How do you run three different programs and take care of a little one? Wouldn't it be easier to do one thing for history, science, and Bible?
These are common questions people ask. And honestly, it isn't always easy running three guides with an active little guy! But it is doable, and honestly, it might be easier than combining for some things!
How do we do it? Well, in the early guides (before Bigger), I focus on the basics (math, phonics/reading, and handwriting). Then we add in history reading, devotional, and storytime. These are what we aim to complete daily. The rest of the guides are icing on the cake! We never focus on the memorization in the HOD guides since they all have Awana and a verse for church already. We normally read the HOD verses a few times each unit, but it isn't a focus for us. Cutting out those things keeps things doable. And since they often join in on science and fun things the oldest does, I am not worried about those missed boxes.
Second, I try to keep the oldest going in her guide while I work with the other two. While I read to one of the middle kids, she does something independently. Now that she is starting CtC, it is even easier because she has more she can do without me. In Bigger and Preparing, there were less things she could do completely independently. But the more she could get done while I was working with someone else, the better!
Third, the middle two are often charged with playing and occupying the youngest. They can take him outside or to his room or to the family room (if the oldest is working in there) and play with him. I some times give them permission to use a tablet or phone to help entertain him (baby piano or songs on Starfall are their two options). When he is about 2, I might allow them to do a show with him to keep him content while I read to others. It isn't always easy to keep him busy, but I aim for 15 minutes away from him at a time right now. That is normally enough time to do a box with another child.
When the little guy is napping, we try to make the most of the time! He currently takes two naps, one to two hours each. I can get a lot of reading to the kids and them reading to me done during the naps. I personally like to leave the afternoon nap time as "me" time, but often it is a catch up time as well.
Finally, we take lots of breaks! They go outside together and play. They play with Legos or board games inside. My oldest gets breaks to read for fun. Without the breaks, their attitudes fall apart. But with the breaks, normally we get school done without too much fussing!
Here is a basic schedule for our day when we were running LHFHG, Beyond, and Preparing(yet now two days are the same):
8am - big kids do math
9am - do history (and devotional) with #3, #1 does an independent subject.
9:30am - do history and devotional/Bible with #2, #1 done an independent subject
10am - do history with #1, #3 does XtraMath or handwriting
11am - do storytime with #3, #1 does independent item, and #2 does XtraMath or copywork
11:30am - do storytime with #2, #1 does something independent if she has anything left
12pm - do storytime with #1, #2 and #3 do XtraMath or handwriting/copywork
1pm - phonics/reading for #3
1:20pm - phonics/reading for #2
1:40pm - DITHOR for #1
2pm - grammar for #1
2:30pm - spelling for #2 and dictation for #1
That puts us done by 3, which is about right. Most things take less than 30 minutes, so there is lots of free time worked in. Some things actually don't even take 15 minutes! On days we are really with it and motivated, we are done by 1. But those are few and far between.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Getting Ready for Bigger - Take 2!
My second born is starting Bigger right now. We have made it through one day of the guide in the last 5 days. We are intentionally going slow, getting use to everything in the new guide while starting to enjoy the summer.
My son will be using the guide as written this year, working through the Emerging Readers (he has completed the Early Readers Bible and is working through the Beginners Bible now), doing Rod and Staff 2, and Cheerful Cursive. My oldest has ahead in all these areas, so it will be a little different feel! He is not as strong of a reader, but his fine motor skills are probably stronger than hers now.
Learning from when my oldest went through the guide, we are using two binders this time around. We also have a composition book for grammar, a file box and index cards for vocabulary, and we will add a composition book for dictation probably (he is currently just doing spelling on random pieces of paper, but I would like it more contained soon).
For the binders, the first is for science. I have two sections in the binder, one for labs and one for notebooking. The dividers have pockets, where I have placed enough pages for the year (hopefully). Then there are enough page protectors to put everything (placing pages back to back).
My son will be using the guide as written this year, working through the Emerging Readers (he has completed the Early Readers Bible and is working through the Beginners Bible now), doing Rod and Staff 2, and Cheerful Cursive. My oldest has ahead in all these areas, so it will be a little different feel! He is not as strong of a reader, but his fine motor skills are probably stronger than hers now.
Learning from when my oldest went through the guide, we are using two binders this time around. We also have a composition book for grammar, a file box and index cards for vocabulary, and we will add a composition book for dictation probably (he is currently just doing spelling on random pieces of paper, but I would like it more contained soon).
