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My 6 yo is to begin LHFHG this fall for first grade. She is the type that loves to do school. She wants some "school work" to do, and I want to get started on our HOD journey.... My question is should I wait til fall when we "officially start school" to get into the curriculum and just piece together activities for her now? I want the core of what HOD is trying to accomplish to flow for her and not be chopped up, broken up and not "stick" in her mind. I'm still working and the kids are all in 'lazy summer mode', with grandpa's garden and this and that going on. I feel like LHFHG may be a little below some of her skills, but I felt like Beyond would have required too much from her just yet. This is also kind of why I wanted to start covering (maybe half speed) the early parts of LHFHG because I don't want her to go all summer and have to digress rather than progress in the fall.... Does that make sense? Suggestions from any of the wonderful ladies on this board are appreciated.

I am starting this summer, but we plan to school year round. With that said, we are doing LHFHG with my 5 y/o [6 in Nov] for K. I was planning on going half speed.

If you want to start sooner I would definitly start half speed. Then you could always go back to full speed in the fall.

I think you could go either way. We school year round mainly because my kids get REALLY bored with nothing to do weeks on end. HOD takes so little time that they have all day every day to play and explore and other random things, so for them it's not like public school kids ONLY having the breaks to be able to play. (the bus runs here at 6:30am and drops off at 3:30pm for elementary)

We tend to take April off because the weather here is awesome, we have two birthdays and a long weekend trip we make every year during April. So they don't really realize that they aren't doing school for a month, therefore they don't get bored. Last year I was planning on taking off from Thanksgiving until after New Years Day, but we had to figure out things for them to do between T'giving and CHristmas AND ended up having to start school the week before New Years just because they were wanting so badly to do school. Basically we've just found out that at our kids ages and stages right now, taking a large chunk of time off school just doesn't work for them.

All that to say, half speed LHFHG won't take much more than 30 minutes to do every day, will give her something to do, and still leave you lots of other time.

How much are YOU needing a break? This matters to me, and I'm taking a guess it may matter to you too. If going half-speed is something you are excited to do, and is something you can maintain in some type of routine fashion, then go for it! BUT, if you are needing a break, if it is a nice season of weather where you live, if grandpa does a neat garden with dc and a summer full of total free time is loved, then I'd say wait. Wait until you are all equally excited to start and enjoy it to the fullest. I've found my attitude effects my dc's attitudes immensely. Having a definite start has always helped make consistently doing school easier to accomplish, as does having a definite end, but that may just be our family's experience too. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

thank you ladies for your kind responses. Julie, you are sweetly insightful. I am very excited to get started with the content of HOD. My daughter is excited to get started with school. 30 mins to an hour a day should be manageable on most days. i will probably give it a start and if we don't get some sort of consistency (and fun) after 2 or 3 weeks, let it go til we start officially.