:iagree: I have read other materials that are quite providential and HOD hasn't felt that way to me. HOD definitely integrates the Bible into many areas of their guide, but I've never felt it was in a providential sort of way. Rather, it is designed with many open-ended discussion questions which allow you to lead the discussion. FWIW, my dh did not like "The Light and the Glory" because of its providential slant, but he thinks HOD is a great choice for our homeschool. We're also not diehard YE folks and we still enjoy HOD. As a disclaimer, I only own through Preparing, so I haven't used the upper guides. I think it's great to get feedback from others, especially when you are making your decision. I've always been the type to research to death before choosing. However, from experience, I would suggest that once you find something that works for you, try not to let others opinions sway you. I can't tell you how many times I've been very pleased with a curriculum, then I start reading other folks' criticism of it and then start second-guessing my choice. :tongue_smilie:

http://heartofdakota.com/

No, it doesn't matter if you complete them in a week. You just simply do the next days plans whenever you pick HOD back up. There are people (Carrie, including, a few years ago) that use Bigger and other younger guides four days a week, leaving Fridays open for other activities. At the end of the school year, they stop and then in the fall, pick back up where they left off. As a side note, the guides from Preparing on up are already designed to be 4-day a week guides.

In the guide, Carrie adds notes such as "If you are not from the YE position, you may wish to skip reading such and such pages." I have yet to encounter any punitive type of character training in HOD. So far, any character training has been quite positive in nature. It depends on what you want to tweak. Some areas are conducive to tweaking and won't be affected by doing so. Others areas (especially on the left side) are interwoven and are thus not as easy to tweak. You could, of course, skip areas and just read the history, but IMHO you'd miss the richness and fullness of the curriculum if you did so.

In New York, you submit your paperwork directly to your local school district, so if you will be living within the Bemus Point Central School District, you would mail all of your paperwork to them. Here is a link to the official regulations, from the New York State Education Department website: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/part100/pages/10010.html.

My gifted nephew was homeschooled for 7th and 8th grade. Though it was obvious he was very advanced, not to mention he had been in a gifted program in elementary school, when he went back to ps in 9th grade, the school insisted he be placed in a general math class. Within a few weeks, it was quite obvious that he was well beyond the material, so they quickly moved him to an advanced class. At first, it was frustrating for him to start in the general class, but it all worked out in the end. I guess the school just wanted to assess for themselves. As a former math teacher, I can understand, as we sometimes would have parents insisting their children be placed in accelerated classes, when in reality, their children weren't at that level and would flounder.

Yes, you definitely can lump them together. :001_smile: I just looked back on my grade 1 IHIP and I actually lumped together reading, spelling, writing & English, since we used R&S BNRS. On the cbd website, the description under ETC says, "Explode the Code’s phonics workbooks contain exercises that guide students through matching, reading, spelling, writing, copying, and more," so I think you're all set! :001_smile:

I'm from NY, so I understand about the regulations requiring spelling. I wouldn't worry too much, however, about choosing a program just to meet the requirement. Your IHIP is not due until August 15, so you have some time to reassess your situation before the fall. I would wait and see how your daughter is doing by then. If you are still learning phonics in August, it would be fine to wait to start a formal spelling program and instead cover spelling simply by using your phonics program as your spelling program. So, for instance, if you are studying the -ful suffix, simply dictate a few words for your dd to spell using the suffix. On your IHIP, you could simply list ETC as both your reading and spelling programs.

I made the charts on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. I scanned the sea creatures from the blackline masters and then copied and pasted them, shrinking them to fit. So, for example, when introducing the x4 tables, I typed in the x4 table on the top of the paper, placing borders around each fact, to make them look like flash cards. Underneath, I had a row of crocodiles, then a row of archer fish, then a row of crabs and lastly a row of snails. I made sure the creatures lined up perfectly under the flash cards. Basically, my 8 1/2 x 11 papers (I designed a new paper each time a new table was introduced.) looked like miniature versions of the wall charts. I kept each paper in a page protector and then just took it out during math time. I loved our duckies poster and our bees poster (which I did on folding white foam display boards) and I thought of doing one with the sea creatures, but I just never found the time to make it. Maybe with dc#2?

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I hear you! I, too, am very much "by the book" and I struggled with letting go. Thankfully, my dh has been great for helping me see the big picture. Now that we're into R&S 3, I can look back and see the wisdom of his decision, but in the midst of it, it was hard.

We recently finished R&S Reading 2. I love the program, but with everything else we do, completing one lesson a day was too much, so we simply spread each one out over two days, reading the story in the reader and doing "Before You Read" on day one and "After You Read" on day 2. We rarely did any orally and we didn't skip anything. That worked out really well and I am thrilled with the skills and knowledge my ds has gained. On a side note, my dh does the questions/discussion from the teacher's manual with our ds before bed, so that reinforces what he is learning during the day. My dh was the one who reassured me that there was no rush to get through a lesson a day, since (for us) our primary goal in using the program was to have our ds learn the Bible. My ds is towards the end of 3rd grade and we just started the grade 3 program, but I'm not concerned as I'd rather have peace in our home and no tears! :001_smile:. We were planning on continuing with a 1/2 lesson a day, but ds has been loving R&S Reading 3 and often will take the initiative to do the full assignment in one day.

We use the dictation in HOD, along with AAS and R&S Spelling by Sound and Structure. The combination has done a world of difference for our ds. I don't think it's overkill, as the dictation only takes us a few minutes, R&S takes 5 (or at most 10) minutes and AAS takes as long as we want it to take. Since I'm doing HOD and AAS, for the most part I let my ds do R&S independently. When we do dictation, I use the AAS tiles to form words that I think might be tricky for him and I remind him of the rules he's learned.

