Placement help

[kidsforHim]

If a child places in 2 guides which one should you choose? We would be doing our own math and language arts. My soon to be 10yr son places in preparing and CtC.

[Samuel'sMommy]

What grade is he in? If you are planning on using HOD all the way through high school, doing Preparing for 4th grade and CTC for 5th grade and then a guide per year has you completing them all before graduation. So that's what I would aim for. Also, Preparing is an overview of world history and I like the idea of doing that before jumping into the more in-depth view of the guides in CTC through MTMM. I think either way would be fine, but personally this is what I would do.

[kidsforHim]

He would be in 5th grade this fall. He hasn't done much with written narrations.

[TrueGRIT]

Usually when they place in two guides it is best to start with the lower one. Especially in your case where he hasn't had much practice with written narrations. For my oldest that is a big part of Preparing. We are about half way through and he is still learning how. We will be finishing next year for 5th grade.
If it is only the written narration and nothing else that might be different.

[kidsforHim]

Thanks for the replies

I think he could do either, but preparing probably would be the better choice and I already have it. Bought it for THIS year but put it away. I don't know what it is, but he's got this hang-up about the guide. I put it out on the shelf, showed him the books for the 1st unit, 'just to try,' no pressure. In the past he's run from the thing. Today he got it out & Grandpa's Box to read. No, he didn't read it to me, nor I to him. He's an excellent reader and scores above average on SAT. He could probably handle the independence of CtC, it's just these guides! He almost seems shy, feels 'funny' (?) to be seen with the guide. ? I can't figure it out. Any thoughts? thanks

[Gwenny]

I think Preparing would be best from what you have said. He can take on the independent things and possibly be a little more independent in some of the other areas in the guide as well--like reading things to himself. It's quite a jump up to CtC from Preparing and the written narrations are pretty important. I'll bet he would enjoy really being successful with Preparing instead of possibly being a little overwhelmed with CtC. I think that you said he isn't quite 10. Having never done a HOD guide before, I think since he would be on the younger end, it would be good to start with Preparing.

[Nealewill]

I agree with Gwenny about using Preparing. This was our first year using HOD as well. It was a pretty big adjustment for my dd who did Preparing this year. She also was a little bit overwhelmed with the guide. But I ended up highlighting my guide to visually help her - one color in the boxes with a T and then one in boxes with an I, and the S boxes I colored it based on whether or not I expected them to do it alone or with my help. I also wrote in the box the amount of time I expected each item to take. So if it was a science experiment day, I wrote 45 minutes. I knew hands down it would take at least that long. My dd literally has no urgency with anything she does so it would take a while. If it is just reading in history and her narrating it to me, then I wrote 20 min. Then my dd would use a timer and she would time herself. Most days she takes longer than the time but that is just her. The nice thing about the timer though is it gives her a goal to strive for. So it may take an extra 5 minutes. That is okay. Without the timer, it would have taken her an extra 30 minutes. She distracts easily.

I also gave her a formal schedule of when she will work on each subject. I have a 5 minute meeting with her each day before she starts and I go over each box with her. I work from home so I work until at least 10:00 most mornings and she starts school at 8:45. So our meeting helps her to know what to do and have the confidence to do it. I have been doing this with her since starting Preparing and it has gone so well, that we don't necessarily "need" to meet anymore, we do so because we like to. The other thing I did due to Julie's recommendation, I have my oldest dd scheduled to finish school before the other two children. What an ingenious idea! It has made a huge difference. She tries HARD to get done first! She likes being done first.

Also, I have enjoyed seeing how my dd has taken in her independence. While sometimes I get frustrated when she messing things up because she didn't read the directions carefully, I also have had to remind myself that this is a year of learning how to follow directions. So for science projects, she almost always asks me for help. So I do help her - I tell her I would like for her read out loud the directions LOL. At first this did frustrate her I must admit. But now it is GREAT! So she will now ask me specific questions when she doesn't understand what the directions are asking. I no longer get the vague I don't know what to do comment.

As for narrations, you mentioned your son hasn't really done them. I have found that the narrations in Preparing have been wonderful. My dd is now to the point where she does them pretty much on her own. Each week on day 4 you read a portion of the text book to your child. Then they are to re-read a page or two (My dd has excellent almost exceptional memory for anything read out loud to her so she doesn't do this). Then you ask them discussion questions. And finally you are given specific instructions on what the narration should include and how to structure it. I find that my dd breezes through this because Preparing has done an excellent job of teaching her how to do it. We are now on unit 26 and after we do the discussion questions, I have her read the guide and tell me what she is supposed to narrate. I then ask her to tell me quickly what she plans to state on her paper. She does this and then she writes her sentences down in order. My only rule with her is that she must use at least 1 adjective or 1 adverb in every sentence. She does a fantastic job with this. And with Preparing, they give you steps to follow with writing your narration. There are 10 steps given. So you when start out, you aren't expected to have your child do all 10. You tackle the first few. As your child writes more narrations, you then begin to have them work on more steps. For us, we are doing pretty well on the list. My goal for the last few units in Preparing is to start focusing on how we close the narration. We haven't spent much time on previously so I want to the spend the last 9 weeks of Preparing on this skill. I love that with the narrations, you work on 1 skill at a time as you develop your child into writing successful narrations.

