytime in LHFHG perfectly. The science in LHFHG is a lot of fun and it made my DD ask more questions about topics we had already lightly covered previously. Since he hasn't had much Bible memorization, the LHFHG would improve those skills in a fun way. And last, the writing in LHFHG seems to be on target if you used the 1st grade option. Beyond has more written work required. And while my DD finished LHFHG well before she was 6, she was not ready for the amount of writing required in the Beyond manual, so we've been floating until now that she is finally 6.

[Mommamo]

I also agree that LHFHG sounds like a perfect fit. I thought I'd share my HOD experience with you, because your little boy sounds a lot like my daughter! When my dd started it, she was also reading Bob books, could count really well and do basic math, enjoyed listening to me read all sorts of books including nonfiction, long chapter books (original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for example) and I really debated going ahead and getting her Beyond. She was 4 at the time. Strangely, I also debated getting her LHTH, figuring that whatever level I got could be adjusted to her skills. I went with LHFHG and it was perfect! I did have to adjust the math for her, but that was no problem. We just went on to the math in Beyond when she was ready for it. We did do LHFHG at full speed. Half pace would have just been too slow for her. We also do school 6 days a week many weeks, although other weeks we only get in 3 or 4 days! She's now 5.5 and in Beyond and I'm so glad we did it this way. LHFHG is a wonderful introduction to world history and although she already knew many of the stories, it was nice seeing everything in context starting with creation. It's great doing American history now in Beyond since she has the basic framework of world history. She loves the stories, the spelling words, everything really! I tried doing Beyond half pace, adding in all the extras we do (piano, Spanish, art, extra reading from the library) and it just wasn't enough for her. She thrives on routine and she just NEEDS the school, which seemed to me what you were saying about your little guy. (We usually don't spend more than about 3 hours on everything though)

I've been a little concerned about getting her through so quickly, because I am somewhat concerned about her age when she gets to some of the mature content in future guides, but I finally decided to just go with her pace and not to borrow trouble, so to speak! She'll be just barely 6 when we finish Beyond, so I haven't decided yet if we'll go ahead with Bigger, or if we'll take some time to do unit studies or something else. I figure I'll just cross that bridge when we come to it. Likely, I won't worry too much about content until we get to Preparing and the new CTC guide. I hope all of this rambling helps in some way! I just thought having a similar experience to compare it with might help. FWIW, when I was trying to find things for my daughter, I kept giving her age and had people chastise me for pushing her (which I wasn't doing). They also told me that programs that would have worked fine wouldn't work because of her age, so I do admire you for just giving his skills.