Lots of questions...please help ladies!!! THANK YOU

[tiffanieh]

Hi ladies,

Hope everyone is off to a great school year start! This will be our third year using HOD and I just absolutely LOVE the program. But I have a few questions, I figure one of these days when I'm an old seasoned homeschool mom I won't continue to have such questions LOL

1. We have a friday co-op that we are involved with and there is no way we could (or want to) come home at 3:00 and do any additional school work. Subsequently we follow the guide only 4 days out of the week, so Day 5 is never on Friday. Because of this, we never seem to finish the guides by the end of the year. The next year I'm so excited about the newest guide we'll be working in that I don't want to go back to the old guide and finish it, we just jump right in to the newest guide instead. But in looking ahead in our BIGGER guide that we have started this year, I really don't want to miss out on the activities that will come. Sooo...my question is, does anyone do Bigger with a 4 day scope? Do you combine stuff throughout the week in order to do this?

2. My boys are in 2nd and 3rd grade this year. Last year, my then 2nd grader did Rod and Staff English 2. It wasn't hard for him. This year I bought English 3 for him. But in finding out that Carrie wants them to be done by 8th grade, he will be wayyyyy ahead if we steam thru English 3 this year doing it daily. So my question is, should we do English 3 at half speed instead of daily as I originally had planned? And then my youngest who is in 2nd this year I had planned on doing English 2 with him at full speed this year as I had with his brother...is this a bad idea?

3. Cheerful cursive. My oldest completed it last year for 2nd grade. He was ready for it and did great. My 2nd grader this year is no where near ready so we aren't doing it for him. But now that my oldest has completed Cheerful cursive, what does he do now? Just practice with cursive in his poetry writings? Or something more formal?

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions! I so appreciate you!

[tnahid]

We also do a 4 day routine, but we are using Beyond. What I have been doing is combining Thursday and Friday both on Thursdays. I combine the history and just read both assignments. I combine the storytime portions into one, and we combine the science/geography as well. I have my sons do double the copywork on Thursday from the poem. Thursdays we do more, but my children don't mind since they are getting a day off on Friday. With the DITHOR, I assign more pages per day for the reading assignments to fit it into the time period as well. Seems to be working pretty well for us, except that I must admit, sometimes the science experiments are getting overlooked. Yet, what I want to do about that is to make a photocopy of the science portion / experiment to give to my sons for them to go and do as a team and then report back to me. I tried this last Thursday and it worked pretty well. Science is something I definitely want to put more focus on for them next year, but for now, it's working. I must admit, it is a weak spot for me. Hands on science projects just don't enthuse me.

Friday mornings are our big chore cleaning days. So they are busy doing household chores that morning, and then in afternoon, we try to do something fun, nature walk, outing, errands, etc. It's working out pretty good so far. I would say you could even portion a little bit more for them to do during the other 4 days, and get it done that way easier.

Hope this helps.

Tina

[GinainMD]

We school on Saturday when needed. Two Fridays a month we have field trips so on those weeks our day 5 is on Saturday. Until recently, dh worked a lot of Saturdays so this worked out. With him home on Saturday more now I'm not sure how this will go as the girls will want to be with him doing yardwork, washing cars etc. HTH

[SoaringEagle]

We also do a 4-day school week. We're in Beyond. I do 1 lesson and 1-2 extra boxes from the next so that by Thursday we will have done the whole unit.

[Carrie]

Tiffanie,

With the guides through Bigger Hearts, I personally haven't really mind (for myself) if I'm finishing a guide out for the first 9 weeks or less during the next school year if needed. In my own mind, I have a goal (with my littles coming up) to be on the schedule of doing a guide a year by the time I get to Preparing Hearts if possible. With that being said, my second son has done a guide a year every year and that has worked very well for him. So, it truly works either way. For me, stretching out the guides can work fine in the younger years as needed to address scheduling concerns, lifestyle, or just plain child readiness for the skills being attempted.

One thing I try to stay away from though is doubling up days or moving subjects around to add a subject or two to a different day from which it was planned to be done originally. This is because it can truly affect the flow of a guide for a whole year, as the guide is then being used on multiple days in a way other than the way it was written. It can make it feel somewhat disjointed and interrupt the connectiveness of the lessons.

So, with what you've shared, I'd likely lean toward finishing the guide the following year. Then, I'd likely do Preparing Hearts 5 days a week (if possible, even though it's written as a four day plan, to gain you some time back) to finish that guide in a year. Or, you could just do it 4 days a week as written knowing you'll eventually get on track for doing a guide a year.

As far as your second question goes, if your son is thriving with Rod and Staff 3, I would continue to do it at full-speed. We schedule both Rod and Staff 2 and 3 at full-speed, because the lessons are easily doable daily. Once you get to Rod and Staff 4 on up, you will likely want to half-speed some or many of those levels. As far as your second grader goes, it is up to you whether you want to do English 2 with him. I lean toward the gentle lessons in Beyond for grammar once weekly instead, but your goals may differ.

As far as your third question goes, once kiddos finish Cheerful Cursive, I assign them to do their copywork in cursive each day (poetry copywork works great for this). The goal is to have them write at least one segment of their already assigned work in cursive each day.

Blessings,
Carrie