Preparing

[StephanieF]

I think that ds will be ready for preparing skill wise in the fall rather than bigger which I had been planning. Can anyone tell me how the child's history of the world is scheduled? Looking at the week 1 sample one chapter of Grandpa's box is scheduled a day but as there are 42 chapters I wondered whether all the chapters are covered and how the other history books especially CHOTW are scheduled.
Thanks!
Stephanie

[mamanlait]

Stephanie,

Child's History of the World is scheduled chronologically and Grandpa's Box is added in where appropriate throughout the timeline. It's a very smooth transition from book to book.

Why are you steering away from Bigger?

Amy

[KTLM6]

The first few weeks of Preparing are a wonderful mix of creation using the book Life In The Great Ice Age. Grandpa's Box is used right from the beginning and is mixed in throughout the year when the stories it tells match the time period. By the way, Grandpa's Box is a favorite of ours! CHOW comes in after a few weeks. The Storytime books and the Independent History Books also coincide with the periods being studied. CHOW is scheduled a chapter a day, with a day or days here and there for Grandpa's Box or the first two books instead. It all flows together smoothly and wonderfully. Plus, we regularly use our Bibles, reading verses and stories from the time periods we are studying, or ones that pertain to the lesson.

[StephanieF]

Tank you for you answers, that is really helpful.
My ds will be 8 (in June) and I need something to challenge him. He can write using cursive fairly well and has been doing so for awhile (copywork). He knows the basic parts of speech and narrates well. He is just starting to write out his narrations for me-something we are going to work on over the last 12 weeks of school.

He can take dictation of a sentence but can't remember more as he is still concentrating on spelling and handwriting so I would like to move to including studied dictation.

He loves to have a list of things to do independently as he likes to feel he is achieving something so I thought that the independent boxes of preparing would be something he would enjoy.
I need help in the creative writing area as we haven't done any of this. It is likely that he will transfer to school, possibly after this next year so he will need to be writing well which I think he could do if helped along the way. We have done some IEW and is retaining concepts such as strong verbs and quality adjectives which he points out to me in his reading and speech.
He reads well, although slowly-he isn't one of those children who reads great volumes yet. We have started DITHOR and he can read the level 2/3 books easily.
I feel that by September is will be ready for Preparing and that as HOD concentrates on the skills that I would like to develop it will be a good fit for us.
Do you think that that sounds about right?
Stephanie

[pjdobro]

From what you describe in your post, it sounds like he has the skills in place to begin Preparing. What level of R&S are you planning on using? In reading your post, I was reminded of how gently R&S3 has been introducing some of those writing concepts like how to make a stronger sentence by using more action verbs, etc. It has been such a surprise to me how we have been improving our writing skills without even having a dedicated writing program. HOD really incorporates so many of the language arts throughout the program that the dc continue to excel in skills across the board. We'll be doing Preparing in the fall as well so we can enjoy our journey together!

[StephanieF]

I wasn't sure about using R&S at all but reading what you say about it perhaps I should! Which one are you doing, we haven't used R&S at all. Im so pleased at what you say about the writing as that is what I need help with.
I'll take a look at the samples on their site
Thanks!!
Stephanie

[mamanlait]

Stephanie,

I'll tell you the reason I asked about your decision to do Preparing over Bigger with your 8 year old. I started Preparing (about 2 years ago) with an 8 y.o. and switched down to Bigger after week 8 or so. She was a really advanced reader but not at all able to do all of the writing scheduled in Preparing (she was very overwhelmed). This was our first experience with HOD and I had no idea just how much depth there was to the program. It was too full of a day for us. We found Bigger with Extensions to be a great fit for her advanced reading level and ideal for her (more average) skill level of LA (I'm not talking about grammar, but writing and poetry). We went from 6-8 hours of school a day to 4-5 and we were able to add lots of field trips and extras into our day. It sounds like our kids have different areas of strength, however, so take my experience in stride. I ended up buying 3 full HOD curriculums that year (one for my youngest). Not a problem, though, because they've all been used since. By the way, now that she's 9.5, and almost finishing Preparing, she's completing it in about 5 hours a day.

I certainly wouldn't worry about either Bigger or Preparing...preparing your child for school, should you choose to go that route. My kids are doing exceptionally well in comparison to their schooled peers with HOD. The only reason I would have to give Preparing a real go over Bigger might be because school kids typically get a limited education in a comprehensive study of World History (especially a God infused version). If I thought this were the only year I was homeschooling my child, I would almost certainly do Preparing simply because I think it is essential to my child's education that they understand God's hand in all that has been (from creation, through Old Testament times, through the early church, early European history, Renaissance, Reformation, to now).

Blessings,
Amy

[mamabeavabjo]

Amy,
This is very helpful information for me.

She was a really advanced reader but not at all able to do all of the writing scheduled in Preparing (she was very overwhelmed). This was our first experience with HOD and I had no idea just how much depth there was to the program. It was too full of a day for us. We found Bigger with Extensions to be a great fit for her advanced reading level and ideal for her (more average) skill level of LA (I'm not talking about grammar, but writing and poetry).

