Getting Ready for LHFHG (Take 4!!!)

My youngest is going LHFHG.  He wants to have things like his big siblings, so I thought I would share our easy set up for LHFHG.  

Like his siblings, he has a crate for his school material.  This makes storing it away when we have company very easy!  

He also got a binder just for LHFHG this year. 

In the front, I have the storytime pages from the LHFHG Facebook group.  These are used on Day 4 of each unit.  The guide directs the parent to write what is typed on the pages.  I have used these some with the middle two kids as well, and it helps keep me accountable for doing the pages more as written.  With my oldest, we would often just do it orally, as I didn't have paper, etc there when we did storytime snuggled on the couch.

Behind the storytime pages, I printed the coloring pages/timeline.  These are also from the FB group.  I printed them 4 to a page to keep them small.  Rarely does my little guy want to do them, but he was very excited to have the ability to do the timeline like his siblings.  We can always save the pictures to color later or put in the coloring bin at church if they never get used.

Finally, there are page protectors at the back for any projects.  The project from Unit 1 is already stored away there.

 

Getting Ready for World Geography (Take 1)

My oldest started Heart of Dakota's World Geography guide this summer.  She is using it for 9th grade.  We have made a few changes to the guide to work best for our family.  

• She is not doing the Bible study in the guide (Rooted and Grounded).  Instead, this summer she did Bible Bee Witness, and during the school year, she will be doing Awana Journey.  She is doing the devotional though.
• She is doing Easy Peasy Spanish 1 instead of what is scheduled in the guide.  I had originally thought she would do dual credit for Spanish next year.  But while researching colleges, I realized her top choice currently doesn't require foreign language.  And with COVID and all of the craziness with that, she might not do as much dual enrollment.
• She just started Jacob's Geometry with Dr. Callahan's videos.  She did Horizons Algebra (1) last year.

Now that we are 7+ units into the guide, I think we have things set up pretty well.  Here are the binders/notebooks she has this year:

1. Book of Centuries
   Since this will be used throughout high school, I have put it in its own binder.  In the front pocket, I put the pictures printed on sticker paper.  She can then easily cut them out and place them into the timeline.
   
   

   

   
   
2. Expedition Journal and World Religions and Cultures Binder
   This binder contains the notebooking pages for those two boxes of the guide.  I also have the living library and storytime bookmarks in the pockets of the binder.
   
   
   
3. Literature and Logic
   In the WG Facebook group, there is a file for the Fallacy Detective questions.  I printed those out, and placed them in a binder.  I have also added an area for all the pages with the literature answers in it.  My daughter prefers to write the answers to the questions instead of discussing them with me.  So she stores the "full" pages in this binder.
   
   
4. Answer Keys and Resources
   The IPC science program came with an unbound answer key/instructor resource material.  I put all of these pages in a big binder we already owned. 
   

   

   
   
   
   Jacob's Geometry comes with student reference material (glossary, formulas, etc).  I put these into a standard pocket and brad folder.  I also put the schedule I made for my daughter into this folder, so she can easily see what to do each day.
   

   

Here is everything in her bins currently.  You will notice that there are composition books for grammar, writing, dictation, and Spanish.  I also have a file folder in her Spanish area for anything she prints out for Easy Peasy Spanish 1.

Schooling Year Round and Updates

 We have schooled year round since the beginning.  I find that it is nice to keep some routine and have something to occupy the hottest parts of the day in the summer.  And last year with everything closed due to COVID, it was definitely nice to keep going because we couldn't go anywhere!

So how do we do school in the summer?  Our current method is half days most days.  My kids do math daily, as we only do school 4 days a week most weeks.  Most math curriculums are 180 days, so doing math daily helps us get a full level in each year.  Then we split the rest of the day in half.  Basically, the things on the schedule for before lunch are done one day, and the afternoon things are done the other day.  

Do we do school "every" day or every week?  No.  We have had two busy weeks back to back.  Some days we did nothing.  Other days I had them do about 1/4 of a day.  Some days we just did math.  It really depends on how long we are home each day.  I want to give them time for free play, outside time, and time to "rest."  Other weeks we have nothing on the schedule outside of church, and we can do more school.

One big benefit for our family to doing school in the summer is that it gives us more time off during the school year.  We can travel when places are as crowded or go on field trips.  It definitely gives us "margin" during the traditional school year!

