Can you make MFW more independent? We did. On days when I was busy with other things (the little ones) my older would read to the younger. We did ECC last year with a 3rd and 1st grader and did it this way. My eldest read the Hero tales book out loud to his sister and anything she could read on her own, she did. I will be combining an advanced 3rd grader and my 10yr old into Preparing next year, and the amount of work in that guide alone is going to be very challenging for my 3rd grader.

In my opinion Spelling Power fits what you are looking for.

You will need balloons for bigger too.

Maybe this would be a good option. Eventually I will want to switch to saxon though... that's part of the reason I was thinking of switching now.

O.K. after much thought... WAAAY too much thought I have an idea. What do you all think of this? Since DS is technically in 3rd grade (late bday) and will be testing at 3rd grade this year. I think I should be able to fit in preparing (since we really don't want to miss it) and still manage to go back to MFW. So for next year: 4th and 3rd grades do preparing with HOD Then the year after go back to MFW starting with CtG for 5th and 4th grade. We then would be able to complete the MFW four year cycle in time for my eldest to start highschool. Thoughts???? Donna, Crystal??? What do you ladies think?

Ugh! I am just so lost on what to do. I know either way he will be fine... still hard to choose though. Maybe I should try NOT explaining and see how he does. :bored:

Did you go over the explanations with your child at the beginning of each lesson? Sometimes I wonder if it is the way I explain things that makes it hard for him to understand me. I was told in school that I made math too hard and over thought it. My husband can take the horizons book and sit with our son and explain it and he gets it right away. When I go over the explanations in the book with him, he gives me a dumbfounded look.

I've noticed that about placement too. I had my son take the placement (we are half way through horizons 4) and he placed in the 7/6 for saxon. Is it wise to stick a 5th grader into saxon 7/6 math? I like to keep things challenging, but don't want to overwhelm him either.

I am having the same problem.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. That is exactly what I was afraid of. My son does so well with Horizons, it's just that I have a hard time explaining math. I know how to do it, but can't explain very well. That's why I need something with more teacher help. I keep grabbing my TM but it doesn't seem to have any help for new subjects. Unless I am missing something.

Week 17 and 18 with Heart of Dakota Bigger Hearts for His Glory. http://joyful-homeschooler.blogspot.com/2013/03/ive-been-lacking-in-getting-our-posts.html

I have enjoyed reading your posts Donna. It's great to hash this stuff out with other homeschooling moms. Maybe I don't quite understand teaching with MFW as I thought I did. Sometimes I just felt like I needed a little more direction in the CM style teaching and HOD does that for me. Obviously I am not turned off by the lack of that in MFW to keep me away though . I love the program and will continue to learn everything I can about CM's style and am still seriously conisdering switching back to MFW. Maybe you would be willing to give me some pointers if and when that time comes. Thanks for all your time and though on this!

We have been using Horizons math from K-4th so far and though I have dabbled in other things we always stick with it. I am noticing however that as we go on with Horizons it is getting harder for me to teach. There is less teacher explanation and the teacher book doesn't explain anything to tell me how to teach it. I'm torn because I wanted to stay with it until 6th and then switch to Saxon. So my questions are: Will I regret switching to saxon this early? I would finish out the year with Horizons 4 and then have my son take the placement for saxon. It seems as though saxon has more directions for the student and would be easier for me to teach to my kiddo, is this so? I would be getting the bundle, so it would include the DIVE cd's. How does Saxon compare rigor wise with Horizons? This is a big step for me because of the price (I usually get Horizons used), and because I trust Horizon to get the job done. Horizons seems like just the right amount of rigor for my son.

One of our favs was Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot... Cried my eyes out. We also read Heidi and loved it. Other ones that come to mind are the trail blazer books. We read those in place of the Christian Hero books. Same stories, just easier for my kids to follow for some reason. Papa Picolo was also a fav. We did Italy as our extra country so that fit in well. The one about the mouse in paris... what was that called??? Ay, there were so many good ones.

We just did this lesson in R&S too and I think he did great! I love how he did the last paragraph!