For the binders, the first is for science. I have two sections in the binder, one for labs and one for notebooking. The dividers have pockets, where I have placed enough pages for the year (hopefully). Then there are enough page protectors to put everything (placing pages back to back).
The second binder is for everything else - timeline, history notebooking, poetry, and projects. For the timeline, I printed the grid from the Facebook group again. This time though, I printed it to make a little booklet. I then hole punched the pages and put them in the front of the binder. For history notebooking, I have it set up just like science with the blank pages in the pocket of the divider and page protectors behind. The poetry section is actually being reused from my oldest. It has two poems per page in page protectors. We use dry erase markers to mark rhyming, syllables, etc. as they are covered in the guide. It is nice to have them reusable that way! The final section is blank page protectors for any projects, geography, etc that are done on regular sized paper (that we want to keep).
Getting Ready for CtC
My oldest started Creation to Christ (from Heart of Dakota) this week. Our goal is one unit over three weeks, as we are kind of in summer mode. It is nice to start the guides at the beginning of the summer, work through them slowly while enjoying all of the summer things, and then be ready to go full speed when public schools start here in mid August. Hopefully we will have 5-7 units done before then!
After finding one huge binder was not ideal with Preparing, I decided to go with smaller binders for CtC. We will continue the same common place book and composition books for dictation and grammar. We started the composition books back in Bigger, and they are still less than half full I think! We do a large portion of Rod and Staff English orally, and we also do most of the workbook pages. So that cuts down on how much gets put in the composition books. As for dictation, we are still on Level 3. We didn't do it as often as we should have I think, as it was something easily skipped. We are trying to be more intentional about it now, so hopefully we can get through Level 3 by Thanksgiving, if not sooner! Here is everything but DITHOR on her shelf. You will see math (Horizons 5 with the spiral bound answer key next to it), Dictation (in the teal report cover), Rod and Staff 5, and then a writing program we will try. The rest is the guide, binders described below, and the books we will be using for the first few units.
Now for the set-up of everything else. I decided to do three 1/2in binders for CtC. The first binder is for the history notebooking pages. I also put a few page protectors in the back of the binder for history projects, etc.
The second binder is for science. There are three sections to this binder: notebooking, lab, and questions. I decided not to do page protectors this time around. Hopefully it will work well. Each section has the needed paper already hole punched and ready to go.
The third binder is for Bible study and geography. I printed the maps and a few travel logs for geography from the CD that comes with the book. For Bible study, I ended up printing Genesis 1-11. You can just use your own Bible for this, but my daughter was not happy about having to mark up her Bible. She has one she marks up a lot, and with so many markings, she wouldn't be able to read what we were doing for school. So I was going to have her use one of her other Bibles (she has 3), but she wants to keep that one "clean." I think there will be other paper things created, but I am unsure what they are at this point!
After finding one huge binder was not ideal with Preparing, I decided to go with smaller binders for CtC. We will continue the same common place book and composition books for dictation and grammar. We started the composition books back in Bigger, and they are still less than half full I think! We do a large portion of Rod and Staff English orally, and we also do most of the workbook pages. So that cuts down on how much gets put in the composition books. As for dictation, we are still on Level 3. We didn't do it as often as we should have I think, as it was something easily skipped. We are trying to be more intentional about it now, so hopefully we can get through Level 3 by Thanksgiving, if not sooner! Here is everything but DITHOR on her shelf. You will see math (Horizons 5 with the spiral bound answer key next to it), Dictation (in the teal report cover), Rod and Staff 5, and then a writing program we will try. The rest is the guide, binders described below, and the books we will be using for the first few units.
Now for the set-up of everything else. I decided to do three 1/2in binders for CtC. The first binder is for the history notebooking pages. I also put a few page protectors in the back of the binder for history projects, etc.
The second binder is for science. There are three sections to this binder: notebooking, lab, and questions. I decided not to do page protectors this time around. Hopefully it will work well. Each section has the needed paper already hole punched and ready to go.
The third binder is for Bible study and geography. I printed the maps and a few travel logs for geography from the CD that comes with the book. For Bible study, I ended up printing Genesis 1-11. You can just use your own Bible for this, but my daughter was not happy about having to mark up her Bible. She has one she marks up a lot, and with so many markings, she wouldn't be able to read what we were doing for school. So I was going to have her use one of her other Bibles (she has 3), but she wants to keep that one "clean." I think there will be other paper things created, but I am unsure what they are at this point!