My girls started new guides in May, and they have completed 5 units already (WG and CtC).  We hope to get another 3 units done in August.  That means we will be 6-8 weeks ahead!  My older son will finish RtR in October, and my little guy is slowly working on LHFHG.  He will only be doing 4 days a week, so LHFHG will take over a year.  My goal is to start Preparing around his 9th birthday, and I think that should work out well with doing LHFHG-Bigger 4 days a week.

Hopefully next month I will find time to post how I have their binders set up for this year!

Bible Bee Review

 During the traditional school year, my children are involved in a local Awana club.  Awana includes Bible study (starting in 3rd grade), verse memorization, and a social outlet including games.  In the middle and high school years.  they also read the entire Bible (NT in middle school and OT in high school), giving a summary of each book of the Bible.  With all of that, we have decided to not do the invidual Bible studies in the HOD guides.  But when we are doing the guides in the summar, I wish we had more Bible study to do.  So this year, we decided to try The National Bible Bee. 

I have four kids.  Based on age, they placed into Beginner (5-6yo), Primary (7-10yo), and Junior (11-14yo).  So I have not seen the highest level (Senior for 15-18yo).  Here are some of the pros and cons of the program.

Pros:

• Variety of conent
• Verse memorization
• Word meaning
• Prayer
• Missions
• And more!
• Transation options*
• Everyone studying the same thing but on different levels.
• Email reminders and resources each week
• Option of print or PDF material

Cons:

• Level of difficulty
• My girls (almost 10 in Primary and 13 doing 9th grade school work in Junior) are well placed in the program.  But my boys (5yo and 11yo) would probably do better in a level below.  
• The Beginner level requries them to write letters, determine missing letters in words, etc.  Most 5 and even 6yos aren't reading fluently.  Some are just learning to form their letters!  So it is a lot most days!
• The Junior level has some activities that I actually had to look up the answer in the answer key (digital version provided).  The reasons these were challenging are addressed in the next two items.
• Reference Material Needed
• You need to have a Strong's Concordance and a specific Bible dictionary or use the online version through Blue Letter Bible for the Junior level.  I did not know this going in, so it was a little bit of a struggle to start.  Although using these references I can find to be beneficial, I think it could have easily waited until the senior level. 
• My kids use a different Bible dictionary for one lesson, and it made the a word scramble almost impossible.  Ungar's had a different word usage than Hitchcock's, and so they had not "seen" the scrambled word in the unit so far.
• Translation usage
• I thought that since they ask for Bible translation preferences that the workbooks would be in that translation.  But they are actually uniform across translation preference.  This isn't a deal breaker for us, but I know some only want to use one version.
• The mixture of versions also makes some activities hard.  I had to look up in all of the translations to see where one word (in another word scramble) came from.  It was in some form in 4 translations, but it wasn't in the one we use!  (Hellenistic in Acts 6:1)
• Schedule
• This is an 8 week Bible study, five days a week.  If you don't want to compete, you can easily do it at your own speed.  But, if you want to do the competition, you have to keep to the strict schedule.  With things like church camps in the summer, this can be challenging!  Although it only takes about 30 minutes a day to do the minumum, if you have a busy week and aren't home much, it can be too much.

Will we do Bible Bee again next year?  Maybe.  Likely, I would order one from a previous year and do it instead of this year's program.  That way we can start a little earlier and not feel any pressure to stick to their schedule.  But I don't know if you get the online answer key with the older versions.  And the key has already been very helpful in the first 5 units!

Schedules

I thought I would share some of our schedules over the years.  Many ask how you can do a different program for each kid, and really it is possible if you are willing to let some things go in the early guides or skip something occasionally.  We try to do the guides as written (minus substituted boxes) starting in Preparing.

Fall 2021 - WG, RtR, CtC, and LHFHG

Spring 2021 - MtMM, RtR, Preparing, and LHTH

Fall 2020 - MtMM, CtC, Preparing, and LHTH

Spring 2020 - Rev2Rev, CtC, Bigger, and LHTH

Fall 2019 - Rev2Rev, Preparing, Bigger, and a 3yo

Fall 2018 - RtR, Bigger, Beyond, and 2yo

School Room

We moved about a year ago to a house with more rooms.  On the main floor, there is a room that works great as a school room/guest room.  The kids do most of their quiet work independently in this room.  Any projects and work with me is done elsewhere (living room or kitchen normally).

