Just last week, Monday morning, my husband found out that he had a property tax lien on his Transunion credit report that did not belong to us. I called Transunion's credit disputes phone number (found under the contact link on their website), went through a short phone tree, and spoke to someone immediately. I told the rep what was going on, and he made a few notes on why I claimed this was not our lien and said the dispute was now open. Their process starts by contacting whatever company or organization originally reported the information to seek confirmation of it's validity. That company then has 30 days to respond. If they do not respond, the disputed item is deleted. Once Transunion was the necessary information a decision is made and the dispute is closed. They then mail a letter disclosing the results of their investigation. Our dispute was decided in our favor two days after I called. They took two days to mail the letter, which reached us two days after that. All told, we knew a week after I called. I chose to call, as I wanted to talk directly to a person in order to make my case clear and ask any questions. After I'd opened the dispute, I tried seeing what opening a dispute online was like, but the system said it wouldn't work with the data provided and I'd have to call, so I don't know if online will work for you. I called Transunion twice, and both times immediately got someone on the phone, so I'd try that before mailing in a dispute if I were you. Of course, as another poster said, the time a dispute takes is going to depend on what needs to be disputed, and how quickly the company that has to verify the information responds to the credit bureau. I've read that you can mail in your own supporting documents, but I chose to let the credit bureau do the leg work to start. In theory, though, it shouldn't take much more than a month. Even if an item isn't detrimental to your credit, I think it's worth trying to remove it. Good luck!

The projected HS plan is on pg. 10 of the 2011-2012 catalog, in the Scope and Sequence Chart, under the "Looking toward High School" section at the bottom. It also can be found at the bottom of this page.

I just have too much free time today. :D

Actually, doing a guide 4 days per week = 42.5 weeks. There are 34 Units, with 170 days in each guide. 170 days divided by 4 days per week = 42.5 weeks, with the 5th day of each week being the extra day. Okay, so here’s my (very) rough thoughts. It sounds like you don’t want to start your DD in Preparing until the end of October 2014. As you do about 41 schooling weeks each year, that means that you need to fill in about 144 schooling weeks* between now and Oct. 2014. I think if you do the rest of LHFHG half speed, 4 days per week, and then the first halves of Beyond and Bigger half speed and the second halves of both guides full speed, 4 days per week it would take 142.5 weeks to do so. Here’s my math (gosh I hope this is right, lol!): LHFHG: 6 Units remaining (right?) = 30 days. 30 days half speed = 60 days. 60 days divided by 4 days per week = 15 weeks Beyond & Bigger: 17 Units = 85 days. 85 days half speed = 170 days. 170 days (17 half speed Units) + 85 days (17 full speed Units) = 255 days. 255 days divided by 4 days per week = 63.75 weeks per guide Therefore, 15 weeks LHFHG + 63.75 weeks Beyond + 63.75 weeks Bigger = 142.5 weeks. As you will need to fill in about 144 schooling weeks, I think this plan gets pretty darn close. :) *144 weeks = 21 weeks May 1-Oct 31, 2011 + (41 weeks x 3 years) Oct 31, 2011-Oct 31, 2014

My guess is you're not going to get a precise answer to this question as the RevtoRev guide isn't even completely written yet, so no one really knows. Hopefully Carrie will see your thread on the HOD board and be able to give you more info. As another poster on the HOD board mentioned, more formal writing lessons are provided in R&S. If you go to this R&S website and click on the "Set" link of the grade level you would be using you can see the Table of Contents, which should give you an idea of the R&S writing assignments that might be scheduled in RevtoRev. Also, even if RevtoRev does contain mostly just creative writing, I'm sure that more formal writing will be stressed as the guides continue on into high school. My impression is that Carrie does not overlook that important things, and will get to everything at some point.

Not silly at all! Heck, like I said, my DS is only 3.5 and I've got him scheduled up through high school, lol! If you don't figure out your scheduling now, then it'll be a lot harder to spread things out later (though I do realize that things can change at any time). Also, how many weeks do you school each year and when are your stopping and starting months for each year? That's really important to know. I wrote down all your other info and will consult my calendar when I know how many weeks you need filled each year. :)

So, what about doing the first halves of Beyond and Bigger half speed, and the second halves full speed? That way the half speed half of each guide will give you more time and the full speed second half will prepare your DD for the rigor of the upcoming guide. And you can still do the guides 4 days a week if you need even more time. I know you said you don't want to take the guides half speed, but I don't know what else you can do without adding in another curriculum (which I certainly wouldn't want to do). And I think doing the second half of Bigger full speed will be enough to prepare your DD for Preparing. If you don't mind, when does your DD turn 8? You would be okay with her starting Preparing then? And how many weeks do you school each year? I enjoy working out schedules so I can help you brainstorm how to make Beyond and Bigger stretch long enough if you'd like. :)

I was posting my reply above when you wrote, so I'll answer you with another post. :) Now, my thoughts are coming from a new HSing mom, and I've only used LHTH, but IMO you don't need to supplement anything if you decide to half speed one of the guides, or do the 4 days per week idea I wrote about above. Either way you will be doing all the content in the guides, just at a slower pace. But the content is there. If you were going full speed you'd be doing the same work, but it would just get done sooner. And you don't really want it done sooner because you don't care for the idea of starting Preparing when your DS is 8. So why worry about going slower? Does that make sense? Also, a big part of the reason I chose to plan on doing HOD 4 days per week to slow it down instead of half speeding a guides is because of precisely the same concern you expressed: not knowing when the best time to half speed would be, and doing it when DS doesn't want/need to. With my 4 days per week plan I feel like I'm not slowing my DS academically, as each day is still a full speed day. There will just be one or two extra days for other things during each HOD unit. So we'll take longer to get through the guides than normal, but will be doing the work full speed each day, and DS will still be challenged. At least, that's how I choose to look at it. :)

abrightmom's idea of taking a guide half speed is great, but another idea would be to do the guides 4 days per week, instead of 5, and add in some other "do whatever we want for school" days to make a full year. Each guide schedules 170 HOD days per year, so if you did HOD only 4 days per week you'd do an average of 127.5 HOD days per year for 4 years (K-3rd grade). You can easily fill in the missing 42.5 days per year with whatever you want (even something as simple as helping with grocery shopping: home ec!). :) The idea of doing the guides 4 days per week should work well for you, too. I definitely agree with you that 7 is too young for Preparing. Going 4 days a week would also keep your DD working pretty much at her level, without slowing her down as much as half speed would (though I think half speed is great, so I'm not knocking it at all). I've been happily lurking on the recent HOD threads, and finally just had to join in! I had the same thoughts as you ladies, as my 3.5 DS will be ready for LHFHG when he turns 5, but I don't want him in Preparing until he's 9, and I just can't be happy with the idea of plugging in an entirely different curriculum for one year just to fix the age issue. How confusing for our DC! Do a guide or two half speed, do the guides 4 days per week, whatever works for you. 3 HOD guides (LHFHG, Beyond & Bigger) can be made to fill in 4 years of school (K-3rd grade). :)