Whew! You have quite a few questions wound within your post!
I only have a little time right now, but I'll try to answer some of them.
As far as Beyond and Bigger go, the guides intend for you to be reading aloud the history and storytime material to your kiddos, so there is no way that you won't know what is going on in the children's stories.
The questions are also meant to be thinking type questions in many instances, which means that you will be thinking through possible answers with your kiddos (rather than seeking one "right" answer).
The emphasis is on the process, rather than the product.
As far as the rest of the storytimes go in our guides, we usually intend for those to still be read by the parent aloud to the student, but we do give the option of the child reading the storytime by himself/herself in guides from RTR on up (if the parent chooses this route instead). At that point, if the parent chooses to have the student read the storytime books independently, then the questions can still be asked from the guide, but the parent may need to skim the books to help prod the child into thinking through some of the questions.
This is the trade-off to assigning the read-alouds to be read by the child.
If you are concerned about this area, I would just plan for you to always do the storytime books as read-alouds. This will take care of your problem and use the books in the way they are originally intended to be used.
As far as concerns over answer keys in history and in science goes, you will find that the assignments given are typically not those that result in one-right answer. Even in seemingly straight-forward questions, it is still possible that a child could be correct with an answer other that what we would deem the right answer. This is why we prefer for you to be able to skim the text to see if your child's answer is acceptable rather than using an answer key and marking a child's answer wrong without knowing anything about the text read that day. We ask so few questions of this sort, that typically you will only be skimming once or twice a week in this capacity. On the other days you will be skimming only if you feel a narration is off-topic.
Here is a past post that explains a bit more about the goal of the science questions. Link:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8826&p=64701
With my older students in the guides from CTC or RTR on up, I do schedule a 30 min. meeting time with them individually mid-way through the morning where I ask them any questions in the guide and go over any of their work already completed. If my kiddos do not know the answer to something or seem off-topic in an area, we pull out the book or notebook and look for the answer together. This works well in keeping me on top of what my older students are doing throughout the day.
Discussions are another key way that we assess our children's understanding. The questions for discussion are usually in our guide or in the scheduled resource. This keeps the discussion on track and gives it purpose.
Another way we assess kiddos through HOD is with CM-style oral and written narrations.
Written and oral narrations CM-style look very different from child to child.
This is different than written narrations done classical style, which result in more of a summary (meaning most kiddos' narrations will look very similar when done summary-style). These are two different types of narrations.
One is a summary, with certain key points being required. The other is a true written narration CM-style, where the child sifts and sorts through information, choosing what to write about and borrowing words and phrases from the author to write in the author's style (without having certain key points that MUST be included for the narrations to be "correct").
In this way, a classical style summary can have a specific answer key. A CM-style written narration wouldn't even know where to begin with an "answer key", as each child will draw out or seize upon different points to express within the narration.
This is why in HOD's guides, we may ask leading questions to get the child thinking about what he/she read, but we leave the sifting and sorting up to the child as far as what to write and how to write it.
The key idea within our guides on written narration days will provide you as the parent with a summary of the reading, so you can see if your child is on-topic in his/her narration, but it is not intended that the child include all those points in the key idea within the narration.
We do have children practice orally narrating in both summary style and descriptive style in our upper HOD guides, because it is important to have a balance of both styles of narrating.
But it is important to understand the two different styles of narrating, as there is much more to narrating than simply summarizing what was read. Otherwise narrating in general can quickly become an exercise in outlining key points and will lose much of what makes CM-style narrating meaningful.
Since summarizing lends itself well to outlining, and these skills are both important, we teach these areas through Rod and Staff English in conjunction with science or history passages that are more factual. This is because a summary lends itself well to being written from just a portion of a book, while a written narration is instead intended to pull from a more continuous ongoing story, rather than just an excerpt. So, we tend to use ongoing books for written narration practice.
This is because the knowledge gained as the child continues reading the same book, provides insights that can then be drawn upon and pulled together as connections when writing the narration. This process requires a different set of skills than those required to write a summary from a passage plucked from a source, where the goal is a summation of the key points in the particular excerpt or passage instead. We delineate that summarizing and narrating are two different skills with two different styles. It is important to note that narrating CM-style is a very different skill from summarizing or outlining.
I do skim the text as my child is orally narrating to me, holding the book in hand. This helps me see if the child is including ideas, names, places, etc. from the text, but it also shows me that the connections are those which the child has made!
The rest of our assignments on the history side of our guide have a notebooking component that reflects the learning from the assignment. The guide directs the student on what to add to the notebook, and when, and the parent uses the guide to see that the student has met the objective.
Some assignments are copywork or mapping with very specific directions and keys provided. Other assignments are more open-ended, where each child's work will look different. But the Teacher's Guide is your guide, with clear directions as to what is to be accomplished.
In truth, this is the kind of balance you will be wanting in your child's education, rather than having assignments with one-right answer for everything (which often requires very little thought).
As far as DITHR goes, your children are actually reading their material aloud to you at the 2/3 Level and are reading at least several pages aloud to you at the 4/5 Level. This really helps keep me on top of what the children are reading. By the time you reach the 6/7/8 Level, and your children are no longer reading their books aloud to you, your discussions in DITHR and your children's written assignments will shed much light on their comprehension and application of what they are reading. While you may enjoy reading their books, we do not find it to be necessary in order for the program to work.
I think you will find that while it is easier on the parent and on the student to have the type of curriculum that has answer keys for every subject, with answers that are either "right" or "wrong", that type of curriculum also results in less thinking on the student's part and ends up with the student searching for the "right answer" rather than thinking through possible responses. This is usually the type of schoolish education we received as children, and so is the type of education many of us lean toward at first glance. However, at HOD we seek balance in this area, providing subjects like English and math that do have answer keys and do have "one right answer"; but we also desire to approach subjects such as history, science, Bible, poetry, and literature as thinking disciplines where students must ponder to come up with their answers (and all students will not answer the same). Even within the thinking disciplines though there are areas with one right answer, like the timeline entries or maps etc. These have keys or models provided for them.
As you go up through the HOD guides, I think you'll find that the correcting is not as difficult as you think, and the discussions you'll have will be priceless in lieu of an answer key dictating your student's responses.
I will tell you that I am grateful for the answer keys in subject areas like English, or math, or the state study, where there is one right answer. However, I also do not have the same type of discussions with my children in those subjects where there is a key, as I do in the subjects where there is not!
I wouldn't want to forego the wonderful discussions we have in history, science, literature, poetry, and Bible (which I would, if I just had an answer key to check off my child's responses instead).
I find NOT having a key for many areas keeps me in better touch with what each of my children are learning and studying, and their answers give me more insight into their thoughts.
I have 4 children too, all boys, and we do 4 different guides at our house. We are usually done by 1:30 each day, and we do all the boxes in each guide.
I am a check-it-off type person and do only what is in the plans, however we do have wonderful brief talks about what our kiddos are learning each day as we go over their work (and I want to encourage you that it takes far less time than you'd think to stay on top of it).
Blessings,
Carrie
All my dc are excellent readers ( all started to read fluently between 4-5 ) and they mostly read by themselves as I have a strong accent and they often correct me in my pronunciation