Organizing Heart of Dakota (and a small Review of Heart of Dakota)
I thought I would share how I organized our children doing Heart of Dakota. If you are curious about what Heart of Dakota is or why we chose this program for our homeschool, I encourage you to read this post.
I would like the kind of preface this by saying that not all this is necessary to successfully enjoy HOD. I have been known to go a little crazy with organization… also, the way I organize might not be the way everyone else will – and that’s ok!
I post this for two reasons. One – I’m a bit crazy about organization and love it dearly, so posting about my organization is almost like organizing all over again. *wheee!* Two – (and most importantly) I truly pray my posts can help other homeschool Moms glean ideas about how they might be able to organize their homeschool days and experience peace in the journey. Many have asked about how I organized HOD, so… here we go:
Organizing Heart of Dakota
This post shows organization for:
-Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory (Audrey, age 8)
-Bigger Hearts for His Glory with extensions (Simon, just turned 10)
The thing that really struck me about HOD from the beginning is the crazy amount of support available from a huge community of HOD Moms. Whether on the Facebook groups (I’ll link to them at the bottom of this post), or through the HOD forums on their site, there is always someone willing to help and encourage.
I wanted to give a peek at a Clip-board System. This is one way homeschool Moms might like to organize their daily tasks…
There are actually 4 Clip-boards in use right now in our home… and I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I’m crazy. But, it’s working very well, so I’ll share.
It has been working BRILLIANTLY. They can easily see what is expected for each day, and how they have (or haven’t!) progressed.
Here’s a look at checklists for Little Hearts, Beyond, and Bigger for 1 week:
I also created one additional sheet to help me pencil in our morning devotions, character studies and any additional reading or activities we will do throughout the week. Very simple, but helpful for me. These are the 4 pages on our ‘checklists’ clipboard. (One Weekly Checklist for each child plus my Additional Plans sheet.)
Below is the second part of our new “Clip-Board System” that we’ve implemented. I spent about 15-ish hours prepping EVERYTHING I would need for doing Heart of Dakota with the three children this year. It was a lot of work, but, hey- our year is completely organized and ready to go, so I’m pretty excited about that!
I created the sheets I wanted but couldn’t find already made, then printed off all their needed worksheets and organized them by unit in a simple file folder (I think it was about $10 at Staples a few years ago). Because we are using three different guides, I just put packets together with paper clips to separate each child’s work by unit.
At the start of each new week or unit, I simply pull out the required packet and stick it on that child’s personal clip-board. They can easily see their Clip-board work for the week and have truly enjoyed the visual ease and organization of the system.
Our son’s Bigger Hearts for His Glory weekly ‘clip-board packet’ includes:
One Character Card– these are beautiful, bright, print-out cards with the character trait highlighted in the guide along with the unit’s memory verse. I laminated them so they will last a long time… (The Mom who made these is wonderful, you can download these cards for free on her blog!)
Two Science Lab Sheets
One Vocabulary Page
One Science Note Booking Page
One History Note Booking Page
One Poetry Page
Any other required pages for either Story-time Activities, Language Arts assignments, Art Projects, etc.
Our daughter’s Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory weekly ‘clip-board packet’ includes:
Two Science Notebooking Sheets– I just want to clarify that not everyone who uses Beyond will implement a Science Notebooking page for their child. I am using these because my daughter is an advanced 8 year old using Beyond and enjoys notebooking quite a bit.
One Vocabulary Page– Once again, I added this. The program doesn’t use Vocabulary pages or Vocabulary assignments until Bigger, but Audrey LOVES doing her Vocab pages! (I show them below.)
One History Note Booking Page– Once again, these are an added supplement to ‘beef up’ Beyond
One Poetry Page– I created these as copywork/poetry pages. They are also available for download on the Beyond Facebook page. So far, Audrey loves them. The poems are listed and used in the guides, I simply typed them out, added boxes for copywork and a drawing.
Any other required pages for either Story-time Activities, Language Arts assignments, Art Projects, etc.
For Little Hearts, all Alex has is his laminated Memory Verse (this is a really cute, free download of train cars) and maybe a copywork page. Very simple for him.
We do not use a ‘work box system’ as some families use, but we have a bit of a simpler version of something similar.
What we have is a simple Ikea Trofast unit, which we have used and loved for nearly 10 years. We use the shallow bins from Ikea, and they work wonderfully for school book storage. Each child has one row of bins. Alex is green, Audrey is white, and Simon is yellow.
Top Row: Math
Middle Row: Language Arts
Bottom Row: Heart of Dakota Books and Clip-board work
Once the children have accomplished their week’s worth of Clip-board work for Heart of Dakota, they store it in their binder to keep a nice, organized, tidy record of their hard work!
