LHTH quest. and intro.

[rayjenl]

Hi everyone. I have been a major lurker here for awhile, and after having so many of my personal questions answered on this board just by reading the posts, I do have to ask for some help in a simple decision. First I'd like to introduce myself, I've been married for 15 wonderful years and have three kids: DD 5, DS 3.5, DD 18 mths. and DD due Oct. 26. On top of all these little blessings, the Lord has made it very clear we are to homeschool. This is my first time to HS and my poor sweet daughter will be the test child for her siblings. I was so excited about HOD I bought LHFG awhile ago and just recently added LHTH. I plan to start in July.
Here's my question: I've noticed that most have spread LHTH over two years, I do plan on using LHTH for my DS 3.5 for two years, I was just going to repeat it twice, the second time with 4 year old options. My concern is if we do LHTH over two years (half speed), would he still retain the first part of the manual, for instance the letter A and its sound, number 1 etc. I just thought doing it twice would keep his letters and numbers fresh in his head and really prepare him for LHFG. I doubt my personal decision because I see so many of you more experienced moms teaching it at half speed and moving right along to LHFG. Thank you in advance for your input, I do appreciate it.
God Bless,
Jennifer

[Kathleen]

Welcome Jennifer! It's nice to meet you!

I think either way would work well. With LHTH, every 5th unit is a review unit where you say all the letter sounds you've learned in the rhyme and review all the letter flashcards. My kids loved the review rhyme!! You add on to it all year long.

As far as the number recognition, you'll spend the first several lessons in LHFHG math going over the numbers and what they look like and how to write them.

So, you'll get review either way you do it!

Garret went through LHTH with Allison when he was 2 and she was 4. I wasn't really planning to include him then, but it worked GREAT! He did really well with it, and he continued to tag along on a very slowed down version of LHFHG this year. NOW, I've restarted LHTH with him because it truly is perfect for so many skills that he's improving on (even though he's been a little pro with letter sounds since he was 2). And, his sister is ready to blaze ahead and finish LHFHG and move on to Beyond this year. And, you're totally free to alter your "plan" as you go, too. I'm getting to be a pro at this! And it's great because there are so many excellent options with HOD and I know that as long as we're moving forward somehow, we're good! My kids are learning and growing spiritually and academically!! I couldn't ask for more.

Kathleen

[ALB]

We'll also be starting LHFHG and LHTH here soon. I have the same question about how to do LHTH over 2 years. My plan is to do what you said (do it twice), just because we have the time in our schedule to do the full program, and I can see my ds benefitting from repeating it at an older age. I have gone back and forth about it, and it seems that a lot just depends on what YOU want to include in your day! I only have 2 kids, moms with more might prefer doing it for 15 a day rather than 30.
I do have to say that my only concern is that I'll tire of doing the same thing two years in a row, so I guess I'll know next year !

[my3sons]

Welcome to the HOD Board! We've done LHTH with both of our older sons, and now are doing it with our littlest pumpkin. With our oldest, we did it all in a year. With our middle ds, we did it over 1 1/2 years, and now with our youngest, we'll do it half-speed over 2 years. These all have worked well! I do think that the pacing depends on several personal preferences. For our oldest, he was ready and I needed something to do with him each day to try out homeschoooling and show my dh that homeschooling works! So, we clipped along and had him doing everything kind of early. He did LHTH from about the time he was almost 4 to about almost 5 yo. He has continued to be on the young side of the target age ranges for HOD guides, which has worked well for him as he is my oldest and fits that typical advanced learner mold that many of the oldest dc seem to fall into (probably since he was my first and I poured all of myself into him first). For my middle ds, he saw his older brother doing school and wanted to be doing school with me too. So, we started him around 3 yo or so, doing it 3-4 days a week over a year and a half, and then we started LHFHG half-speed after that. Worked great! With our last honey, I wanted to wait until he was 3 1/2 yo or so, but he didn't want to wait that long. So, we started it half-speed when he was 2 1/2 yo and we will finish it in about 2 years or so. I guess technically it is not exactly half-speed, as we are using both Bibles and will eventually be using both devotionals (when he can understand the older one better), and we are doing daily Fingerplays and daily flashcards. Here is how we are doing it half-speed:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5600&p=41232#p41232

I had thought about doing LHTH full-speed 2 years in a row, just using the harder resources the second year. I decided to instead do the "deluxe" half-speed (I'll name it that to show it's more than just 'half'), because as much as I do love LHTH I wasn't sure about teaching it all again back to back after I've taught it 2 other times to my other boys too. However, that is totally a personal preference, as long as you're fine doing it 2 times, it's totally fine to do it twice!!! HTH as you consider the pacing that fits your family best. No matter what pacing you choose - LHTH is the best start to homeschooling!

In Christ,
Julie

[Mommamo]

I started doing LHTH with my middle guy when he was somewhere around 3. It was just too much for him to do daily yet, but we ended up doing it at church in his Bible class (with me as the teacher) so he got a year of it anyway. Then as soon as we were done we started it up again. We've been back to doing it at home for several months now. I'd say 3 at least, and we're only on week 6. We do it with both Bibles and both devotional books. We use the older options for him and the younger ones for my 2 yo. We also add in little activities to put in his workboxes that correlate with the later we're doing (these are just something I've added to keep him busy while his big sis does school). I wish that my 6 yo would do independent work while I did LHTH, but she thinks it's too fun so she does it with the little ones. But that's a completely different post. When we're done with LHTH (whenever that ends up being, I sort of feel like it will be forever ) I may go ahead and repeat it over 2 years with my youngest, or I may just combine her with the middle one in LHFHG, just kind of what seems to make sense when the time comes. But all of that is to say that I've gone through it once, started it right over again, and I'm not tired of it, and neither is my 4 yo. (Neither is the 6 yo for that matter!) So I think you could do it however it ends up working best for you. I'm learning that the thing with homeschooling is just to be flexible (which is hard when you're a planner like me!) and HOD makes that easy for you.

As far as retention-there is the built in review. But also, this is more of an introduction to all of these ideas. So when you do phonics along with LHFHG, the kiddos will learn letter sounds again, and you can remind them of A-A-Adam or whatever the letter sound is. Like Kathleen mentioned, they'll also spend some time in math learning to write the numbers again, etc, but they'll already have been exposed to all of this before so it will make it just that much easier for them when that time comes.