What age for HOD RTR?

[shadah]

Background:

K- Little Hearts

1st-Beyond. We supplemented heavily.

2nd- Bigger. We flew through. I wish I had done it for first.

We are now doing Prarie Primer. It has been fun, but I want something more. I have and plan to use A World of Adventure.

 

But, dd saw the HOD catalog and wants to do RTR. She loves the journal pages. If we do it, it would be next year for fourth grade. The guide says fifth or sixth. I have seen people using it for high school!

 

Preparing doesn't have the notebooking pages. CTC would be ancients again. Would she be too young for the content? The amount of physical writing? I'm tempted to get it just to see. It is just too expensive a buy for a maybe I will or maybe I won't.

 

What age have you or would you do RTR?

[kentuckymom]

Let me first say that I probably have no right to advise you because I'm not even a homeschooler yet, but I hate to see unanswered threads and I did take a serious look at that program for my son and read a lot of reviews. I ultimately decided that HOD in general just wasn't a good fit for our family.

 

Most of the reviewers I read used it in six or seventh grade so, in general, yes, fourth grade would be young to use it. But, then again, I did read a few reviews that said the HOD middle school material is too low skill wise and the high school material would be appropriate for middle school, so perhaps your daughter would do fine with it with just a few adjustments. You did fly through or heavily supplement other HOD material when she was at the recommended ages.

 

However, the fact that other HOD material wasn't a great fit for your daughter might just mean that the program in general is a bad fit for her. Have you already considered and rejected MFW's Rome to Reformation? It also has the Charlotte Mason influence and notebooking pages but is aimed at a wider age range. If you haven't rejected it, maybe you could show it to your daughter and see what she thinks.

 

I hope at least that this bump will allow some actual HOD users to see and comment on your thread :).

[Tenaj]

I wouldn't use RTR with a fourth grader but I don't have your fourth grader in my house.  There is a lot of writing required in RTR and the amount of reading is challenging.  If you want to use it, I would use the placement chart and make sure your dd fits the requirement for that guide.

 

My fourth graders use Preparing and it has been  plenty challenging for each of them (three kids have used it so far).  

 

One of my sons is just finishing RTR.  He is 12 and finishing sixth grade.  He is a quick study in most subjects and has enjoyed the guide without it being frustrating for him.  It has great content.

 

If your fourth grader meets the placement chart guidelines, then you'll be fine.  The only warning I would give is that the RTR guide is designed to be very independent and if your child is not quite ready for the guide, you will lose that independence and have to spend more time guiding your child.  For our family, it's very important to have the independence factor.

 

You mentioned that your daughter likes the note booking pages.  If you are interested at all in the Preparing guide, I'm pretty sure that someone has made note book pages.  I think they are on one of the HOD face book pages.  You could print them out on parchment paper and make your daughter happy :)

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2016 by JanOH

[shadah]

Thanks for the replies. She looked at Preparing. I think we'll go with that. If we get bogged down halfway through like we have other years I have a few unit studies we can do for a change and then go back and finish. or maybe supplement a little. Monotony gets me half way through no matter what we do. I need to give myself permission to change occasionally.

 

I am thinking we will do something else for ancients and then back for RTR. As long as the writing component is strong, I think that would work. Thoughts?