We are almost to the end anyway so I don't see a problem with starting very soon. Anyway, I did look at the placement chart. It looks as though my 8 and 9 year old would place into Bigger, although I am still questioning some things as far as how the placement actually works. It states that to place into Preparing that the child needs to know how to form capital and lowercase letters in cursive. My 9 year old (10 in Sept) could probably handle Preparing as she has done HWOT Cursive 2 years in a row. She still doesn't feel confident though if she had to write a whole paragraph in cursive and I know would get frustrated having to do this frequently. I am afraid to push her to Preparing. I also read that there is quite a bit more writing in Preparing as well as more independence. She currently does math and spelling independently and gets a lot of guidance from me for writing and grammar. I am not sure she is ready for that much independence. Should I be determining her level of HOD this way or am I completely wrong? My DD has already done some creative writing this year using Winning with Writing, although, what she has learned is extremely basic such as doing an outline with a topic sentence, 3 details, and an ending. She has learned to put them into a paragraph, add strong verbs, adjectives, and form a finalized copy. Like I said, she does get MUCH of my help with it still. My DS who just turned 8 still struggles with writing. We are currently using Apologia Botany for Science and just today he struggled having to write a few lines for his notebooking on what he remembered about trees. He wants me to spell out everything (which I won't because I know he can figure it out) and refuses to try and sound things out. I don't want to have to tweak HOD for either of them. I have read that children get the most out of this program used as written. The only thing I want to tweak is the math (we will continue with CLE). For my 9 yr old DD, I will also tweak the writing/grammar and not use R&S because she will be taking an outside class starting in August. Also, my son will start learning cursive in 3rd grade (this coming school year). He hasn't had any practice with it yet other then trying to mimic what his sister does.
As far as math goes, both my 8 and 9 year old are in the exact same place. They both just started 3rd grade math in CLE. I have tried Singapore and it has worked well with my DS, but my DD has strugged with it. I just don't want to switch math programs again until 7th grade. As far as grammar goes, both of them know the basic parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects). My 9 year old has been working on diagramming, but my 8 year old DS has not.
I am honestly so stuck about where to place them that I was going to drive 2 hours to the convention this Saturday just to look at the curriculum and talk to Carrie. If I can avoid having to do that and save money that I can spend on buying more books right now instead of waiting, I would love to!
I am also stuck as to whether I should start DITHOR with either of them. I honestly don't think my DS8 is ready for it. Right, now he still can't read more then just the emerging readers. My DD9 is probably ready though. If it is going to end up being more work to keep them together when they don't belong together in the same level then I'd rather not, but I don't want to run 3 guides. I don't think i have it in me to do that. If my 8 and 9 year old are to place in different guides, then I will probably end up being more relaxed with my 5 year old and just concentrate on getting him to read and learn the math basics.
Ok, so who is willing to help me here and save me a trip to the convention??
