Heart of Dakota Box Day!

Well admittedly our box day was a few weeks ago but I never managed to get the pictures up for it.  I was going back over pictures for our week in review and found the box day pictures and I just had to post those too!  Heart of Dakota is such a blessing to us and the rich literature is just outstanding.

Here is what I saw when I opened my box and pulled out the packing paper:  Beautifully packed!

Here are the History books that are the spine of our History studies using Preparing Hearts for His Glory.

Here are the Science books for Preparing Hearts:

Preparing Hearts includes an independent history study.  These are the books used for the independent history study:

We are already enjoying Preparing and I hope you enjoyed a quick peak into the rich literature of Heart of Dakota.

Miraculous Change After Only 2 Days

Yesterday was our first day back with HOD as our core curriculum.  It was a long day.  But it was a good day.  Joshua spent a lot of time saying he hated it but he was the happiest hater I've ever seen LOL.  It was our first day and I knew it was going to take a while for us to get into the grove of doing things in this new way.  I also knew we were going to have some heart issues to deal with but that is another post entirely.

I was still exhausted from the MidSouth Convention and ended up sleeping until 9:30 this morning.  Jacob also slept in and woke a few minutes after me actually.  Anyway while I was sleeping this morning Joshua worked on his independent work. We are still doing Reading through the BJU Distance Learning (I can not wait to start HOD Drawn Into the Heart of Reading this fall though) so he did that lesson and also did his Saxon math.  He also voluntarily completed his Independent History and Independent Science from the HOD Preparing manual.  This was approximately 3 hours of work without a prompt from me.

Now I need you to understand that this child has been one that could not follow a schedule or do any work without a constant push to do so.  He would rather be doing ANYTHING than school. ANYTHING!  Physical labor would probably get done without whining before school.  I hope you are understanding the depth of change that took place yesterday for him to do this this morning.  It truly was the first miracle of the day.

So I got up and got Jacob and I some breakfast and did some necessary catch up from waking late while Joshua took a break. Have I mentioned that Joshua is writing phobic?  Seriously.  Getting a sentence out of him has been like pulling my teeth out without a shot for the pain.............  So while on his break he decides he's going to WRITE A BOOK!!!!  And write he has done today.  I had to pull him away from writing after lunch to finish school.  Miracle #2 today!!

We are reading Grandpa's Box: Retelling the Biblical Story of Redemption for History right now and we read Ch. 2 today.  Joshua loves this book already.  After reading Ch. 2 our Preparing manual had read most of Romans 5 today and do the discussion questions listed in the manual.  Those discussion questions led into an hour long talk about the law, Jesus' gift, and whether or not we could keep the law.  It enabled me to share more intimately with Joshua why I follow Jesus and my relationship with him.  I explained to him that I don't love Jesus because I'm afraid of going to hell or anything like that.  I love Jesus because the law has shown me just how black my heart is and how much I deserve death yet God loves me anyway.  I love Him because He first loved me and continues to love me even when I sin.  I attempt to not sin because I love Him and I know it breaks his heart when I do sin. I love Him so I don't want to hurt him. Every motivation is based in love.

There were tears from both of us and Joshua made a confession to me about some sin in his life.  When I didn't directly address the sin he asked my why.  I told him that the Lord was convicting him and I didn't need to punish him any further.  I realized that he thought I didn't love him because I wasn't angry about the sin he confessed to me.  We had the sweetest time together talking about how, like Jesus, there was nothing he could ever do that would take my love away from him.  NOTHING! No matter what he does he's my son and I will love him forever.  I also told him that as much as I love him God loved him even more than me.

I am simply amazed at the miraculous change that has come after only 1 day with Heart of Dakota. I fully credit HOD with the new found creativity that Joshua is experiencing and for guiding us in a truly Jesus centered day that brought my son and I to a most wonderful place with Jesus. If you are feeling unsettled with your current curriculum or are missing out on time with your children having truly deep conversations about the heart of God then may I humbly suggest you take a look at Heart of Dakota.  I think you will be blessed if you do so.

Praising Jesus for the presence of His Holy Spirit today and for finding Heart of Dakota!

