before I hit 'confirm order'... (Hod)

[IceFairy]

Tell me what you love and hate about Heart of Dakota, especially Little Hearts and Beyond. Thanks.

[twoxcell]

I love that it is open and go and simple to use. I love the storytime selections for both those guides and the history books in Beyond and the family time Bible used in Little hearts. The Little Hearts history is good as well but not as much of a favorite. I love that my kids enjoy all of the activities, crafts, experiments, games, songs, etc. And they are easy to do. I love the bible song Cd's and so do my kids. I also love the Biblical focus and the progression of skills taught in those guides. You will be able to see and understand the skills even more once you get to the upper guides. I also love that HOD is complete without taking tons of time in the younger years. I don't think I hate anything. There are a few things here and there that I omit or change a bit but that doesn't bother me. ;) I'm not crazy about the spelling lists and I like some of the hands on math, but I always use SM textbooks even if they aren't scheduled. One more thing I love is the ER's.

[Tidbits of Learning]

I hated that at least 60% of the history from Little Hearts was from the children's Bible and it is heavily protestant. I thought that the Bible books were for Bible time but they are actually a heavy part of the history. I loved the ARFH handwriting K b/c it gave big letters and had a nice coloring page on the back. It worked well for my boys. If you buy the guidebook for the handwriting book it has science for each animal in it for the k book that will add to your LHFHG science. The science book is light and well you jump about and it just wasn't our cup of tea. We added Singapore Earlybird Start Up Science which is 4 small science "workbooks". Both of my boys loved the Thornton Burgess books and we even bought a game called the Uncle Wiggily game. I did not like the devotional for LHFHG either. There were several sections that I just did not agree with personally for that age range. I love the HIstory for Little Pilgrims book for history. However, we skipped the section on Martin Luther and the Reformation b/c it conflicted with our beliefs. The Rod and Staff workbooks are pretty good as well. I liked it better for Kindergarten than 1st.

For Beyond, I was pretty happy with it all around. We did add in more science. I just feel the science is light in the early years of HOD and my children love science and it is part of state testing (required in my state). So we added Apologia's Zoology 1 that year. The yahoo group had some notebooking pages for my older kids as that was the year I tried to combine my 3 oldest in 1 guide (my oldest dd is only 27 months apart from my oldest ds). I did not buy the book packs as they are girl/boy/classic. Instead, I read the choices each unit and let my kids pick out which book they wanted me to read aloud. There were normally 3 or 4 choices a unit and we would get them from the library mostly. We did the emerging readers set and I love it. We chose to do the Reading Lesson for phonics with both boys and it is really good. Even my son who has now been diagnosed with dysgraphia/dyslexia reads excellent. Writing is another story.

The thing is it is very scripted with the copywork and scripture in the younger years for the science experiments and such. They copy poetry for copywork in Beyond after they finish learning print in LHFHG. They do orally narrate some to you but there really isn't any creative writing. Again, this can come back to haunt you if you have to test in your state and writing is required.

Beyond stays on pilgrims forever. It gets very tedious for the children sometimes. A good thing to add to the History for Little Pilgrims for LHFHG is a coloring book that goes with it from Christian Liberty Press. I also agree with the previous poster to buy the Singapore textbooks. It will help you to understand Singapore Math a lot better than the activities in the HOD guide.

I am still using the Emerging Readers schedule with my 1st grader even though we use a different curriculum now. There is not free writing or writing from your own thoughts in the early guides and I felt that hindered my son that did HOD LHFHG, BLHFHG, and BHFHG for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade. He could not write freely like his sisters that had went to school until 2nd and 3rd grade. He was diagnosed with dysgraphia this year in the charter school but as the year passed and the 504 director proctored his state testing...she seemed to think it had more to do with lack of exposure and confidence than a true inability to take thoughts to paper. He had just never been asked to write paragraphs through BHFHG and well it is a 1st grade skill in most schools. My k'er was doing more language arts writing in his 1st grade language arts than my older son had done in BHFHG. Christian Liberty Press books that are used predominantly in LHFHG and BLHFHG are reformed protestant pov and that required me to work around it a lot. It isn't that big of a deal if you have the same beliefs.

One of the reasons I kept going back to HOD and continuing it was b/c I felt my older son who had mainly used HOD would not place in his right grade level with any other curriculum. He didn't when we switched to K12. He tested a full grade level behind in math and language arts after completing BHFHG for 3rd grade.

[acsnmama]

I've not heard of anyone being behind in math with HOD. They do use Singapore, on grade level, and Singapore is known to be more advanced than other programs, even the US Edition! I also am surprised about being behind in LA! Rod & Staff is very thorough.

