Future Geography through History Program

[jer2911mom]

Hi,

I am starting LHFHG with my Kindergartener this fall and as I was looking through the sequence in the catalog, I realized she would take the Geography through History program in 8th grade if she takes one program each year. It says the science focus will be biology. She will need biology in 9th as a high school credit. What is the intention here, that the student will take biology twice? Or is one of the programs supposed to last two years so that geography falls in 9th? I noticed that The Age of Exploration and Invention program would fall in 6th grade, with a physical science focus, which is normally taught in 7th, so there is the same issue there. I just wanted to get a feel for what the intention is for those who start LHFHG in K.

Thanks!
Kathy

[Kathleen]

Hi Kathy!

I jumped into HOD with my oldest when he was a "3rd grader"...and we started with Bigger. We're having a fantastic time with all the programs we've used so far! (And I'm loving the younger programs with my little ones!) This past year we were using Preparing, which is a 4-day program. All of the programs from here on will be 4 days per unit. Soo, for us, we're planning to stretch the younger guides to last longer by doing 4-day weeks. My "plan" is to have them hit Preparing as 4th graders and complete a guide every year from there on out.

While they're young, I don't really think it matters if they're completing a guide within a typical school year. As long as they're progressing with the skills taught, it really doesn't matter when they start and finish and where the breaks are. At least we've found this to be true while using HOD. It's still working beautifully even though we're not starting a guide in August and finishing it in May.

This past year I even slowed down LHFHG more (not because my 5 yo needed to...but because it worked so well for our family & schedule to be able to include her younger brother for a lot of our day). She will still LOVE the content in LHFHG as we start up "1st grade". We'll just be using Beyond for the math and reading portions since she's done with phonics now.

Anyway, to answer your question the short way ...you're free to complete a guide per year and use the newest one in the line-up as "8th grade", and then use whatever you desire for high school. OR...feel free to take a more leisurely pace as you start out and maybe you'll end up with a "9th grader" using that newest guide in the line-up, and you'll be a-ok that way, too!
Kathleen

[Carrie]

Kathy,

Kathleen did a great job of answering your question! Thanks, Kathleen! Here's a link that will explain our thinking on this. Make sure to read through the second page where I share our thoughts: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5668

Blessings,
Carrie

[Tukata]

This conversation is interesting to me as we will also be starting LHFHG this fall for K. So, if I understand this right, we could do LHFHG 4 days a week and thus stretch out first 3 guides to start Preparing in 4th and to hit the last one in 9th grade? What about math? If I stretch LHFHG for K and part of 1st, should I still finish math for K and then start math for 1st with Bigger while doing the rest of the subjects in LHFHG?
Thanks!
Erin

[Tukata]

Oh, and one more question - if I didn't stretch out the guides and started and finished LHFHG in K this year and did a guide a year from there, does this mean there will be a problem when we get to the upper years? Will there be a year that I will need to fill on my own in order to "save" the 9th grade year for high school? Or am I not understanding this correctly? Oh dear! I thought I had it all figured out and now am so confused!
Erin

[MomtoJGJE]

if you "stretch" the guides to make them last longer, even then math and other basics will take longer to do... so basically, instead of taking 9 months for a school year, you'll be taking 10 or 11 or however many you are making it be... here's our schedule for the coming up years... I'll use DD2 because she's the one most similar to your situation.

We are doing LHTH for K, LHFHG for 1st, and Beyond for 2nd with her, but how each year falls is what is important.

If we had just done one guide per year she would be finishing up K now (spring 2010), finishing up 1st in spring 2011, and finishing up 2nd in spring 2012.... but the way we are doing it... she'll be finishing up K in December (so 6 months later), she'll be finishing up 1st in spring 2012, and finishing up 2nd in spring 2013....

so by making K last roughly 1.5 years, and then making 1st last roughly 1.5 years (each with some breaks) it'll put her a full year later doing 2nd.

does that help any? I had a lot of interruptions while trying to make this post. Basically, if you make your year take longer, ALL of your year takes (or can take) longer, not just the history portion....

[ALB]

Oh, and one more question - if I didn't stretch out the guides and started and finished LHFHG in K this year and did a guide a year from there, does this mean there will be a problem when we get to the upper years? Will there be a year that I will need to fill on my own in order to "save" the 9th grade year for high school? Or am I not understanding this correctly? Oh dear! I thought I had it all figured out and now am so confused!
Erin

Okay, I have NO experience yet , but I've also be working on a plan since I like to know a plan of where we're headed (even if it changes!). I'm planning on just doing a guide a year, without stretching them, and using the Geography Through History as 8th grade. I know it looks like it could be either way, and I'm not so sure about the science either. BUT I think it may be possible to count that for hs credit science wise even though it's 8th grade (I mean, if they are able to complete it all and it is 9th grade level biology, why not?). That would just give us another year to play with for hs science and maybe do something more interest led. I'm sure someone with more experience with hs could have suggestions.
Anyways, all that to say that I don't think you have to stretch the years out unless you want to. If there is something else you want to use for a year,or if your life gets hectic for awhile, that may be a great option. But I think it's reasonable to do them straight through, too.