Ahh the grass is greener on the other side syndrom lol :) I suffer from the same disease. I have to say though, that if I was only teaching one, I would still be drawn to both programs. The only reason HOD works for us is because there is a good gap inbetween my two sets of close aged kids. 9&7 work well together and then we've got the 2&8 month old that will be close in skill level (Lord willing).

MFW's dictation is written out in the guide. It is in the form of a Bible verse/verses weekly. If memory serves me right the first day they copy it, 2nd day it's dictated to them. From my experience MFW is more open in implementation. Most of it is a prompt thing.

I guess what I was trying to say was that HOD's LA is more integrated through the program. Where as MFW's LA is mostly from the chosen english book, PLL or ILL. They both offer narrations, copywork, and dictation. MFW's is just easier to fit the the child's skill level where as HOD it's not as easy. I wasn't trying to put either program down.

I didn't understand this before doing HOD either. Now that we are over half way through Bigger I understand a little better. One concern for me would be the amount of writing... maybe another would be the book selections. Both of these could very easily be modified with a little extra effort on the parents part. For the writing, if you went into it with an attitude of knowing that you may have to expect less of your younger child it might work. For the book selections, you could maybe read ahead and sumarize or decide if you want to omit the material. This is just with Bigger though, I haven't done any other levels and have just started really digging into Preparing. With MFW the 3 R's really aren't written into the main curriculum in my opinion as they are with HOD. LA is very integrated into HOD. For many that would be a bad thing... for us it has proved to be a good thing. With MFW I wasn't confident enough to know what to expect from my children writing and narration wise. HOD has given me more direction on that. I'm sure others will chime in, but that is my reasons.

We do love it! The kids are doing very well with it and it is a good fit. BUUUUUT Combining for more years to come with HOD will prove to be very difficult. I can't imagine my DD9 doing CtC on her own. Although that is a couple years off still and maybe she will mature enough by then. One of my biggest worries with staying with HOD is the length of the day. I have read over and over how long the day can get with HOD. Can I ask why MFW is off the table? As always Crystal, thanks for your wise words. It's funny because one of the very reasons that I don't want to stay with HOD is also one of the very reasons I am afraid of going to MFW. :) I want independence for the kids, but also want to learn with them.... there has to be a happy medium in there. Hehehe we do have some great HOD talks. We do still love MFW but I cringe at the thought of not doing Preparing. I keep thinking maybe I should stop trying to plan so far ahead and just do Preparing and take it year by year. That was my plan last year :) My oldest will be in 5th next year. We have already done ECC so if we go back to MFW next year he will be right on schedule to start highschool with MFW in 9th. If we take a year to do preparing he will have to either skip 1850 to Modern times and go on to highschool or be a year behind. Make sense?

How much of this can be done by the child him/herself? I have two more kids coming up the line and am tempted to go back to MFW (we've done 1st, adv, and ECC). We are using HOD Bigger right now. The only thing that is stopping me is that we really want to do Preparing with HOD and the fact that HOD gets so much more independent in CtC. So I would be able to focus on my two little ones coming up better.

I tried to quote, but my ASUS pad isn't letting me. I was going to agree with Katrina about the Bible study in HOD. We are loving Bigger this year, but the Bible study isn't what I want. We did MFW ECC the year before Bigger and the Bible study was our favorite part. We learned so much from it and were actually reading daily from the Bible. I miss that. We haven't decided if we will just add another Bible study into our day or move away from HOD after Preparing next year. I know this isn't answering the OP but I wanted to let anyone who is going to be using HOD for the first time to be aware of this.

We loved everything about it except the state sheets. What finally helped us enjoy them more was to have the kids illustrate something they wanted to remember about that state onto the sheet and them sometimes I would let them print pictures from online to glue to the page. There is nothing wrong with them but doing the same thing over and over again got boring to us, so this helped to keep it interesting..

Why do you say that your days would wind up very, very long? We are using HOD and I am trying to decide if we will stick with it. I can't have very very long days! In what guides does it get this way and how long are we talking?