 

Those two subjects are actually the reason I went with HOD. We had already been using Singapore and R&S English. What I like so much about HOD is that there are added activities, the guide is a nice layout, and I no longer feel like our schoolwork is completely disconnected. It seems to flow. I don't use the devotional though. Instead on the days the devotional is scheduled, we use "The Dig" which is a study of Luke, my son loves it! The emerging readers are good choices, and the questions in the back of the guide are great. My son loves the poetry. Unfortunately I had not exposed him to much poetry before starting HOD (Beyond) but he loves poetry. The History readings are quick and easy, and my son LOVES the notebooking pages, and looks forward to doing them.

[Another Lynn]

I liked Beyond much better than LHFHG.  The only thing I didn't like about Beyond was that the copywork was from the poetry.  I really prefer copying prose at that age because I want them to learn regular punctuation and capitalization rules before they learn that poetry breaks all of them, lol. 

[Tidbits of Learning]

My sons exact areas of weakness for math were decimals, place value with decimals, fractions, and algebraic relations as well as not having his math facts mastered. His troubles with language arts were with respect to proofreading, writing his own composition, and spelling. Keep in mind he completed BHFHG which only gets to R&S English 2 and does not have formal writing instruction. Because HOD is so relaxed in language arts in the younger years, it is hard to transfer to a different curricula that expects them to have more exposure to writing. I do not regret our years with HOD and I am not bashing. I am just saying that I knew that my son had a very different scope and sequence for language arts than my dd's who went to public school and most curricula for language arts.

His strengths were many in testing. They were very impressed with his vocabulary knowledge and reading fluency. His big "weak" area was writing. He just had no exposure to writing on his own for compositions at that point. The math areas were also I think a lack of exposure and different terminology plus the algebraic expressions instead of blanks hindered him.

If I was not sure I was in it for the long haul with HOD or following through the middle school guides, I would want to supplement with writing at a younger age and starting R&S 2 with Beyond or something different. Since each guide builds on the others in skills then if at a certain point for whatever reason you change curricula, then there will be gaps. That was what I meant. I am sure if you continue all the way through it all evens out in the end.

Testing is changing. They do not use standardized tests which compare them to other kids in their grade levels now. They use tests which measure their individual knowledge. The tests give a hard question and if your child gets it right they get a harder question...if they get it wrong they get an easier question until they are just getting questions that they can not answer at all and then the test is over and scores their knowledge. My son scored well on the CAT test, but when he took the state test and the scantron that measured his individual knowledge and exposure to certain topics, he was behind by about a year. So after testing, his teacher told me that had he been going into 3rd and not 4th he would have been right on track.

Even though we are using K12, I knew that the scope and sequence for HOD in the early years is very light in exposure to language arts as a whole until Preparing and up and if you switch to something more rigorous or traditional, there is gaps. That was all that I meant having a child in the early years and using HOD is hard to switch out to something else if you do not bridge those gaps.

[In the Rain]

What I didn't like about it might actually have more to do with us than the program itself.

 

I think we used Beyond, although I'm not positive (it may have been Bigger). I agonized over making the purchase, and had Carrie's help in placing my dd. It turns out that dd did not fit nicely into little boxes. I ended up with sticky notes all over the place trying to keep track of where she was. I think we finished the whole year's curriculum in about 3 months.

 

The science was too basic, even for my non-sciencey kid. She preferred to pick her own poems, and strongly disliked some of the poems provided. As I recall, the math, science and reading were too easy, and the writing was beyond her fine motor skills. It just wasn't a great fit, and we have not purchased a boxed program since then. I guess some kids fit better in boxes than others. My younger dd, for example, is more even in her skills, and more tolerant of things she doesn't especially care for.

 

I remember liking the format of DITHOR. We incorporated some of the activities into a book club. Dd also liked many of the literature choices for older kids.

[raceNzanesmom]

We love HOD! We've completed Little Hearts, Beyond, Bigger, and Preparing is on the shelf. I love that it's open and go, it has a CM foundation (not 100% CM, but leans heavily in her way of teaching), it's skill based (not grade level), is full of rich literature, projects are fun for my son and easy for me to pull together, and so much more. We use our own Bible, so no issue with the Bible used. We use MUS. I can't imagine SPM being behind. Finishing R&S English 2 by the end of Bigger is actually ahead of where CM would likely have a child. Grammar isn't even really needed in the younger years. Kids will get all they need as they get older. I teach the very basics, capitals, punctuation, etc. Some of HOD may seem light, or unnecessary, but it really builds on itself throughout the guides.

 

It really comes down to what you want for your child. I don't want school at home, or to fit some standard. I want a love of learning, good books, and enjoying my time with my ds. I get that with HOD- and more.