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Heart of Dakota Blog

Let the design of the HOD guide help you keep your day in balance.

  • Carrie Austin, M.Ed.
  • / Teaching Tips
  • / November 16, 2023
2023-16-11 - Teaching Tip- Let the design of the guides...

Let the design of the HOD guide help you keep your day in balance.

My tip this week has to do with the design of our guides. Each guide is designed in a way that is meant to help you keep your days in balance.

The boxes in the guide work together to create a balance of skills each day.

Each box in the HOD guide has a specific pattern it follows each week. Each box also has a certain set of skills it is meant to help your child gain. The boxes work together to create a balance of skills each day. The boxes also work together to utilize a variety of learning styles across the day.

Following the daily plans lets the design of the guide work for you.

My tip then is to encourage you to follow the HOD plans by doing a day of plans within a day. This means striving not to shift boxes to a different day. It also means not grouping multiple days of the same boxes together on a single day or skipping boxes. While this seems like such a simple tip, you will truly reap huge benefits if you let the design of the guides do the work for you. This is because the design of the guides automatically sets a routine in place each day. This routine focuses on a balance of skills daily and hits all the learning styles daily.

When you tweak a guide, you remove the pattern and balance of skills and learning styles.

Often, when you tweak an HOD guide, you are removing the patterns that lead to independence. Tweaking also shifts the balance of skills that keep a child from frustration. Last, tweaking affects or omits the variety of learning styles that keep each day fresh without you even realizing it.

Try using the guides as written and see if your day feels more balanced.

I encourage you to try using the guides as written. You may be surprised over time to find that your child is happier and so are you!

Blessings,
Carrie

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This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Della July 11, 2019 Reply

    Hi Carrie!

    I love reading your helpful posts! Thank you for sharing. Quick follow up question…did you intend for the boxes for each day to be done in any particular order?

  2. Julie Grosz, M.Ed. July 12, 2019 Reply

    In general, it is good to do the left Learning Through History side of the plans together if possible, as this helps better connections to be made to the history theme. It is important to do the Reading About History reading prior to the follow-up history boxes (i.e. history projects, timelines, geography lessons, research activities, etc.). If you are using a guide that plans for students to have their own personal Bible Quiet Time (i.e. CTC on up), if possible, it is nice to have them do this first thing in the morning to instill that lifelong habit. Otherwise, it is just a good idea to rotate inspirational and disciplinary subjects…

    https://www.heartofdakota.com/2021/10/07/alternate-inspirational-and-disciplinary-subjects/

    You can search Carrie’s past schedules with the order she completes the boxes in for each guide here…
    https://www.heartofdakota.com/board3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093

    Hope this helps!

  3. Pingback: Keep your child's school day steadily moving. - Heart of Dakota Christian Homeschool Curriculum

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