I just am planning to use Bigger with my 7 and 9 year olds in the fall, but I just received my guide and was concerned that it might not be challenging enough for my 9 yo. When I looked at the sample in Preparing, I was also concerned that the writing would be too much for her. The dictation and spelling in Bigger seems easy for her, but I guess I could just supplement. Any other suggestions are welcome!
Steph

[mamanlait]

Steph,
I know that some people doing Bigger order the next guide early (Preparing) and use the more advanced Dictation. The Extensions with Bigger are excellent! It is so easy to supplement with this time frame if you end up needing to but I think the combination of Bigger and Extensions will be plenty. I found the History to be more difficult in comprehension with Bigger than Preparing's CHOW. It is very CM and has older language. I think it does a great job of preparing the kids for older books down the road. What my dd loved was to do more free reading related to her interests when she had some down time. I ordered more DITHR books for this (the boys books). Bigger LA Box was also a great opportunity to really make her handwriting more beautiful. I got her special pens and she worked hard making her cursive perfect. I think you'll really enjoy the year.
Amy

[StephanieF]

Oh , perhaps I need a rethink. Preparing would perhaps be too long a day for us.
What does the extensions for Bigger include? Are the extra books scheduled or is there anything else? I suppose that within Bigger I could make some of the work semi-independent to get him used to working on his own plus I could require longer written narrations after the first few weeks. What turned me away from Bigger to Preparing was the use of R&S2 which some people have used for grade 2 rather than grade 3.
Thank you for your very helpful answers!
Stephanie

[3sweeties]

Hi Stephanie!

Just wanted to let you know that you can use R&S 3 in Bigger if that fits your DS better than R&S 2. You could start out with R&S 3 and then take it slowly if you need to. It gets into helping verbs, pronouns, direct objects, diagramming sentences, etc. We are a little over halfway through it right now and it has helped improve my DS's writing tremendously!!!

There are extra books for Bigger with extensions. Someone else here that has done Bigger w/ extensions may be able to answer what is involved in it better than me, though. As far as making his work in Bigger semi-independent, you can absolutely do that! I spread out Bigger for all of 2nd and part of 3rd this past fall and had my DS do much of it independently once he hit 3rd grade to get him ready for Preparing. I am so glad I did that b/c it made the transition much easier to Preparing! HTH a little!!!

[pjdobro]

I wasn't sure about using R&S at all but reading what you say about it perhaps I should! Which one are you doing, we haven't used R&S at all. Im so pleased at what you say about the writing as that is what I need help with.
I'll take a look at the samples on their site
Thanks!!
Stephanie

We've been using R&S3 with Bigger this year. I've really been enjoying how we'll study parts of speech for a few lessons then they'll throw in a lesson or two that includes improving our writing. We learned about the topic sentence in a paragraph and how to support it with the rest of the sentences in the paragraph. We've learned about using more powerful verbs in our writing. Just this last week we started talking about synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. One of the exercises was to replace one or more of the words in a sentence with a synonym. It's just little activities here and there that work on better writing bit by bit. I wasn't expecting that. In looking to Preparing for the fall, it looks like we'll really be moving ahead with some creative writing activities that are scheduled in the weekly plans plus I'm sure R&S4 will be adding in more little bits along the way. One of the wonderful things about HOD is the language arts are incorporated throughout so many parts of the daily plans.

I wanted to encourage you about the times involved in Bigger and Preparing as well. It's true that Preparing takes more time than Bigger. Once we've gotten into our groove this year, Bigger only takes us around 3 hours each day. I think the average time is usually 3 to 3 1/2 hours each day. In this post: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4244 Julie shares that it took them less than 4 hours for Preparing once they were used to it. So generally speaking, I think Preparing only takes 1/2 to 1 hour more per day than Bigger and that extra time is independent work. I'm actually thinking that my teaching time next year for Preparing is going to be less than my teaching time for Bigger. I guess I'll find out in the fall. I just want to encourage you to really use the placement chart to figure out the best placement for your ds. Here's another post that might be helpful as well that compares the amount of writing in Bigger versus Preparing: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3602 We've really enjoyed Bigger here this year and are really looking forward to Preparing in the fall. They are both excellent programs so the key is to pick the one that your ds places best in skill wise.

[mamanlait]

Patty,

I realized from your post that your time amounts are more accurate than mine for Bigger (and Preparing). I forgot that I had included our 2 BIG extras (French and Suzuki Piano) in my time allotments. We do those in the middle of the day and I pencil them in with a box to check so I often forget they aren't actually "scheduled". Together they take up an extra hour for our school day (which is why I had listed 4-5 hours rather than what I should have, 3-4).

Thank you for the correction.
Amy

[pjdobro]

Stephanie,

I wanted to jump back in here to tell you more about the writing that we have done the last few days in R&S3. I had no idea we would be doing this, but the last 3 lessons have been all about writing. The first lesson was on describing a thing, the second on describing a place, and today was describing a person. Each lesson went through examples and the sort of questions that one should try to answer in describing these then a short description was written by the student. It was a wonderful, short lesson each day to help learn how to enhance one's writing. I am really thrilled with the step by step writing instruction in R&S3. It has been challenging for my dc but not overwhelming. I see their writing skills being incrementally increased. I just wanted to share since you had mentioned how writing was a concern you had. I don't feel that writing is my forte so I'm really happy to have the step by step instruction that is presented in the HOD guides.

Amy, no problem there about the times. I hope I didn't offend. I just wanted to share what I had experienced and what I am hoping to experience in Preparing. If I include our extras like violin practice, our days would be much longer too.