Hope my thoughts weren't too crazy but I just wanted to share with you my experience with Preparing and why it has been a great fit for my dd this year. I hope this might help you when thinking about your son.

[Gwenny]

Nealewill, I love your ideas of how you do the written narrations. I need to give that to my daughter, require an adjective and adverb for each sentence. She uses very general and "boring" nouns and verbs in her sentences. She would be one to write, "the man went to the building"--nothing descriptive or exciting. Thanks for posting that.

[kidsforHim]

Well, he shared some of his feelings toward/about HOD - "it takes too long". So far he has only done reading about history box- unit 1 day 1&2 and the history project. In all other subjects (not HOD ) he gets right to it & can have school work done well before noon, including another history curriculum (he has finished it & I wanted to 'test drive' preparing). He is very neat and careful in his work and tends to get weighted down. He is enjoying Grandpa's box & it doesn't take him long to read. He's weighted down about history taking an hour to do. Is there a way to help him with this so it can work for him?

Thanks Nealewill for sharing your experience. I had that same idea come to me today, to write in the times for each box. I had some narrow sticknote tabs so I wrote it on those & put one in each box. Also thought about highlighting too.

Narrations, oh boy, not sure how well I will do there. My two older boys did written narrations in another program but it was more just write what you remember about.... but they did very well. The one quickly learned how to summarize because he hated to write, and the other one had a hard time leaving out the details but he improved by the end of the year. My soon to be 10 son, he wilts at the very word- NARRATE. He used to give me l-o-n-g narrations but now all I can get is "Idon't know"s or very basic like Gwenny wrote.
I sure admire all you ladies.

[Gwenny]

If that is the complaint--I would definitely do Preparing. I wouldn't have him do anything from the next day before the day you are working on is finished. Only have him work on the days work. Then he will see that "history" doesn't take so long. I would follow the instructions as Carrie has them. Don't add or subtract---do it 1/2 speed if you need to at first. t t
Another thing-and this is just my 2 cents. I wouldn't give him the option of deciding what you are going to do for school. If you decide that Preparing is what you should do--(and I think it is ), then you will just tell him this is the plan. He is too young to make important decisions like this, you are the wiser one. Carrie is great about walking them through how to do the narrations in Preparing (and there is a list in the appendix about what to look for in the oral narrations. It is a fantastic guide that will prepare them for all of the guides to come. I really love it and so does my daughter that is in unit 30 of Preparing right now. I'm amazed at her improvement over the year.

[Nealewill]

Have you thought about splitting the History assignment up? My dd does her independent history box by herself in the morning and then I read the "Reading into History" box in the afternoon after lunch. That helps keep things moving and switching things up a bit.

The other thing I found is that at the beginning of the year it was a little bit of an adjustment. I work from home and I had been praying about finding a full curriculum that was well rounded, could meet my educational goals, be interesting for my kids, include hands on activities that weren't overwhelming and weren't lame, and have them work independently sooner rather than later. HOD did this for me. When we first started the year, my dd didn't necessarily want to do every box as it was written. Actually, before we chose HOD, I had a conversation with my dd and told her my expectations. I expected that I may have some resistance when we started and unfortunately I wasn't disappointed.

However, I am very happy to report that we set some family rules at the same time and that softened the blow of her negative attitude some. After about a month, she was able to get into a healthy grove, there was now minimal complaining about doing things she didn't like (she hated looking up vocab words), and she started working harder. We then had to go through a bit more transition of change to get a great working system - like adding a timer, meeting each morning before she started her day, discussing work ethics, and I made her desk sign with the verse Colossians 3:23 - things like this to help her maximize her time and efforts and to create an even stronger work ethic. We are now in a grove and life is good. I love the skills she learned! Honestly, some of these skills are skills I would have never even implemented if I hadn't found HOD.

While it was a little bit of a rough start, I gave her and myself extra time to get into the grove. For the first month or so we went half speedish. We also tried to do a little bit of a minimal approach to school to cut back on the volume. So we didn't do spelling for a weeks, we skipped math for a few weeks (we use a different math), and then we didn't start DITHOR for the first month or so. Then we set a certain amount of time in a day that we would do school and stopped after that for the day. We would then just start the next day where we left off. I am very glad we did this and that we persevered. My dd is also MUCH happier this school year than any other school year thus far. And I am amazed the volume we have conquered and that she has grow in so many skill areas. And she (plus my younger 2) have told me how much they love HOD and are so glad we are doing it.