A Peak at a week of Bigger:
This is not all the work we did, but it’s a good peak…
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Binder tabs for Bigger. |
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A simple timeline. Figures can be downloaded on the Facebook group for Bigger. |
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Practise with identifying and placing the continents and oceans in proper placement on a round surface. |
A Peak at Beyond:
Along with Beyond, Audrey is using Teaching Textbooks 4 for Math, All About Reading and Preparing the Build for Language Arts and Reading, along with Draw Write Now for additional copywork and drawing. She’s also working on cursive practice and reading tons of readers through the HOD Emerging Reader Program.
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Tabs for Audrey’s Beyond binder. |
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A simplified Vocabulary page for a more advanced student in Beyond. |
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One of the Storytime activities (drawing the main character and showing something about their personality…!) |
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One of the lovely History Notebooking pages another wonderful Mom made for use with Beyond. These are also available free for download in the files section of the Beyond Facebook page. |
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Science Notebooking page. (Also available free on the Facebook group!) |
14 Comments
Proverbs31Woman
Always love your posts and pics π
I was wondering how you organize your day with 3 guides? I guess it's a bit early to ask being in your fist week. I am considering doing only 1 guide this year, 2 guides next year and possibly 3 guides the year after. So seeing you jump into 3 guides makes me wonder how you're doing it? I will be doing SL Core B along with an HOD guide (most likely Bigger) with my oldest this year.
BTW Your daughters handwriting is beautiful!
Cassandra
Thanks! π So… how we organize our day changes daily… ha. Basically, we do what works. We generally homeschool from about 9am-1pm. In this time period, the kids rotate with work. I will take individual time with each child to do things that need my direct help. Then I will 'assign' certain things they can do individually (esp the older 2) while I help other children do their work that needs guidance. It's really not so bad.. The kids have really enjoyed having their own guides. I won't lie – it certainly is more time consuming during the day then having them all doing a unit study together as we've done in the past – but it is working out very well and I actually kind of wanted the day to take longer, to be honest! I have 10 hours to fill and being done in 2 hours isn't always helpful with the flow of the day. Often times the other children will join in on one child's Science or read-alouds… so there's lots of stuff to do… I tend to 'jump' into things, but I've had no issues. Being very organized has been a must though… I couldn't do it if I hadn't taken the 2 weeks to prep everything. It would be too overwhelmind without the printouts and clipboards the way I created them… so it's all right in front of us – we know what to do. π Hope this helps!
Proverbs31Woman
I'm just realizing you responded! Thank you for the info! π You've done a wonderful job! Whenever I see your posts of anything I can't wait to get started myself. HOD, AARβ¦ gonna be a busy year for us! π
Are you also using AAS? I want to use this too but also trying to figure out how to fit it in my day. Like you mentioned I guess the organization is what makes it all work. I will have to spend time organizing myself as well to make our year run smoothly, almost everything I'm using this year is new to me other than math.
Unknown
could you pretty please share the link for the character cards?
Unknown
could you pretty please share the link for the character cards?
Cassandra
Melissa – http://www.monarchroom.com/2012/08/heart-of-dakota-character-cards-bigger.html ! I'll add this to the post.
Robin
Love! Love! Love! Thank you so much for taking the time to share all this with us. What a kind soul you are..
Cassandra
Thanks Robin! I love sharing… if I can encourage/inspire even one other Mom, it's worth it! xo
Megan Russell
We just started with Bigger Hearts and Little Hearts! And I also placed my 10 year old son in Bigger. We are loving it so far!!
http://Www.myfullhandsandheart.blogspot.com
dk
Just found your blog and love it! It's encouraging me to get more organized with my three in various levels of HOD. My oldest will be in Bigger Hearts. I would love to use some of your printouts. Are they available anywhere besides Facebook?
Anonymous
So thankful to find this!!!
Can I ask why the extra printables? I am new to HOD and just learning the program. Are these printables used to complete assignments listed in the guide or are these extra things you've chosen to do? If the latter, would you mind explaining why you felt the need to add?
I love your clipboard idea! Please keep sharing as you are able π
Thank you again!
Cassandra
Hi Karie – it is a combination. I wanted to add because we really like to do Notebooking. As for the printables – much of it is just making your day to day life easier with the program- so creating the space for the child to do the work that will be asked in the guide. None of them are necessary. You can do it as you go… π We actually did not continue with HOD, as I found it too difficult to keep up with with me 3 kids. It is a fantastic program though and I believe families will be richly blessed by this curriculum, if that is what you are looking for, it is wonderful.
The Forsythe Homeschool Days
I used your system last year with clipboards, prepping in advance for each and I LOVED IT! We are using it again this year and I couldn't be more excited. Thank you so much for your insight.
Cassandra
That's so wonderful! I'm so glad it worked for you!!!