Many kids to teach = Many guides??? Please help!

[Mississippi Mama]

I have 6 kids ages 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12. We have always homeschooled.

After years of piecing together and combing curriculum (SL, HOD, TOG, etC. etc. ETC!!!!), I am fully convicted I need to stop over-supplimenting and stick with only HOD. Although I love the HOD guides, selections, etc. I've been a tweaker and curriculum junkie for a while. I've got to stop because it's expensive and half of the stuff goes unused I feel with the Lord's help I can get over this addiction

Anyway, I say all that to lead me into where I need help. Part of why I continued to tweak curriculum was to have all my kids on the same history time period. I know some do it and PTL if they are happy. I'm burned out on it PLUS I'm actually ready to just put all my guys in separate guides--all HOD, nothing else--where each needs to be.

I won't be used to this. I will have 5 guides out to teach from: LHTH, LHFHG, beyond, bigger and CTC. Am I crazy? Has anyone done this before? i've used 3 of those before so I'm not completely new It seemd like a lot!

We homeschool year-round and are wrapping up Beyond along with some extras for my 12 year old. So soon, I'll need to order for the "new" school year. I just would like any advise and help from those that have used several guides at once. BTW, I know it's possible to get away with maybe four guides and do LHTH only part of the week.

THANKS!

/

[water2wine]

I won't be used to this. I will have 5 guides out to teach from: LHTH, LHFHG, beyond, bigger and CTC. Am I crazy? Has anyone done this before? i've used 3 of those before so I'm not completely new It seemd like a lot!

I also have six kids fairly close in age like you have. Mine are a little older we range from 15 to 8 now. When I look at your kids ages I see at most three guides. I am thinking your three year old may fall into LHTH and then your 6 and 8 year old probably can fit into one guide as well as putting the 10 and 12 year old into their own guide. I would seriously look at maximum of 3 guides and I think you can do it. Just look at the placement chart and see where they fall and then look at the over lap and I think you are going to find with the flexibility within the levels you can fit them into three. Maybe you could list where they all fall on the placement chart and we can help you here get that level of guidebooks down. I think you would find doing 5 books so overwhelming that you would lose the joy of HOD in the process completely. I would hate to see that happen to you. So take a breath and open your mind to the less is more for a moment and have a look to see how they could fit. I think you will be much happier with a plan like that. I know the ladies here will help you get the best fit!

[countrymom]

My first thought when I read your post was to wait on LHTH for your 3 yr old and just do the guides with your upper 4. It would give you one more year to get the olders more independent and your now 3 yr old would be ready to really sail in LHTH next year. Then I read your last and I took it to mean the 12 yr old was finished Beyond and some extras - but maybe the extras were the 12 yr old and Beyond was another child? Anyway, if your 12 yr old is really just finishing Beyond I wonder if it wouldn't be better to put him or her in Preparing instead, perhaps with extensions, with your 10 yr old. Then your 6 and 8 could go in Beyond and bigger and you would be in 3 guides. Without having any idea of where your children place on the chart (which is most important), that is my first thought. I think if you can drop your 3 yr old for this year you might be able to get into 3 guides some way. Just a thought.

[MomtoJGJE]

Have you looked at where your children place individually on the placement chart?

I have four, soon to be five, children and have them separated, so I'll be running five guides at one point. Right now I'm doing four. But I don't think I'd do LHTH, LHFHG, Beyond, and Bigger... At least not all starting at the same time, you know? Like right now I have LHTH, LHFHG, and Beyond, but my Beyond child is almost done, LHFHG is in unit 10, and LHTH is just for fun right now because she wants to do school like her sisters.

I would definitely look at the placement chart for each one separately.

[StillJulie]

I don't think you're crazy. It can be a large time commitment, though.

I have two weeks under my belt now of

Rev to Rev with my 7th grade daughter

CTC with my 5th grade son

Bigger with my 3rd grade son

LHFHG with my 1st grade daughter

and Sonlight's PreK 3/4 with my 3yo and 4yo (they did LHTH last year and will do Sonlight's PreK 4/5 for kindergarten next year, followed by LHFHG the following year for 1st grade) I haven't combined any children before these two b/c it didn't seem the right thing to do (for various reasons). I am not wholly committed to combining these two if it doesn't seem to work well for them, but they're my first two that would only be one grade apart by public school standards, so I'll give it a try...