[water2wine]

I am also a planner so I get where you are coming from with this. Just one thing to keep in mind on the science is that you can do whatever science you wish with HOD. They provide a plan in the guide or you can substitute your own. I personally have just included biology twice in my oldest dd plan on purpose. Biology was my filed so I felt like a first introductory course would actually be a great idea. She did Biology in 7th grade and she will be doing it again in 9th. Actually I would have done it back to back but I found the biology we chose for the upper level had some prerequisites we had not fulfilled. At any rate my feeling on this is if it is science worthy of high school credit and done in Jr high it is getting high school credit in our house. Bottom line if it fits the description for credit and they do work worthy of credit and it is possible in your state to do this counting it for high school is possible. This is just my point of view and not everyone feels this way so just putting it out there to ponder some options. If you search around under high school on the HSLDA site you will see they give the same advice. The disclaimer is not every college will accept this so look ahead that way as well. At any rather there are many options for you when you get there you can decide what is best. I probably will not make the same decision for every one of my children myself.

[Carrie]

Kathy,

I'll paste a portion of a previous response below that we had as we were pondering whether to add a geography guide to our line-up. As we've officially committed to write a geography guide, we are still thinking along these lines:

Ah, ladies, you make me smile! At this point we're thinking we'd love the geography portion to be flexible enough to stand alone for 9th grade geography credit, or for it to be used as an 8th grade course for those who are through our 4 year cycle and need something for the 8th grade year. We'd ideally like families to be able to choose in which fashion to use it based on the needs of their family. Anyway that is the thinking for the present time. Once a child gets to our high school guides and is technically completing high school level work, the work can be counted toward high school credit. Most states have minimum age and credit requirements for graduation, but often the minimum age is 16 or 17 (as long as the credit requirements have been fulfilled). So, an 8th grader using our high school guides could award high school credit for the work and then choose to either graduate early or take his/her typical senior year to do an apprenticeship, apply to colleges, take the ACT/SAT again, study for CLEP credit, begin taking college courses, travel abroad, do missionary work, etc. So, you can easily do a guide a year with HOD if desired and still be fine for high school.

We've actually been entertaining the idea of a geography guide for a long time but had never found anything geography-wise that we liked enough to implement this sort of a plan. With Ellen McHenry's new book "Mapping the World by Art", we believe there is the beginnings of just such a plan. Link here: http://www.ellenjmchenry.com/id151.html

We were in contact with Ellen this year as she was writing the guide, and piloting it, and have been very excited over the samples that she shared with prior to its release. We are thrilled to now have this truly excellent guide in hand. However, we will know better once we use it for our oldest son's 9th grade year.

Blessings,
Carrie

[rainbowacreshs]

Carrie,
I have to admit I am excited at all HOD has to offer. Even though we are still 14 units away from being done w/ CTC, I have seen tremendous growth in my dd. She enjoys her work now and looks forward to the projects in her history.
My husband and I had decided to give dd 2 extra years in her middle school years by doing an extra 7th and 2 years of 8th. For a while I kept tossing back forth if this was going to be best for dd for her in the long run, but then you announced a Geography through History for 9th grade. It was a confirmation for us that, if we hold to our plans for our dd, she would have a solid history cycle behind her, as well as time to grow in confidence with language arts and math skills before coming to Geography through History.
I truly hope that this guide will be just the beginning for the years of highschool. I love the idea of knowing the core subjects will be covered while allowing flexibitly towards adding electives.
We are looking at highschool with our homeschool law in mind... that the required subjects to be taught are as follows Reading, writing, math, science, and social studies; (grades 7-12) composition and literature. This leaves the door wide open for a broader range of type of curriculum to be used.
Our public school requires for graduation, students must earn 24 credits. 4 units English/Language Arts,4 units Math, 3 units Science (though I like the idea of 4 units science better), 1 unit US History, 1/2 unit Civics, 1/2 unit Economics, 1 unit other Social Studies, 1 unit Physical Ed, 1 unit Computer Science/Keyboarding, 1 unit Foreign Language, and 7 units Electives.
Again, the way you have so carefully planned the guides, I have no worries about being able to meet either one of those requirements with my dd.

