Heart of Dakota

[bethben]

I am thinking of purchasing the Beyond guide and the Preparing guide. Can you tell me why or why not this would be a good/bad idea?

 

Beth

[HeartatHome]

That is hard to answer since what works for one family may not work for another. It might also help if you have any specific questions.

I'm only using little hearts at the moment so can't answer your question about beyond or preparing but giving you a bump. :-)

[Another Lynn]

I think Beyond and Preparing are good guides, especially Preparing.  I would ask yourself how you feel about your kids studying different subject matter (from one another).  Also, if you dig around on Heart of Dakota's message boards you may find time estimates for the guides (both your time and your student's time) - is this going to take more time than what you're currently doing?  Will you feel rushed to check off the boxes?  What will your 13yo study?  Will you feel like 3 different directions is hard to keep up with?  Or will the plans give you peace of mind?  Do your students like a regular pattern in their school work?  Or will that feel monotonous after 6 weeks? 

 

These are some of the things I would think about. 

[walkermamaof4]

We did Preparing and Beyond as our first year with HOD last year. Eventually I dropped Beyond and moved the younger ds into Preparing. Often times I find myself questioning that decision. I think he would have fared better staying in Beyond. But it has worked well overall to move him. We have loved HOD. I especially appreciate it even more now as I have been reading the independent work with the younger ds and am really seeing all of what the children are learning. It is a good amount of work for us. This year we have continued with HOD using CTC. We love the water painting although we find the directions vague and are very grateful for the FB group and the Garden for Sara blog. I joined the RSS feed to that blog so I have her paintings in my email and we search by unit each week and use hers as examples.

 

We will use HOD RTR next year with extensions for the olders and no extensions for the younger.

 

I haven't loved DITHOR but do love the reading choices. I think I'll add in Lightning Lit next year.

 

We love the poetry too.THe book choices are fabulous. I love owning everything. I love not having any prep time. And this year with Voskamp's geography has been great too.