We decided we wanted a Murphy bed with bookcases on either side for the room.  The bookcases would be used to store all of the school stuff, and the Murphy bed would make converting to a guest room easy.  We got the bed done in January, but it took until recently to get the bookcases done.  Now, the room is "done."  We are considering adding more storage on top of what we just built, but other projects are going to be completed first!  The additional storage will likely come in handy for the high school guides as well as bedding.

For desks, each of my kids has a Lifetime fold-in-half 2x4ft table.  The younger two have it on the second lowest setting, and the older two have it at the second tallest setting.  If we have company, these are easy to take out of the room!  And they are very handy when we have company over for dinner as additional seating.

To store their current school materials, each child has 1-2 plastic crates.   These fit file folders, so they can easily sort and contain their books.  They also have "magazine holders" to store big items, their guides, and binders.  When we take down the tables, these bins can go in the bottom of the cabinets.

The closet stores the craft supplies.  When company comes, some will get moved to the bottom cabinets or to the top shelf so guests have some storage.

We have used the room like this for two weeks, and it is working well.  We actually pulled the tables out this weekend, and it was easy to take down and put back up!  (That is also why it is so clean in these pictures - it was just after setting everything back up.)

MtMM - Take One!

My oldest started MtMM at the beginning of this month.  I cannot believe she is so close to high school!

We are doing most of MtMM as written.  Below are our changes to the guide:

• Math: Horizons Math.  She will finish PreAlgebra soon and start Algebra.
• Writing: Since we skipped WWTB1 in CtC, she is doing WWTB1 with her brother in CtC.  When they finish, she will go back and finish the creative writing from Rev2Rev.
• Bible: We found with Awana, that during the school year, it was too much to do HOD independent Bible as well.  So this summer (when she doesn't have Awana), she is finishing the Bible she started in RtR and Rev2Rev.  She is in Awana Trek, and they have daily Bible study plus read half of the NT each year.  Each book they read from the NT they give a summary with key verse, author, theme, etc as well.  So it is a lot of studying!  We are still doing the Apologia book together though.
• State Study: We have decided to skip this.  She does want to study music theory, so she will do that instead.
• Dictation and DITHOR: These we do but not exactly as scheduled in the guide.  We do dictation daily instead of three times a unit.  DITHOR we often do daily for a genre and then take a week or two off.  It varies depending on outside distractions to our school day though.  We will aim to do five genres this year though.

MtMM wasn't too hard to organize!  I ended up with two binders for her.

The first binder is economics, history, worthy words, president study, and geography.  Economics, history, and president study are simply the notebooking pages sold by HOD.  For worthy words, they are instructed to answer questions about a famous speech or writing on index cards.  Another parent typed up those questions into a single file.  I chose to print this file, as I knew she woudl loose the index cards.  And it is easier for when we don't get to the discussion immediately.  Finally, for geography, I printed the student maps from the CD and put them into the pocket.  She will put them in the binder itself when she is done with each one.  The teacher maps are in a binder with the maps from Rev2Rev (I might add RtR maps to that same binder as well).  At the back of this binder, we have the storytime bookmarks.  The appendix of the guide has a page similar to the file I printed from Facebook.

For science, I went through the guide page by page.  I typed up all questions that were to be answered (mostly from the books).  It was tedious, but it will make checking work so much faster for me!  For days were they are to do a written narration, I made a page with lines.  For the Elements book, I chose to purchase the pdf version online.  I could then easily copy any of the activities into the file I made for my daughter.   And then for labs, I recreated the lab form from the appendix of the guide.  If I only had 1-2 kids, I don't think I would do through all of that work.  But with four kids, I think it will be worth it!  At the end of the binder, I have the pages printed for some fo the activities in the Elements books inot sheet protectors.  These are pages that are in the Elements book, but they are also free printables on the author's website.  

Next, I fot everything ready for the nature journal.  My daughter already had a nice set of colored pencils, so she will use those.  I bought the markers and journal from Miller Pads and Paper.  Then I got pens from Walmart and she gathered the last remaining things from the house.  We put them in a little bag so nothing gets lost or misplaced.

With so many books, she needs two bins to store everything she needs for about 5 units!  A few of the spines are huge, so they take up a lot of space!