Calling all 2021 HOD Graduates!
Happy Thursday, everyone! We hope that you are having a great start to the summer! 😃 This summer we will be featuring recent Heart of Dakota high school graduates in our weekly email newsletter. If have a child who graduated HOD this year, we’d love to feature him or her! All we would need from you is a graduation photo and a brief description of their Heart of Dakota career along with any future plans that you would like to share.
If you have a child you’d like us to feature, just send us an email at the address on our contact page.
We are very thankful for your curriculum orders these past years and pray that the HOD class of 2021 goes on to do wonderful things for the Lord!
Blessings,
Mike & Carrie
PS: Below are three Heart of Dakota graduate spotlights from last year that we included in our weekly newsletter. As you can see they are all a little different, so whatever you would like to provide us would be just fine! We would love to have your student be included in an upcoming edition!
Robin Payton
“Our oldest daughter is a horse loving, service oriented, hard working girl. Robin Makamae Payton didn’t meet her daddy until she was 5 months old, because he was at war. Her Hawaiian middle name means ‘precious chosen one,’ given to her by her Hawaiian Tutu, so dear to us during her birth and Dad’s deployment. She is strong, courageous and filled with grace.
Robin has been home educated her whole life. We were already using a great Christ-centered curriculum when we were introduced to HOD in 2014 at a conference; spoke with Mike and Julie. We changed to HOD right away, and Robin began World History. HOD was so complete and helped Robin to flourish as a home educator by making the most of her time. She really enjoyed the Fine Arts program, and many of her projects are now featured in our home. She appreciated the way HOD was organized and diligently accomplished each day on her own. HOD helped her mature and be ready for the college classes that we integrated into her schedule too.
We really saw her confidence soar in academics and she made the time and put in the hard work to start training Therapeutic Riding horses. This is no easy accomplishment to train these horses, and we have enjoyed watching her with them. The Bible lessons in HOD are life changing and helped Robin as she led 26 grade school girls in Bible study every week.
HOD, as a family business, has been so helpful to our family as we prepared college applications and especially her academic profile for admission to the US Naval Academy. As a 17 yr old with a few college classes, Robin will be attending Liberty University this fall majoring in Aeronautics and aspires to serve our country. In all things, we are so thankful for the family that is Heart of Dakota to us, as we continue to home educate two more children and as our kids grow into young adults. We enjoy all the choices for the Living Books section and Literature that are so uplifting and HOD feels like family, so that we trust their choices.
We have always prayed for Robin to do as Romans 12:18 says and ‘Do all that she can to live at peace with everyone.’”
– Les and Gina Payton
Eli W.
“We are thrilled to announce the graduation of our first homeschool student! Our son Eli has been home educated his entire life and began using Heart of Dakota in the 2nd grade. HOD has strengthened and matured him in a number of ways. It has not only challenged him to excel in his academic studies, but more importantly, grow in his faith. One of the things he appreciated most about HOD was the efficiency of the curriculum as a whole. He learned exactly what he needed to (and more) each day without long and exhausting ‘busy work’. His education frequently eclipsed mine or my husband’s public school education and we often found ourselves being enlightened by what HE was learning. His favorite subjects over the years have been Bible (especially Apologetics) and History. The in-depth study of these subjects have prepared him to be a lifelong learner, capable of defending his faith.
Eli will be attending the University of North Georgia in the fall and will be studying Film and Digital Media with a Production concentration. He also scored in the 93rd percentile on the ACT and received our state’s merit scholarship, something that is very difficult to do as an unaccredited homeschool student. We as parents give God all the credit for the amazing young man Eli has become, but we are also so thankful for the incredible spiritual and academic foundation and love for learning that using HOD has given him over the years.”
– Andy and Jessica W.
Carol-Ina Houser
“I have been doing Heart of Dakota since 9th grade and think it is the best curriculum that I have done. It has taught me a lot of things I would have never learned in public school and has encouraged me to continue to learn. It has completely transformed my faith and has made it so much stronger. I love that you can customize this curriculum to suit your own needs while still learning all the fields of education. I also played basketball throughout my school years and was able to do all my school work in reasonable time. Now that I am graduated I plan on working for now. I will not be attending any colleges this next year. I am also working with my sisters to open up a bakery in our community. Heart of Dakota has given me the greatest opportunity for learning (besides my mother) and I can not thank them enough.”
– Carol-Ina Houser
“As parents we have been richly blessed and thankful for the joy of raising Carol-Ina; from 2001-2020! What a unique and challenging time to be raising children! We feel that the past two years in particular have strongly shaped and strengthened Carol-Ina’s worldview and have prepared her well for the future God has planned for her.
Thank you, Heart of Dakota, for your godly commitment in providing such timely curriculum and excellent service.”
– Steve and Kathy Houser