I'm not 100% sure, but maybe this? http://www.sonlight.com/FH22.html

:iagree: Our state has the same requirement and that's how I count, as well. For the most part, I count summer days as 1/2 a day of school, since we usually do about 2 1/2 hours of work. I do count read alouds, violin practice, educational field trips and the like as school, but I don't count things such as chores, cooking, cleaning, etc., in my hours. I know there are others that do, but we prefer not to include those, and since we have plenty of hours with our regular schooling, it's not been an issue.

You certainly could get by without them, but I found it helpful to have them pre-made, to save me time. I also liked how they were divided into skills, such as one page of sums of 7, 8 or 9, so I could really hone in on particular areas. I used the 2nd edition blacklines, which are masters that may be copied, and with having a second child coming up and the 10% off sale, it only cost me a little over $6 per child to buy them. I sometimes used the blacklines as reinforcement, but I also used them for review over the summer.

We're using R&S 3 for our 3rd grader and it's a perfect fit. R&S 2 would have been much too easy. I dabbled in FLL a few years ago and it just wasn't a good fit for us. I've never tried GWG, so I can't compare, but I will say that my ds enjoys R&S. We do much of it orally and that works well for us. Although HOD doesn't recommend the worksheets, we use them. When a lesson has a worksheet, we do the whole lesson orally and then my ds does the whole worksheet written. If a lesson doesn't have a worksheet, we do about 2/3 orally and 1/3 written. We also use R&S Spelling 3. I wont' say my ds jumps for joy with it, but I feel it's effective, so we're going to continue it, along with the dictation in Bigger (and AAS on the side, as I felt he needed the extra practice). From my understanding, R&S ups the ante as their spelling progresses, so even though it's easy now, I know it will be more challenging in future years.

Just to clarify, the storytime in Preparing adds to the history, but the storytime in Bigger is separate from the history (although a couple of books are historical) and covers the nine genres.

There is a separate read-aloud storytime scheduled daily in the guide. You can use the packages they recommend or your own books. Over the course of the year, storytime covers 9 genres, so if you use your own books (or ones from the library), just make sure you choose from the appropriate genres. Many of the books from their packages can be found in the library, so that's an option. FWIW, we have absolutely loved all of Carrie's book choices. :001_smile:

We do a combination with our 9yo ds. It's the only way we could keep using an excellent math program without it consuming our day and leaving our ds feeling overwhelmed. Last year, he used R&S Math 3 and I knew it would be too much for him to copy all of the problems, so we just let him work in the textbook. This year, for R&S Math 4, there just wasn't enough room in the textbook, so I will write the "longer copying" problems on our chalkboard and he will work them on there. I have him do the shorter ones on lined paper. It takes me all of 2-3 minutes to write the problems on the chalkboard and it saves my ds about 45 minutes of work, plus, he likes the variety of working on the chalkboard.

I've always wondered about this. Do you have any links to the U.S. studies/results from using Singapore, which you mentioned? I'd be very interested in reading them.

When you wrote what you wanted, I thought, Wow!, she's talking about our math program! We use Rod and Staff math and couldn't be happier. It has a fantastic teacher's manual that carefully walks you through each step, ensures you do sufficient oral and written review, and effortless guides you throughout the lessons. From grade 4 on up, there are good oral mental math exercises included, as well as chapter reviews and tests. You can see samples here:http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/list/Mathematics_for_Christian_Living_Series/ The series is inexpensive and right now, they're even having a 10% off sale. Although I was hesitant at first to move to R&S, because of the complaints I've heard about it being too drill-oriented without enough conceptual work, now that we've been using the program for four years, I am fully convinced it is a top-notch program.

If your daughter is anything like my 5yo dd, it will be well worth the purchase. We've done Button Bear, Amber Lamb and are now doing K4. Since she's been 3, doing A Beka Art has been the highlight of her day! :001_smile: The only complaint I have is that there has been a lot of repetition of activities (some of the 4 yo Amber Lamb ones were identical to the 3 yo Button Bear ones).

Very interestingly, before reading this post I had just done a cookie example with my ds this using the repeated subtraction model. We used 12 cookies to be divided among 3 children. When I first subtracted 3 that meant each child got 1 cookie, when I subtracted another 3, each child then had two cookies. Another subtraction and they each had 3 cookies. After the last subtraction of 3, they each had 4 cookies. It might sound confusing, but FWIW, it made perfect sense to my ds. :001_smile:

I haven't read all the responses, so this might have already been noted, but you wouldn't be subtracting the quotient, you'd be subtracting the divisor. Very simply, you're discovering the quotient by seeing how many groups (i.e., divisors) can be subtracted from the dividend. If you have a problem like 45/5, you'd start with 45 and keep subtracting groups of 5. After 9 subtractions, you're down to 0, so the quotient is 9. My ds actually found it quite interesting to see how repeated subtraction relates to division and how the process of dividing normally is so much faster than all the subtractions. (When I taught this to my ds, I put 45 beans on the table and took 5 away at a time. Really, it's the same as taking the 45 beans and putting them into groups of 5, but instead of leaving the groups on the table, each group is taken away as it is counted.) I explained to my ds that we could sit and spend a lot of time subtracting one group at a time, or we could just use the division algorithm. With enthusiasm, he fully agreed the algorithm was much more efficient. (I used the same process when teaching that multiplication is the same as, but much faster than, repeated addition.)