Heart of Dakota Questions

[Mrs. Frankweiler]

Hello,

All this talk on here of HOD got me interested in this program, and now I'm considering revamping next years plans. (Thanks a lot!;)) I was going to do WP AS1, but this just seems a little more doable.

So, questions.....


I'm looking at Bigger Hearts for my 4th and 2nd grader. Any thoughts....opinions?
We're Catholic, and I know this is a Christian, bible-based curriculum. That's fine with me, but is any of it anti-Catholic? If so, how much?
The main attraction to HOD is the history portion of their curriculum, as I'm pretty happy with the Math, LA, and Science choices we've made. Could you weed out the history parts of HOD and do your own everything else? I realize that some of the "unit study" feel would be lost, and I wouldn't be opposed to adding some of the other lessons in, I just don't want to HAVE to use the other lessons since we're happy with what we have.
This question will totally contradict #3, but what do you all think of Drawn into the Heart of Reading? Is this just the "reading" portion of LA, and grammar, spelling is somewhere else, or does this encompass the whole LA. I feel like we've just been floating along with our reading this year (we just pick interesting books from the library) but this might give us a little more guidance.
Thanks for your help!

[angela&4boys]

bump :lurk5:

[Julieofsardis]

Hello,

All this talk on here of HOD got me interested in this program, and now I'm considering revamping next years plans. (Thanks a lot!;)) I was going to do WP AS1, but this just seems a little more doable.

So, questions.....


I'm looking at Bigger Hearts for my 4th and 2nd grader. Any thoughts....opinions? I think it would be perfect for the 2nd grader, but a little light for the 4th grader. However, you could add the extension pack for extra reading and require more writing for the notebooking and that would probably round everything out nicely. You'd probably need to personalize the 4th graders LA and math though. I'm not sure the schedule included for those would work for 4th grade.
We're Catholic, and I know this is a Christian, bible-based curriculum. That's fine with me, but is any of it anti-Catholic? If so, how much? I'm not Catholic, but I didn't notice anything that would go against it. The time period doesn't have any majorly controversial events.
The main attraction to HOD is the history portion of their curriculum, as I'm pretty happy with the Math, LA, and Science choices we've made. Could you weed out the history parts of HOD and do your own everything else? I realize that some of the "unit study" feel would be lost, and I wouldn't be opposed to adding some of the other lessons in, I just don't want to HAVE to use the other lessons since we're happy with what we have. I think that the history portion by itself is worth the price of the TM and accompanying books. There are some other portions that you could use, such as poetry, character study, and science.
This question will totally contradict #3, but what do you all think of Drawn into the Heart of Reading? Is this just the "reading" portion of LA, and grammar, spelling is somewhere else, or does this encompass the whole LA. I feel like we've just been floating along with our reading this year (we just pick interesting books from the library) but this might give us a little more guidance. We didn't use DitHoR.
Thanks for your help!

Hope that helps!!

[HollyinNNV]

I haven't found anything anti-Catholic in Bigger. I'm not Catholic, so I'm not looking for it either. You might go to the HOD website and ask this question at the forum.