[jer2911mom]

Hi Carrie,

Thank you for your response. If your son is doing geography in 9th, would you mind sharing what he did for 8th? Did he spend more than a year on one program? I think my preference is to avoid confusion with credits and just use the geography with biology for 9th, but I also don't want to take more than a year for each level unless we find it necessary at some point, thus the dilemma. It almost seems we need a "filler" year in order to do that.

I am not up to speed on how 8th grade courses (and even those that spread out into part of 9th) translate into high school credits, so will have to look into that more.

Thanks,
Kathy

[Carrie]

Kathy,

Our state does not allow us to use any coursework completed in grade 8 on a high school transcript without getting an exception for each course ahead of time. So, basically without an exception, we are able to only list coursework completed in grade 9 on up on our high school transcript. Some states have this distinction and others do not. This will greatly impact what you are able to count as high school coursework. So, for our purposes when we write the HOD guides, we will be thinking of states like our own who are more rigid in this area. In that way, those who have less rigid state requirements will easily be able to use our guides, but those with rigid requirements will also be able to easily use our guides too.

Even with a state such as ours, as long as a child completes some of the coursework in grade 9 (even if it was begun in grade , it can be listed for the ninth grade year. So, if you did an HOD guide a year, not stretching them out at all, you could still do the geography/biology guide in grade 8 and just overlap that one particular guide into grade 9 by a few months and still be fine listing it on the high school transcript even if you are in a more rigid state like ours.

My own son actually piloted much of RTR for us in his eighth grade year. He also did Math Essentials Pre-Algebra and began Videotext Algebra, Rod and Staff English 6, DITHR Level 6/7/8, Medieval History-Based Writing Lessons, The Fallacy Detective, Practical Happiness, Typing Instructor, Greek, Dictation, and a living books science spending 12 weeks each on the following areas: Intro. to chemistry/physics/evolution vs. creation. He also joined my younger son and I in reading and discussing our way through CTC's Genesis: Finding Our Roots and A Child's Geography: Explore the Holy Lands.

Hope that helps!

Blessings,
Carrie

[jer2911mom]

Hi Carrie,

Thanks so much for your reply. If you extended the geography program into 9th for a few months, what would you do the remaining months? Or would you overlap it with another year-long program? It seems like then you'd have a lot of items on the transcript for the 9th grade year, which might look a little questionable - geography and say another history, two sciences, etc. This sounds confusing to me. Have any of your children started LHFHG in K and gone through one program a year? If so, do you plan to extend geography into 9th for a few months for them? What is your plan for the rest of 9th and the next year? Will you extend the remaining programs into the next year as well? I'm just trying to get this sorted out in my mind and I can't make it jive with what makes sense to me (one program per year with no overlap). I felt this way when I looked at the Sonlight catalog before choosing HOD. They seemed to have no 8th grade program (if you did one core per year starting with the Kindergarten core in K), although the 100 Am Hist core was written at an 8th grade level. I couldn't figure out what you were supposed to do to get Am. Hist. credit in 9th. It just seems there is an 8th grade year missing in my mind. Please don't get me wrong, I am excited to start HOD and I trust it will all work out as it is supposed to. I am just hoping to glean some more insight from you. Maybe in your spare time you could write an additional 8th grade program that could be used before geography?

Thanks!
Kathy

[Kathleen]

Kathy,

I can't answer all your questions. But I know that as Carrie is writing the guides, she's writing one per year to stay with her 2nd oldest son. I believe he will be a "6th grader" this year using the new guide RTR. So, he fits in the middle of the suggested age range. I'm not sure what pace her younger boys will be using the guides at. (I just know I was glad that she has a son a year older than mine so that I won't run out of great HOD guides to use! ) I know that since she's still in the process of writing these guides that there aren't any of us that have had a child go from LHFHG in K all the way through - because there isn't an "all the way through" yet.

Kathleen

[Mommamo]

I know this isn't actually what you're asking, and it very well may not apply to you at all, but I just wanted to share my experience. The only reason I mention it is that we school year round, and happened to finish LHFHG when dd was only 5.5. I kept worrying that she would be so far ahead of the guides, so young, but that hasn't ended up happening at all! We started Beyond when she was 5.5, and now at almost 7 we are about to finish it. (We moved, had illnesses, my grandmother died, just a bunch of stuff happened) She's going to end up spot on for the levels after all! And if more life happens, she might even end up in the middle of the age range! Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you because I know I am such a planner myself. I have asked very similar questions. I've had to let go of that and just take things as they happen, which is not in my nature. However, I am very thankful that the state I live in doesn't really have requirements like that and that certainly might change my perspective on the subject, you never know.