[HOD Beyond or WP Hideaways?]

Just curious, does your daughter have a preference at this point as to which program she prefers? Does she seem to connect better with one of them?

 

 

She says she prefers the Hideaways program because she can make hideaways. Though she doesn't seem to retain as much as she did with the Beyond program. Which is really another part of my indecision problem.

 

So how do I let go of the program I want to do and embrace the program (with the extra work for mom due to pre-reading the books) that my DD prefers?

[HOD Beyond or WP Hideaways?]

I have both HOD's Beyond program (with all it's pieces) and WP Hideaways in History program (With all it's pieces) sitting on my shelves. I really love the idea of Beyond being so Christ-centered and being American history. My DD enjoyed the activities that went with the program. And she enjoys the emerging readers list so far. (And it seems to fit her well.) Yet, my DD seems to be able to speed through most of the work very quickly. (For reference she is a 6 year old first grader this new school year) She can do all the history readings with associated activites for the week in one day. (At least the first 2 weeks worth.) So we tried Hideaways this week which is generally a chapter of SOTW 1 each day. Some chapters she had a hard time sitting through. But she loved making the hideaway and doing the notebook page that WP offers.

 

I feel like I'm torn in two. I love the Christ-centered program since that is important to us as a family. Yet I like that WP has so many options to do and I can teach both kids with one program (we only have 2 with no more planned). But WP has the Bible as an add on subject not woven inoo the main lessons. How does one choose? And if I went with HOD's Beyond, how to I slow her down or give her more to do?

 

Please help this very confused mom.

[What is your schedule for K? MUS Primer?]

We finished Primer in our K year. We just did it at DD's speed. It took weeks before she really understood place value. But she could speed through some of the skip counting later in the book. Each child is different so there is no set schedule that most MUS people do.

[Do sight words or sounding out words come easiest for your child?]

My son was the same way. We would have a whole row of cat, mat, rat, sat... and he would sound out every one! When we came to "the" I would have to tell him not to sound it out (he would try every time). Once he really knew the words and was reading them by sight because of familiarity, it ceased to be a problem. He did this right around his 8th birthday.

 

 

My DD is 6 and this was her start. She is finally starting to recognize the as a sight word. But we have so many more sight words to go. So for her sounding it out comes easier.

[When is your "school year"?]

Here in PA, we have to have 180 days so I try to sit down with a calendar and mark at least 180 throughout the year. We run our school year from July 1 to May 31 and take off the month of June plus lots of other breaks.

[Encyclopedia sets...every schoolroom needs a set? or not?]

We don't believe in having a set of Encyclopedias sitting around since the information in them always seems to be changing. If I were to own something, I'd get it on CD. But really, in this day and age, we just look it up online.