Modified HOD schedule and questions

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MommyMc
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 4:03 pm

Modified HOD schedule and questions

Post by MommyMc » Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:15 pm

Julie's thread about "How does half-speed HOD look in your home" prompted me to write about how we are using HOD in our home currently and ask a couple of questions about how we should use it next year.

I purchased Bigger to use last year but due to a LOT of family circumstances (a child hit by a car, a flooded house, a new baby, an extended family vacation to a variety of historical sites during the school year, and a few other things), we didn't end up starting a new curriculum. So, we kept plugging through the things we had been doing. I didn't want to waste the things I had bought from HOD. However, my kids didn't really fit into Bigger. I now have a 4th grader (who will be 10 on Saturday) and a 6th grader (who will be 12 in April). My 4 year old (almost 5) listens in to our history when he wants to, learns all of the Bible verses and hymns with us and listens to the poetry.

Since, placement-wise, my kids didn't really fit well, I have my older two each doing their own math and LA. We also are using something different for science (although, I would add the science if I had time, but it just takes more parental involvement than I seem able to give right now). Perhaps next year my DS will do it when DD starts doing Apologia science.

Anyway, we started Bigger when we re-started school January 4 after our Christmas Break. Instead of half-speed HOD, we are doing 5/3 speed HOD for the left page and story time and it is working great. We just started DITHOR this week and I am kind of trying to coordinate it with the story time. So, I am not sure exactly how that will work.

Basically, I do 2 days per day of the left-page for two days in a row and then on the day we do notebooking, we only do one day or "catch up" if we have only done one day's work on one of the days. The first week, I did things as written, just to get started. My husband was out-of-town two weeks in January and we did not have very smooth school days while he was gone. We have also had out-of-town guests a few times in January. Considering all of that, I'm pretty happy that we are in Week 7 after almost 6 weeks are done. Now that we are getting "the flow" of HOD, I think that the 5 days work in 3 days will work well.

For next year, I was thinking of putting my son in Preparing and my daughter in CTC both with extensions. Now, I am considering putting them both in CTC. My daughter with extensions and my son as written. This is partly due to the fact that I think that the placement will work fairly well and the fact that since my younger son will be starting kindergarten, combining programs for the older two would give me a bit more time to work on his reading with him. I've never had a kindergarten student that didn't already know how to read fluently. So this will be a new challenge for me!

Let me give you some placement information about my kids and you can tell me what you think. I will give you ages and grades as they will be in the fall. I will tell you where they currently are as far as LA and math and where I think they will be in the fall.

Will be 12 yo daughter (currently 6th grade, next year 7th grade):
LA:
Currently starting R&S 6 for English. Will probably get about 3/4 through the book by the end of the year.

Math:
A little more than halfway through Saxon 7/6. Will start Algebra 1/2 in the fall (unless we decide to use Videotext Algebra or MUS pre-algebra).

10 yo son (currently 4th grade, next year 5th grade):
LA:
Currently working through R&S 3 for English. Will probably get 1/4 of the way through R&S 4 this year and start there next year.

Math:
We have used a combination of curriculum, but have used Singapore as part of it all the way through. My son enjoys that MUCH more than Saxon, but there are some things about Saxon that I really like better (as far as how it teaches terminology, among other things). My son is halfway through Saxon 5/4. But since the beginning of January, he went back to using only Singapore for him. He started where he was, which was the beginning of 4A. He works on math for about 20-30 minutes a day. At the rate he is currently going, he will probably finish 4A in 2-3 weeks and then pretty easily finish 4B by mid-May. Because we started "school" after our "history tour" in the month of September, we will probably "do school" through the second or third week of June (depending on how things go). So, he could conceivably get part-way through 5A by the end of the year.


Although we haven't used Sonlight per se, my kids have done "Sonlight readers" and used their comprehension questions in the past. They are fine doing independent readings and can give fairly good narrations with help. I think my son would struggle more with written narrations than my daughter, since we haven't done as much formal narration as people who have used HOD all along. But, I think it could learn. It would just be a big learning curve at the beginning.

Other factors:
We have used more than half of the books in the Preparing packages over the last couple of years of our schooling. My son owns "Grandpa's Box" and has read it probably 6 or 7 times. We've also gone through A Child's History of the World recently. My son is VERY interested in creation science and could probably teach me (someone with a degree in biochemistry and a minor in biology) some things about the books from Answers in Genesis. We recently got the Hero Tales book, but although he hasn't read it, he has read 2-3 biographies (some multiple times) of everyone in there except Menno Simmons. He has recently read 3/4 of the Basic Package and about 1/2 of the Extension Package.

My children both do their own quiet times already and we usually memorize Scripture by chapters or even short books (1 Timothy, James, Colossians).

However, I know that just the TIME involved in DITHOR has been hard for me. But, again, we just started it. There is always a learning curve with anything new.

My daughter also takes a French class from a private tutor that is a friend of ours who is a French and English writing double major at a local college.

Both of my children take piano lessons and are at the point where they devote about 45 minutes per day. My daughter would like to take up a wind instrument as well. (I used to teach flute and would love it if she had chosen that, but she will probably end up taking French Horn from a friend. :) )

So, does this long post give enough information to tell you whether I should do Preparing with extensions for my son and CTC with extensions for my daughter? Or should I do CTC as written for my son and use extensions for my daughter? I realize that either way, she will only be halfway through the "cycle" by high school. But I think I can probably live with that at this point. Although we are just now doing Bigger, my kids read about 35 different books about various aspects of American History before we went on our trip this past year. They are avid biography and historical fiction readers. I think she will be ok. (Although I do sometimes worry that I haven't done enough.)

Feel free to ask questions to clarify if you need to. I realize that this post is somewhat rambling and VERY long.

Edited to add: I also must admit that coming from a more "Sonlight"-style approach (if not exactly Sonlight), I don't do all of the art projects. I don't even own any tempera paint right now. A lot of my art supplies were in the part of the house that flooded and things like tempera paint I have not replaced. I *do* have the little boxes of watercolor paints, colored pencils, crayons, markers, etc. But I am NOT an artsy Mom and it is a REAL stretch and VERY stressful for me to do some of the art projects. With other things I need to do, there is not always time to do them at nap-time and some days it is more than I can handle with an 11 yo, a 9 yo (who does not like drawing or art assignments and needs a lot of encouragement), a VERY energetic 4 yo boy, a 3 yo girl who copies everything the 4 yo does and an 11 mth. old baby.
Anita
Wife to a hard-working hubby
Mom to five great kiddos (4/98, 2/00, 3/05, 11/06 and 3/09)

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