MidSouth Homeschool Convention Highlights

I attended the MidSouth Homeschool Convention this past weekend in Memphis and there were some great highlights for me.  The first and foremost was getting to meet Carrie Austin, the author of the Heart of Dakota curriculum.  It was such an honor to meet her and her sister Julie.  They have been an inspiration to me and it was my privilege to spend time with them.

I spent a great deal of time at their booth and to top it off they were next to Rainbow Resource's booth!  What a win win situation for me LOL.  I mentioned in my last post that I was leaning towards Saxon for Joshua's grammar.  After spending so much time at HOD's booth I got to looking at Rod & Staff for grammar.  One thing I've learned about Carrie Austin is that she picks what she recommends within her curriculum for a reason.  I've also learned that it's usually best to trust her and go with her recommendations first. Then if it doesn't work look elsewhere.  So I went with Rod & Staff English for Joshua.  After really looking it over I feel very good about it. It is scheduled within the Preparing manual so I don't have to think very hard about scheduling it either.

I also decided to put Jacob in Little Hands to Heaven right now. I hadn't been doing anything structured with him at all and I knew this would be a great start to "school" for him.  Today was our first day of LHTH and he had so much fun!!

I attended 2 workshops while I was there also.  I heard Ken Ham speak and it was excellent as usual.  I ordered his workshop on CD in fact.  I also went to Art Reed's workshop.  Listening to him confirmed my decision to use Saxon for Joshua. I highly recommend Mr. Reed's book and if you get a chance to hear him speak about Saxon math you should.  I'm still strongly considering using Saxon for Jacob too.  I'm still weighing things. Carrie recommends Singapore math. I'm seriously considering each of these and I'm grateful that I've got some more time.

One other change that is happening is in regards to Joshua's phonics work.  We have been using Saxon's Phonics Intervention. It's strongly focused on learning to read but does include spelling along with a great deal of other skills.  Joshua is reading well and his reading level has jumped several grade levels in the last several months.  He still struggles with his spelling though.  After praying about this I've decided to go back to All About Spelling with him.  The approach of AAS lends itself well to helping Joshua with any phonics holes he may have.  It will better address his spelling struggles also.  We will also be using the dictation in Preparing which also includes some spelling words.

Well those are the highlights and changes I made after attending Convention.  We are set to go now and I am really looking forward to our Journey using HOD as our core curriculum.  Our first week of Saxon math also went well.  Joshua says he doesn't like it but I know that's only because he's truly having to work at it LOL.

Blessings!

A Few Changes & Next Years Curriculum

Just a quick update on what we are using right now and what the plans are for next year's curriculum for both boys. We have been using BJU's Distance Learning classes with Joshua.  It's going very well but when I started BJU math with Joshua I knew he might not thrive well with it.  Since I had to pay for the complete grade kit for the BJU Distance Learning classes I wanted to give it a try.  I've learned that Joshua does much better with incremental lessons and consistent daily review of those concepts.  Mastery based math just doesn't seem to be enough review for him. So we decided to move him to Saxon math.  We are also using Teaching Tape Technology dvd's with the Saxon books.  With the English he was doing ok but again he seemed to need the same constant review of grammar concepts that he needed in math.  I learned that Saxon had a grammar and writing curriculum also so I took a look at that and have decided to move Joshua to Saxon for grammar also.  I will be picking up the Grammar & Writing at convention this coming weekend in Memphis so we will start that the following Monday.  If all goes well with it we will continue with it for the next level.

My research for next years curriculum brought me back to Heart of Dakota.  We have enjoyed BJU but I wanted to shorten our school day and I've always wanted to do HOD with Joshua. I just couldn't seem to make it work for us in the past.  I knew that we could go back to using HOD for next year so I began looking into the Creation to Christ manual.  I was completely sold on coming back to HOD for both boys starting next year.  It hit me one day that I could do Preparing right now with Joshua and it would help him with the skills he will need for CtC in the fall.  We will receive our Preparing materials on Tuesday and get started on that for Bible, History, Geography, and Science.  We are really looking forward to Preparing and HOD in general.