[kidsforHim]

Thank you Gwenny & Nealewill, your replies have given me food for thought.
I talked a bit with my husband about this & he is thinking that I might be trying to MAKE it work.? That got me thinking about shoes - I need a pair of shoes, they willl be worn most every day, so I find a pair that I really like but when I put them on they don't feel very comfortable, in fact when I try walking in them, they kinda pinch or dig in in places. They're not a good fit. A good fit is important or I am not going to want to walk in them. Do you see what I'm saying? I like HOD and we tried it before, but maybe it really ISN'T for him. Between that time and now I have done a lot of reading on this board trying to learn more about it and get ideas in using it. It's just taken me a long time to get brave enough to register! I don't know of anyone that is using HOD, and yet we live only about an hour away from the author! If there are some areas in his life that he is needing help in & HOD would be the tool, it could very well be uncomfortable for awhile, I see. I need to take this and pray more on it, I feel. It is so hard sometimes to know which way to go.

Thank you for all the helpful ideas and thoughts you've shared! (and any more if you'd like to share them )

[Nealewill]

I agree with you about finding a good fit for you family . There is nothing better. Just little back ground on my history:

Year 1 - I started out originally using workbook type curriculum. That was a terrible fit or me and my oldest.
Year 2 - I switched math programs (am still using this product for my oldest) to a more hands on approach but stuck with the workbooks for the rest of the subjects because while it wasn't a good fit, I just didn't know any better.
Year 3 - I went very eclectic. I stuck with my phonics program but started researching dyslexia. My oldest has a ton of dyslexic similarities so we finished up phonics by using dyslexic geared products. We also switched to more hands products for other subjects. That was great fit.
Year 4 - I got much busier with working from home and needed to go to a boxed curriculum where I didn't have to plan anything. Where I live no one I know uses HOD. But everyone I know uses MFW. So I was recommended to try them. That year we did have a great year and a lot of fun.
Year 5 (this year) - I started the year with MFW but found that it really wasn't meeting my needs at all. I personally found that we were now into the cycle and it was to broad of an age range to teach to. Some products were too easy and some to hard. I was spending way to much time and effort trying to modify it. Their academic goal time line and mine were different for the areas of literature studies, writing, grammar, and general student independence. And I am also not the type of parent that is good at modifying things to fit me either. So I decided MFW wasn't a good fit. Somehow I stumbled upon HOD. It must have been providence but it was honestly the best day ever! I went into it thinking that I would be teaching all of my kids using the same level and that we would be learning together. I had no idea of all the skills they would be learning along the way and how each level was geared to meet each child where they were. I was so impressed by their book selection that I called them to ask them about their program. I am pretty sure I spoke to Julie and she spent a good 45 minutes on the phone with me about their products. I had so many questions. Initially, I was really worried about teaching more than one level and about all the writing and notebooking they would do. Because I don't have kids who love to read, I was also worried about the volume reading their own books once they got to Preparing. But I prayed about it and my husband was so on board that he offered to pay for all new books even though we had spent quite a bit of money on school for the year already (and this was VERY generous of him because he was saving up to build a shed in our backyard - but he gave me the shed money to buy new curriculum). I AM SO GLAD we switched. This is definitely my perfect fit! I can see it in my kids and in myself. We are so very happy. Before I found HOD I was always researching different programs and trying to modify things to meet my needs. Now, I never do that.

I do agree with you also about the fact that you can definitely use HOD to meet the needs of one or two areas. For me, the main "area" that brought me to HOD was the area of science. I LOVE the more Charlotte Mason approach that they have. Text-booky science isn't a good fit for me. And I know many people who use the Apologia Young Explorer series as well but that was also not a good fit for me. I don't mind that HOD uses some of the books in their levels because of how they are used. I love the science experiments HOD has the kids do. I love the living books they read about different things and especially people/scientists. I do love the history too but I was initially impressed with the science. And for us - we are trying to switch over to as many products as they recommend because it does balance our day best. My oldest used all of their products this year except math and spelling. Next year she will switch to their math but keep a separate spelling (because of the dyslexia). My youngest is using only the HOD products and that has been great. My middle child though is using a separate spelling and a separate reading program. He has a language delay and needed a different type of instruction. He also has some fine motor skills issues but the volume of work he had to complete with HOD has been a good fit for him. He - which surprised me - has loved the art projects this year and has completed all of the writing activities without complaining.

So I will definitely pray that God leads you to your perfect fit. I feel so beyond blessed that we have found ours. I am so grateful to God that he has put on it on so many different people's hearts to write so many different, diverse and wonderful curriculum programs. My perfect fit can be very different from other people's perfect fit. And I know for sure that my teaching style is different than others. Even the learning styles of each of my children is totally different (my oldest is visual, my son is kinesthetic and my youngest is audio). So that is why it is wonderful that there are many different programs to fit many different people. Good luck and God speed in finding your perfect fit.