My daily schedule tends to be something like this:

8 til noon: teach (rotating around, working independently with various children; don't usually get to all six before lunch)

noon til 1: break for lunch (my husband usually eats the noon meal with us, but not the evening meal, so we have a bigger meal at noon, so it takes a little longer to clean up)

1 til 3: teach (rotating around again)

3 til 4:30 supposed to be "quiet time" when I get a break, I usually try to exercise during this time

4:30 kids have snacks, I correct some work and go over any remaining things with kiddos (usually only my oldest)


Sometimes I will do school with a child or two in the evening so that they can work with Daddy (we farm) the following day w/o having schoolwork hanging over their head.

[mskogen]

Placement is sooo important. If you would share where each of your children places on the placement chart that would really help everyone give the best advice.
I want to encourage you that multiple guides is possible, I run 4 and am done teaching by Noon. (We start at 8am) Looking forward to reading more about your kiddos

[Mississippi Mama]

Placement is sooo important. If you would share where each of your children places on the placement chart that would really help everyone give the best advice.
I want to encourage you that multiple guides is possible, I run 4 and am done teaching by Noon. (We start at 8am) Looking forward to reading more about your kiddos

WOW! Being done by 12 or 1 would be nice:)

Ok-sorry for the late reply. My guys "place" at each of these levels where I mentioned the guides. My 8 and 10 year old are finishing up phonics (10 year old is dyslexic and I just got behind teaching the 8 year old). Those two are definitely in Beyond as placement goes. My 6 year old is in the LHFHG and the 3 year old is in LHTH (which I do with him s-l-o-w-l-y). Then my 12 year old...he falls into CTC, even preparing. We don't use Singapore, we use Teaching Textbooks and he reads great, so with him, the hold-back on him is getting better at handwriting and grammar (2 subjects he hates). He's also the history buff and never has done a full scope study of world history.

Does this help? I appreciate you guys commenting:) And yes, staggering the start dates of the guides looks like a good idea too (someone mentioned that above too).

[psreit]

If your 8 & 10 yo both place in Beyond, if you combine them, that would put you in 4 guides instead of 5. I agree with the pp who said to wait on LHTH. That would give you 3 guides to work and would not be overwhelming while you get adjusted to doing just HOD. I only hs one, so I don't know what it is like to use multiple guides, but I can only imagine what it would be like here, trying to do multiple guides with several dc who not independent.

I jumped around with curriculum when I homeschooled our older three. I began doing that with our youngest, until I found HOD. This is our 3rd year with HOD for our core curriculum, and it feels so good, come spring convention time, to not have to spend time looking for curriculum. You won't be disappointed.

[MomtoJGJE]

Then if I were you I'd do Preparing, with extensions, Beyond, and LHFHG... then I'd fit in LHTH whenever I wanted to/could.

Honestly, my 3yo will not let me skip school with her most days So generally I spread it out among different people. DH might read the Bible story to her, then my oldest will do the Hide and Seek page (or whatever), then my second will do the letter activity or talk about the letter some more or something with her, then I'll do the finger play with her.

I also have occasionally started letting my oldest read the Burgess book to my LHFHG child while I do something with my Beyond child. It really has brought them closer together, and I don't mind if a word is missed here and there with those books.

You could start out doing Beyond full speed and then LHFHG half speed and that'll let you spread those guides out a bit. That's what I did, and now my Beyond child is in week 25 (I think, haha) and my LHFHG child is in week 10 or so. And since your oldest you said technically places in CTC but you wanted to do the overview of history, you could even do school 5 days a week instead of 4 in Preparing.

The other thought is that you could do Bigger with your middle two (8 and 10) but do Emerging Readers instead of DITHOR and place them where they place with things like Language Arts, and you already do a separate math. You could start it out half speed to let them get the hang of it and then start your LHFHG child after tehy start going full speed. Then do CTC with your oldest because it's more independent. I'd start that one first actually and let him (her? I can't remember, sorry ) get the hang of the flow....

And FWIW, we are doing, like I said, Preparing, Beyond, LHFHG, and LHTH... we get done with the older three in about 3 hours total, just counting HOD stuff. LHTH could fit in before lunch, but I'm trying to incorporate AWANA and chores plus American Heritage Girls badge work... So that's why LHTH is spread out among the day and among the family.