For Spelling, Reading, and Cursive Handwriting we are continuing with the BJU Distance Learning classes. Next year for Reading we will be doing HOD's Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. I'm really liking BJU"s Spelling. As we get closer to fall I'll make some final decisions regarding Spelling but at this point I'm leaning heavily towards doing BJU Spelling again only teaching it myself.  Joshua's cursive is coming along very with BJU right now. For next year he'll do all of the writing & copywork required in CtC in cursive to serve as his handwriting.

I'm also considering enrolling Joshua in an IEW writing class taught by a licensed IEW instructor.  IEW stands for Institute for Excellence in Writing.  If I don't do a class then we will get the Student Writing Intensive dvd's for him.  I'm leaning towards a class for accountability and to start giving him an idea of what high school might be like.  I likely will make use of tutorials, etc. in high school and I want him to start understand what it's like to have to do work and turn it into someone other than me.

Jacob is turning 5 in April and he's doing so well with "school" type stuff I feel confident in going ahead and doing K with him in the fall.  He will be 5.5 years old at that time and he's already chomping at the bit to learn his letters and numbers. Right now he enjoys playing on Starfall, doing Abeka's ABC 123, Readiness Skills, and Art workbooks. I'm also using Learning at Home by Ann Ward with him.  I plan to start him in Little Hearts for His Glory at half speed in the fall for K.  I will be going half speed so that LHFHG can be used his K and 1st years.  I will be using the appropriate levels of math and phonics for him each of those years. At this point I plan to use Saxon Math and Phonics for him. We'll see how that works out.  I'm really looking forward to it.

Well this went much longer than I had planned. If you stayed with me bless your heart.  I really appreciate it!

I hope everyone has a wonderful school week!

Some thoughts on our curriculum

I'm seeing some things in our curriculum that will need to be addressed soon.  Joshua is doing cursive using A Reason for Handwriting.  He's not learning how to connect the cursive letters very well.  I'm going to have to do something else for him I think.  Any ideas are appreciated.  I am thinking of BJU simply because BJU was the the first curriculum that we used with Joshua and he's kept with the basic idea of their "font".  I also like that BJU has wonderful teacher's manuals.

We also have not been doing history this semester.  I have been looking over several curriculums trying to decide what to use.  I have let Joshua be involved in this process and we really like History Revealed by Diana Waring.  After all the research I remembered that HOD uses Diana's What in the World cd's. 

Ok let me back up and give you some history.  I have loved HOD since I found it a few years back.  I have used it in the past but sold it and bought it and sold it and bought it :o)  I just couldn't make it work for Joshua in the past.  BUT here I am again finding that HOD is using yet another book or curriculum that I am choosing on my own.  I honestly wish I would have known about HOD when Joshua was at the right ages to start it from the beginning.  I will be using HOD for history at a minimum for Jacob when he gets old enough to start it.  So let me just say again that I love, love, love HOD.

I'm starting to understand that I just need to do HOD and get over it.  The biggest decision now is what level to start with for Joshua.  Decisions. Decisions.  Oh if only all our decisions were really this easy.

Our Summer Curriculum

Over summer we will be working on some school things so I thought I would update what we will be using.  Joshua struggled to learn to read but he's doing really good.  I've prayed about it and I believe the best thing for us to do this summer is work on his phonics so that he can get better and faster at his reading.  I've purchased Saxon Phonics Intervention for him so that is the only Language Arts we will do over summer.  For Bible we will be using the Discover 4 Yourself How To Study Your Bible.  I will also be working with him on All About Spelling as that will only reinforce what we are doing in Saxon Phonics Intervention.  He is participating in 2 summer reading programs with Barnes & Noble and our local library system.  He's reading Hank the Cowdog books right now and loving those.

I'm also having to reevaluate our math.  He's been using Teaching Textbooks and he really likes it but I feel that it's not sticking with him like I feel it needs to.  I'm undecided what to use yet but I'm leaning towards Singapore or Saxon for math.  I'll update with final decisions on that when I know. 

He will continue to use A Reason for Handwriting for his cursive.  He's doing very well with his cursive.

I've not made any plans for the next school years curriculum yet.  I'm leaning heavily towards Heart of Dakota's Preparing Hearts for His Glory program for history & science.  We'll see what the summer brings with Joshua's reading and I'll go from there.

Latest update on homeschool curriculum changes.

