I'm just full of questions. :D

[Daph]

What year covers Astronomy? What about Ancient Greece and Rome? What exactly will we be missing by starting with Bigger? I just want to make sure I cover all my bases. I'm also curious if there's anything about dinosaurs. I have one kid who loves all things dinosaurs. She loves all reptiles, really. Thank you! I'm sorry for asking so many questions. I'm sure these won't be my last, either. lol

I feel like our entire homeschool career has involved hop-scotching from one curricula to the next, trying to find one that fits us. I'm REALLY praying that we've finally found it.

[Allison TX]

Hi Daph. I"ll try to answer some of your questions.

Astronomy is covered thoroughly in RTR. About 14 weeks are spent using Apologia Astronomy. My boys love that book.
In Preparing, a lovely book about constellations is used for a few weeks.

Dinosaurs are covered in Preparing for several weeks, and possibly again in CTC if I remember correctly. In CTC you spend several weeks using Apologia Land Animals as well.

Hope this helps. Rest assured, everything is covered in HOD! We have been so pleased with all the guides we have used. I pray that you will feel as content with HOD as we do.

Allison

[Daph]

That's very reassuring. Thank you.

I was looking at the scope and sequence, and saw that there's a possible Creation vs. Evolution section in a higher level. I thought about doing this at home with my 3rd grader, but it just didn't happen. I'm excited to see that it may be in a future TM.

[pjdobro]

I think I might be able to help a little.

Astronomy is covered in little bits in some of the early guides. I'm trying to remember if it was in LHFHG or Beyond or both that we talked about the sun and the planets in general. It's just a bit of an introduction to a few of the concepts like earth being a planet and going around the sun, etc. Then for us this coming year in Preparing, we'll be looking into the stars using the book, Find the Constellations, by H. A. Rey. The more in depth study of astronomy comes in RTR with Apologia's, Exploring Creation with Astronomy.

I'm not for sure how much is covered about dinosaurs though I know that one of our books this year in Preparing will be The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible by Paul S. Taylor. I see that Dinosaurs of Eden by Ken Ham is used as a read aloud in CTC. So dinosaurs will at least be discussed in both of those guides.

As far as Ancient Rome and Greece, they will be covered somewhat in the overview of world history in Preparing but covered much more in depth the following year in CTC.

I know how you feel about missing things. When we started, we thought about starting in Beyond, but due to quite a few factors, we stepped back to LHFHG and I'm glad we did. It was a nice overview of history and a good starting point skill wise for my dc. If your dc place in Bigger though, don't worry, they will be getting wonderful skills and it won't matter the other things in the previous guides that they missed. I sometimes am sad that we missed LHTH, but it would not have been a good fit for my dc. You have to go with what is best skill wise. You can always go back and read some of the other books just for fun. I know we still love the Thorton Burgess books around here and read many of them for fun. It just keeps getting better and better! So far, Bigger has been our favorite guide here so you are in for a wonderful year using Bigger!

[Kathleen]

Welcome Daph!

I'm agreeing with what the ladies have already told you here. And wanted to mention that my son really liked the book Dragons of the Deep which we used for DITHOR last year. It's the non-fiction choice for the Boy 4/5 pack, but if you have a girl interested in dinosaurs, I'm sure she'd love it, too!

Kathleen

[twoxcell]

Just wanted to add that Apologia Zoology 3 has a whole chapter on Dinosaurs, and that is used in CTC.

[Daph]

I've heard great things about Apologia. Thank you!