[Mumkins]

Here's my blog post on uncombining http://aheartturnedtohome.blogspot.ca/2 ... ldren.html and I made one on here too:

Basically, I had my oldest two together as they are just two years apart. And I wanted my next two together too, initially. However, I found that although my second child was very bright and could do the work, once I go the books for CTC, I knew he would gain more from it if we held off a bit. Plus, my DD was ready for it now. Looking back at Bigger and Preparing, I'd always dragged him through a bit. My next set left me waiting for the younger one to get old enough, which meant holding my older one back. Then, there's the baby and he'd have to go it alone anyway.

I decided to put everyone in their own guides this year. I'm doing CTC, Preparing, LHFHG and LHTH. We're only on Day 2. But we finished all but dictation and research for my Preparing child. But, we decided to just go ahead and do all the history project yesterday, so he can do research during the time scheduled for the project today. I never thought I'd want to do this, but I have a lot of peace about it.

Another thing that helped me was seeing how independent guides get. I had decided that I HAD to combine while doing Bigger. There's no way you could do 5 guides like Bigger, that is all teacher directed. But as you go up, it becomes less and less that you do as the teacher. By the time my 5th starts LHFHG, the others will be in Preparing, RTR, the geography guide that's coming out this year and the 2nd year of highschool guide. I think it'll be extremely doable.

When others said it's easier to do different guides at children's own levels, I believe that to be true.

[Mississippi Mama]

Thank you all for your suggestions. Maybe I can search the forum for more tips on uncombining.

[my3sons]

Wow - the ladies have really had some great responses here! I love how willing the ladies on this board are to give of their time, advice, and encouragement. Having read through all of these good thoughts, and your placement details, I think LHFHG, Beyond, and PHFHG with extensions (with LHTH as time allows) sounds very doable.

We do 3 guides, and we find it very manageable. I do not have as many dc as you do, and I realize that will naturally make your day busier, but I wanted to encourage you that you truly can do multiple guides with HOD and have a less hectic, more enjoyable homeschooling day than you had when you were trying to put everyone together in the same time period. I'm excited for you to try this!

I have some great threads to link you to that will help reinforce your decision to combine some dc but not all dc...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9338
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9340
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9342

Here is a wonderful thread about larger families successfully using multiple HOD guides...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9325&p=68227#p68227

Best tips for peace, sanity, or really helpful stuff...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4929

You asked for help in making this work. In this thread I shared my best tips for making multiple guides work well, and I included our schedule for last year doing RevtoRev, PHFHG, and LHFHG...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11724&p=85112

Your older dc can be such a help with the youngers, as I described in the above thread. I think you will find you can enjoy your day so much more by dividing and conquering! It seems like you are a researcher, so that is why I included all of these many threads. I am hoping this is helpful and not overwhelming. Please keep asking questions, and we all will be glad to help! This board is very encouraging - full of lovely Christian ladies who are so gracious. I am looking forward to getting to know you here too!

In Christ,
Julie

[Mississippi Mama]

Wow - the ladies have really had some great responses here! I love how willing the ladies on this board are to give of their time, advice, and encouragement. Having read through all of these good thoughts, and your placement details, I think LHFHG, Beyond, and PHFHG with extensions (with LHTH as time allows) sounds very doable.

We do 3 guides, and we find it very manageable. I do not have as many dc as you do, and I realize that will naturally make your day busier, but I wanted to encourage you that you truly can do multiple guides with HOD and have a less hectic, more enjoyable homeschooling day than you had when you were trying to put everyone together in the same time period. I'm excited for you to try this!

I have some great threads to link you to that will help reinforce your decision to combine some dc but not all dc...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9338
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9340
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9342

Here is a wonderful thread about larger families successfully using multiple HOD guides...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9325&p=68227#p68227

Best tips for peace, sanity, or really helpful stuff...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4929

You asked for help in making this work. In this thread I shared my best tips for making multiple guides work well, and I included our schedule for last year doing RevtoRev, PHFHG, and LHFHG...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11724&p=85112

Your older dc can be such a help with the youngers, as I described in the above thread. I think you will find you can enjoy your day so much more by dividing and conquering! It seems like you are a researcher, so that is why I included all of these many threads. I am hoping this is helpful and not overwhelming. Please keep asking questions, and we all will be glad to help! This board is very encouraging - full of lovely Christian ladies who are so gracious. I am looking forward to getting to know you here too!

In Christ,
Julie

Thank you Julie and everyone else. I'm reading these links now:) I'm very excited and feel very good about this. i only wish I had started earlier with my oldest:)