Final decisions have been made so I thought I should update anyone who is interested. I really like Teaching Textbooks for math but the level my son needed isn't being released until Feb. 2010. I really like CQLA but I know we needed more phonics instruction to help Joshua's reading along even more. I was in our local homeschool store last week and happen upon Saxon Phonics and Math. I was really impressed with their Phonics so I researched it a bit more at home. I also gave him the placement test for Saxon math. So last week I bought the Saxon Phonics and Math and we started them last week. Saxon has computer CD's that are very similar to Teaching Textbooks starting in 54 so that is covered if I feel like I need it. I have decided to wait on CQLA and see where we are at the end of this year for that. At a bare minimum I see myself using Meaningful Composision in the future. Then again I might just go back to CQLA. I just feel like we might need a bit more formal grammar than CQLA gives but that is easy enough to rememdy with CLE or ACE English. I am very pleased with the Saxon at this point. I was somewhat of an anti Saxon person so this was a pleasant surprise for me. I'll try to start doing a weekly update and give my opinion of the Saxon Phonics (and Math too).

We are using Heart of Dakota for our history and science. I love HOD so this is working out great for us. I am looking into using BJU science in addition to HOD's though. I think HOD's science is fine but Joshua is science minded so I think using a formal science might be a good idea for him in case he ends up in a science career down the road.

We are also starting Notgrass's Celebrate Thanksgiving unit study this week. This is super fun and we are looking forward to doing this over this month. We will also do their Celebrate the Savior study over December. I will post our Advent plans very soon since it starts here in a few weeks.

My computer's hard drive is dying so I am borrowing my neighbors laptop to update here. I hope to have a new hard drive put in my laptop soon so I can get back to business.

This weeks Preschool plans

I have received all my books for Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven except for the Singing Bible. I should receive it tomorrow. I absolutely adore Playtime Devotions. I am so glad I decided to spend a few extra dollars and get this book before I couldn't get it in the future. It's the perfect devotion book for Jacob. That is what I love the most about Carrie Austin. She is so discriminating in her book choices for each of her manuals. I have come to trust her and that is why I really looked at the out of print books that were originally used in Little Hands to Heaven. I knew they would be top notch and I am not disappointed at all. I am really looking forward to snuggling up with Jacob to read our Bible stories and do our letter activities. Jacob loves to read together and he loves saying his ABC's and many of their sounds. I have no doubt Jacob will love the fun learning activities in Little Hands to Heaven. I will try to take some pics of him on his first day or preschool. I didn't do things like that with Joshua and I regret that I didn't now. We will be doing more memory type things with both boys in the future.

Fun stuff in store for us this week. How about you? What are your plans for this week?

Next Year's School Plans

Well I think I am pretty set on most of next year's curriculum choices for my oldest son. We will continue with Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts for His Glory until we finish it. We will also continue with All About Spelling. We are currently in Level 1 but I expect to finish that by the end of summer and move into Level 2. We will also continue using BJU English & Writing. I am really liking this because of the alternating focus that BJU takes with this course. It's one chapter of grammar and then one chapter of writing starting in 2nd grade.

Right now we are using Singapore math and using the lesson plans that Heart of Dakota has written in their manuals to coincide with the Singapore workbooks. I really like Singapore for it's mental math component and Joshua is doing fine with it. I keep thinking don't change something that's working but I really am considering putting him back in BJU math. We did BJU before Singapore and he did fine with that too. I am waiting to see what BJU does with their online classes because I want to use the distance learning classes for English, Math and Handwriting from BJU but right now you can only buy full grade kits at $1000 a pop to get those classes. So no classes for us right now. I am teaching the English class myself and it only take about 15 to 20 minutes for us to do. If they offer an acceptable plan for the online classes then I will use those classes for English and also move him back into BJU for math. At least with the distance learning classes I know that the basics will get done if for some reason I am unable to teach one day.

With Bible I am thinking of going with the Summit's Building on the Rock World View/Bible Survey curriculum. We currently use Grapevine Bible in addition to HOD's Bible and we really like Grapevine but I am drawn to the age appropriate study that Building on the Rock offers. I just might have to try it out to see how it goes. BotR is somewhat expensive to get started so I haven't made up my mind for sure yet but I am strongly leaning that way.

