Introduction and preparing for Bigger Hearts for His Glory

This is our second year homeschooling and our first year doing the Heart of Dakota (HOD) curriculum.  I know I've benefited from the knowledge of those who've done the program before me, so I decided to pass along my knowledge for those who may come after me.  First, let me introduce my family.  There's myself and my husband, Darling Dear.  We have three beautiful daughters: Bug is 10 years old and in 5th grade, Bean is 8 years old and in 3rd grade, and Sprout is 4 years old and will be doing preschool outside the home.  For one year, having her taught by someone else will giving me just a little more time to focus on the older girls and adjust to the new little one (Gummy Bear) we will have joining our family in January 2014.

Ok, so introductions are out of the way.  Let's move on to schooling! Here's a look at what I did to prepare for the beginning of this program.  Since the girls are doing two different levels, I'll show you each individually.

Bean is doing Bigger Hearts for His Glory.  After reading the introduction in the teacher's manual, I used Post-It notes to mark the sections of importance (Narration, Dictation, and Poetry for our needs).  You probably could should use real page markers, but I was being cheap and using what I had on hand.

I'm a big "mark it off when you're done" person, but I don't want to write in the manuals so that I can re-use them as the girls age.  So, what to do?  Hmm. Well, I'm test-driving a page protector situation.  I cut off the side of the protector that had the holes and then slipped them over the current day's pages.  We used a dry erase marker to X off each thing as it was done, then erased and moved the protectors to the next day.  I'll let you know if it gets bothersome, but here's a couple pics to try to show what I did.

 

 Then I created two three-ring binders for Bean. In the first, I added dividers and labeled them "Math," "English," "Spelling," and "History."  Under the History section, I visited the HOD Facebook and Yahoo! pages that correspond with the Bigger program and printed off some History notebooking pages that were available there.  Since Bean is not a big writer and loves the feel of a fill-it-in workbook, I think these are going to be very helpful.

For the second binder, I labeled it "Science." There are going to be enough pages for this topic for it to get its own binder.  Again, I used what I had on hand already, which was a soft cover binder so a cover sheet wasn't an option.  But if I was being more purposeful, I would have gotten one where I could just slip a cover sheet under the front plastic piece.  That would be prettier, too. :) I also utilized those Facebook and Yahoo! pages I mentioned earlier to print off Science notebooking and lab pages for the entire year.

Finally, we are using Drawn Into the Heart of Reading (DITHOR) this year for literature, which is also a HOD program. Bean is doing the 2/3 level, so I picked up an age appropriate biography from the library.  We will begin the year learning about Amelia Earhart.  Fun!  I divided the pages into 15 days and marked the page numbers in the front of her DITHOR workbook.

As you can see, I was late on taking the picture and she had already marked off day one.  Oops!

The two final things I did were get a globe from my local thrift shop and get a box to hold 3x5 index cards (I already had the cards at home).  TRUTHFULLY....my mother-in-law got hold of these for me.  She's great at supporting our homeschooling journey. :) The globe is older and thus some of the country names might be a little outdated, so it is only temporary until I can get to the store to purchase a new one.

Outside of this curriculum, we are doing Saxon Math- Intermediate 3 (this is actually a substitution of the Singapore Math that HOD recommends), a health course, and piano.  We will wait a week to start the health and piano classes, though, to give ourselves some time to adjust to the new schedule. Oh, and we also use A Reason for Handwriting as a substitution for much of the copywork items HOD offers.

Whew! This SEEMS like a lot, but really it was very little work to prepare for the entire year.  I'll admit the only thing I haven't done is prepare the timeline that she'll complete throughout the year.  I'll let you know how that goes when I get to it.

Stay tuned for the next post and I'll let you know what I did to prepare for Bug's year of Creation to Christ. I'll also be posting each week about what we did during the week for each program. It should be good!