Monday, May 15, 2017
Preparing Hearts for His Glory
My oldest finished Preparing Hearts for His Glory by Heart of Dakota earlier this month. We really enjoyed the year!
We started the year doing the guide exactly as written except for math (continuing with Horizons). As the year went on, a few things got left by the wayside. First, we gave up "sharing" the poem. A few times she shared with her dad or a grandparent over the phone, but she began to always pick to share with her little siblings. They weren't overly enthusiastic about listening (since they often hear the poem during the week as we do school), so I didn't require it after a while. Second, we stopped doing the Bible box after Christmas. When we started back up, we were crunched for time for a few weeks with some outside of the house things, and it just didn't always get done (we would do 2-3 days per unit). And then in late January/early February, we replaced the box with Awana studying. My daughter was doing Bible quizzing, so we studied that instead (we had been doing Awana Mission Grace in Action all year, with the regular and silver sections completed). Here and there we skipped a project or research, but otherwise we completed the whole guide!
As for how we set up everything for the year, here you go!
First, we continued our composition books for grammar (Rod and Staff 4 this year) and dictation. I again printed the dictation passages and put them in a report folder for my daughter. This allowed her to mark them as needed - completed, what she missed, things to remember, etc.
We also continued our vocabulary box from Bigger. So, she again wrote on 3x5 cards and alphabetized them in the file box.
We also bought a nice red journal for a common place book, which we will continue for years to come.
For everything else (except the math and DITHOR workbooks), we used one 2in binder. It was HUGE! My daughter complained about how big it was. So, we won't be going this route again. But it did work. We had sections for timeline, history written narrations, independent history, science notebooking, science labs, science five questions, poetry writing, and other. We used tabs with pockets, so I could store blank paper in the pockets. For things she would use printer paper for (which was a lot of it), I put page protectors in for filing. This kept her from having to open the binder prongs too often! I put the parts where she would use lined filler paper int he middle, as those are the easiest places to fill later.
For timeline, we decided to use baseball card holders instead of the accordion style. We don't have wall space to store things, and a set of "loose" cards would be easily destroyed. And it worked great! I will definitely be doing this with my younger kids.
Here are pictures of the HUGE binder:
We started the year doing the guide exactly as written except for math (continuing with Horizons). As the year went on, a few things got left by the wayside. First, we gave up "sharing" the poem. A few times she shared with her dad or a grandparent over the phone, but she began to always pick to share with her little siblings. They weren't overly enthusiastic about listening (since they often hear the poem during the week as we do school), so I didn't require it after a while. Second, we stopped doing the Bible box after Christmas. When we started back up, we were crunched for time for a few weeks with some outside of the house things, and it just didn't always get done (we would do 2-3 days per unit). And then in late January/early February, we replaced the box with Awana studying. My daughter was doing Bible quizzing, so we studied that instead (we had been doing Awana Mission Grace in Action all year, with the regular and silver sections completed). Here and there we skipped a project or research, but otherwise we completed the whole guide!
As for how we set up everything for the year, here you go!
First, we continued our composition books for grammar (Rod and Staff 4 this year) and dictation. I again printed the dictation passages and put them in a report folder for my daughter. This allowed her to mark them as needed - completed, what she missed, things to remember, etc.
We also continued our vocabulary box from Bigger. So, she again wrote on 3x5 cards and alphabetized them in the file box.
We also bought a nice red journal for a common place book, which we will continue for years to come.
For everything else (except the math and DITHOR workbooks), we used one 2in binder. It was HUGE! My daughter complained about how big it was. So, we won't be going this route again. But it did work. We had sections for timeline, history written narrations, independent history, science notebooking, science labs, science five questions, poetry writing, and other. We used tabs with pockets, so I could store blank paper in the pockets. For things she would use printer paper for (which was a lot of it), I put page protectors in for filing. This kept her from having to open the binder prongs too often! I put the parts where she would use lined filler paper int he middle, as those are the easiest places to fill later.
For timeline, we decided to use baseball card holders instead of the accordion style. We don't have wall space to store things, and a set of "loose" cards would be easily destroyed. And it worked great! I will definitely be doing this with my younger kids.
Here are pictures of the HUGE binder:
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