I am also looking into adding Evan Moor's A Word a Day books for vocabulary. Thanks to Dana for that idea.

Soooo I am fairly set except for concrete decisions on Math and Bible yet. We will be working through summer since we didn't get very far at all into Bigger Hearts. I know it will be a great summer with HOD though so I am really looking forward to watching Joshua grow in his reading ability while doing Bigger Hearts. We will be going through HOD's emerging reader set over summer and into next year to help give Joshua some practice and confidence in his reading.

How about you? What are your plans for your homeschool next year? Any new things? Keepers? Tossing? My top keepers are for sure Heart of Dakota and All About Spelling.

Our Preschool Curriculum

Well I ordered my books for our preschool curriculum for Jacob. We will be using Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven.


When Mrs. Austin wrote the Little Hands to Heaven manual she used a devotional book called Playtime Devotions . It's now out of print but Mrs. Austin has substituted it with another great book called Big Thoughts for Little People. I decided to buy Playtime Devotions because of Jacob's age. He will just turn 3 on April 12. I wanted a very easy intro to school things and Playtime Devotions looked like it was just what I was looking for. I want to instill a love for learning in him and make some wonderful memories with him. I looked at Big Thoughts extensively and I think that when he's just a bit older I will get that book and use it at night before bed. Big Thoughts is a very good book and I was torn because I didn't want to miss out on it either. Little Hands to Heaven also uses A Child's First Bible. In Little Hands to Heaven each unit has a theme centered around Bible characters. These stories provide the focus for the day's plans. The daily activities are linked to the Bible stories. There are musical selections from The Singing Bible that correspond with each unit. I have no doubt this will be a favorite of Jacob's.

My plans at this time are to do Little Hands to Heaven a couple of times a week because of his age. I plan on taking 2 years to complete it. Jacob has shown signs of being gifted so I might end up doing LHTH every day and have to change my long term plans for him but in the beginning this is the schedule until I see how he does. On the other days I plan to use some Kumon First Step workbooks called Let's Cut Paper!, Let's Fold!, Let's Color!, and Let's Sticker & Paste!.

I am also strongly considering using Mathematical Reasoning: Beginning Prek with Jacob. It's for 3 & 4 year olds and I think this book and maybe even the ones that follow it would dovetail very nicely into Singapore math which we will use when Jacob is older. Singapore is known for it's mental math component so I think these books will be an age appropriate precursor.

When I start will depend on when my books arrive. I will be posting about some of our days and weeks in review also.

I'm also working on a new daily schedule now since I will need to make sure I allow enough time for working with Jacob. I will post my new schedule when I'm done with it.

School Week in Review

In school this week we learned about Columbus' trip to the West Indies and how hard it was. We are reading Pedro's Journal (Apple Paperbacks) as an extra read aloud for History and Joshua is enjoying it very much. He asks every day if we are going to read it. On day 3 of the unit I read aloud the history readings and Joshua built Columbus' ship and an Indian out of Lego's. Here's a picture of his creations.



One of the history activities was to take a balloon and label index cards with the continents and then place them on the balloon in the proper place.



He also made a map of Columbus' route from Spain to the West Indies.



We also set up our timeline from Drawing From The Past. I want their timeline figures too but can't afford them right now. For now we are using some other figures that I had. We put Creation on our timeline at the beginning (top left) and then put Columbus on at 1492.



We had a great week and we will be doing school next week too. We will take the week of Christmas off but then we will start right back the next week because we are so behind in school.

Merry Christmas!

Catch Up Day in School

Well we did school today but it was a catch up day. We did grammar, talked about rhyming patterns in poetry, and reviewed the character trait persistence. Joshua had to come up with something to do to help him be persistent in honoring Jesus. He chose to try to be obedient with a good attitude all the time as his way of being persistent in honoring Jesus. We didn't get math done but we did get our phonics done. We are using Language Tune Up Kit and he's doing very well with it right now. He does that on the computer and it's mostly independent and then I read the detailed reports about what he did while he worked.

Tomorrow Joshua has tutorial so tonight we will read the first 2 chapters of The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli. That is his current Book Club reading for tutorial.

Merry Christmas!