Need Help Deciding Between Little Hearts or Beyond

[starryiz929]

My oldest is easy to place with HOD. He's spot on for Preparing age and skill wise. My middle child I'm not sure. She's bright but a little bit of an unwilling learner...unless it's reading a book about a cat...then she speeds right through it

Here is her info and please tell me which one you would put her in?

-She is 6 now, will turn 7 late September (we start our school year in July).
- This year we did All About Reading Level 1 and Horizons Math K. She is reading well but we need to cover vowel combos and long vowels yet. In math she easily counts and writes numbers to 100, and can do addition and subtraction up to 20 without a number line and with any numbers with a number line. Writing, she can copy short paragraphs. She doesnt like hand writing but can do it and does it pretty neatly. I will be using CLE (christian light education ) for her phonics and math next year.
- She can listen to books read such as Little House on the Prairie that I read to her and tell me back what happened in the story and about the characters.
- She's very science minded and from watching science shows she knows a lot about habitats, ecosystems, continents, oceans
- We have done pretty much zero dictation or spelling at this point
- She frustrates easily and shuts down. We do reading lessons in very small chunks or she gets flustered and starts not sounding out words she can sound, and I still can't figure out if it's just getting flustered or not wanting to do it.
- She will technically be 1st grade age next year according to the public school system where we live, but only bc her birthday fell 4 days after the after cutoff for 5 year old Kindergarten. I don't want to rush her to skip a grade level or hold her back if she's ready, but I do think ahead to she'll be 18 her entire 12th grade year if we stay at this pace....unless we can do dual enrollment by that point with the community college.

Thank you!

[StephanieU]

I would think Beyond might be fine. If she can handle Little House on the Prairie, she should be able to handle the reading in Beyond. The nice thing about homeschooling is you can slow down when you need to to spread things out. Many families do Beyond and Bigger 4 days a week, which would get you almost a half of a year. And then some families find they need to go half speed in Preparing, etc at the beginning of the year. So, that will help you spread things out too. Or if you finish a year early, you can do electives, community college, online classes, etc.

[starryiz929]

Are all the HOD 5 days a week? We do 4 days bc our co-op is on Friday. But we school July-May.

[Molly]

The guides up to Bigger Hearts for His Glory are all five days a week. After that they are four day weeks. You can choose either to just spread it out over extra weeks or try to condense the five days into four for the earlier guides. Hope that helps.

[gardenmama28]

If it were me, I would put her in Beyond. It sounds like skill-wise she would be ready for it, and that your main concern is attitude / motivation. Little Hearts is probably a Grade 1 or K when it comes to math so if your daughter is already adding and subtracting to 20 she would find it too simple. Also, the activities for the read-alouds, history and science assume that your child is not yet reading or writing fluently (for LHFHG). I would not worry starting Beyond, even if she is not yet confident in her reading since that part of the program is very easy to customize - from not having any phonics instruction to being a fully independent reader. You might want to do the emerging readers set with her, or just practice more phonics if she is not ready for the readers yet. Also, Beyond has two different spelling lists per week, so you can just pick the one that suits your child best.

My daughter is the exact age that yours is..... we did LHFHG with grade 1 options this year, and next year plan to do beyond for grade 2. We have not yet finished phonics instruction (about the same place your daughter is at), but after purchasing the guide for beyond and looking it over I have no concerns that it will be too advanced.

I hope this helps! You have probably already looked at the placement chart, but if not thats the best place to start.