In those 5-7 weeks, the second born will finish LHFHG as well, as he is on Unit 28 right now. He will also continue his math and phonics through June.
We have been good at following the Bigger guide for reading about history, science, history notebooking and timeline, vocabulary, and geography. We have skipped a lot of art and completely stopped storytime, poetry, and hymns. We never followed the guide for LA and math. For LA, we were one level up in Rod and Staff, so the page numbers weren't the same (but we did do one lesson most days). We were ahead in cursive, but we did one lesson each day until we were done, and then I had her at least a few days a week do some cursive copywork. And for spelling, we finished Spelling You See Level B and then started dictation a few weeks later. For math,w e are using Horizons, and again she just does one lesson a day most days.
So why did we not follow the guide for poetry, storytime, and hymns? I blame a lot of it on pregnancy! We welcomed #4 into the family in February, and I just didn't have the energy to do them every day. The hymns seemed really drawn out to us, especially since our church still uses the hymnal (so she was familiar with many of them). For storytime, I realized part way through that my daughter had read all of the books on her own. So, after 3 genres, we just dropped it. Since she is such an avid reader and tells me a lot of what she has learned/read, I wasn't worried about it. And poetry was just not something we always got to. There were many Thursdays or Fridays early on we would do the whole week's plans in a day. And then as I got more tired and the holidays came upon us, we stopped completely. Art and Bible were hit and miss. I made sure we did the Day 1 and Day 5 Bible boxes. We almost always did the devotional too, and I read the Key idea every day. But, we didn't always do the questions on Days 2-4. It just depended on the day and how much energy I had. My daughter also was doing Awana Truth And Training Ultimate Adventure 1 (with silver and gold sections), so I knew she was studying the Bible a lot on top of HOD.
So now for the next 5-7 weeks, we will be doing 1 unit of poetry a day as well as a hymn over every 2-3 days. I think those two are good things to study, but they were definitely the first to get pushed to the side as live got crazier! I had always planned on doing a genre of DITHOR over our break between guides, and now that our break is going to be almost 2 months, we will try to get 2 genres in! We did one around the time #4 was born, and we enjoyed it. But I think it can easily be too much on top of the rest of the guide, so doing DITHOR when we aren't doing a guide full speed sounds like the best plan for us right now.
Now to LHFHG. I will say we aren't doing most of the guide. #2 is the kind of boy that just wants to get things done. Acting things out (that aren't his idea) ends in a fight almost every time. So, we are sticking to the basics. We always get the Reading about History and Storytime boxes done (plus phonics, handwriting of some sort, and math - but not following the recommendations). Some days, that is all we do. On days with devotional readings, we normally get that done, but occasionally I skip it. We never set out to memorize the verses (since he memorized about 125 verses for Awana this year, I didn't feel it was necessary), so that box and the music were easily skipped minus the key idea. I had tried the rhymes when we tried LHTH with him, and it was a HUGE fight. It just isn't his style. So, we ignored that box. I think when #3 starts in just under a year, she will love them, as she enjoys the LHTH ones. But not #2! And that rotating box... I wanted to do more of the science and art at least. But pregnancy and time had us skip a lot. He also helped #1 with her science many times, so some things we had already talked about and covered there. Hopefully we will be better about following the guide in Beyond (and with #3 when she starts in 2017). But I also know that at his age, the battle isn't always worth it!
So that is where we are. The plan is to start Preparing and Beyond with #1 and #2 mid-July. We will go half speed for about a month and then return to full speed when summer is "over" in our area. #3 will finish LHTH hopefully by Christmas, with plans of starting LHFHG with her in January.
