Heart of Dakota's Preparing Hearts for His Glory Year-End Review

It's such a good feeling to wrap up a schoolyear! We used Heart of Dakota's Preparing Hearts for His Glory with Silas, my 6th grader, and Titus, my 4th grader, this year. Heart of Dakota is a really great homeschool provider, and we've used several of their programs throughout our homeschool years. While we had a mostly fantastic year with Preparing, we aren't going to use Heart of Dakota next year.

WHAT WE LOVED

There are many things we loved about Preparing Hearts for His Glory. First I really loved the Teacher's Guide. You don't have a weekly grid schedule like most programs; instead there is a two-page layout for each day. That's right, for each day of the 4-day a week, 35-week program, you have a two-page spread detailing each and every assignment. This helped me a lot and kept me from flipping back and forth too much. 

We also loved most of the history hands-on projects. I tried to do the majority of them with the boys, and even when the activity sounded silly, they always had fun with it. The history projects were relevant to each week's lessons, easy to follow, and almost always used easy-to-find supplies. Toward the end of the year, we skipped most of the activities because we were so ready to finish with the schoolyear! I wish we would have done them, though, looking back.

stained glass project

The literature choices were excellent, and there were only a few books that we didn't enjoy - The Wonderful Winter, which we never finished because it was so incredibly long and repetitive, and Door in the Wall, which was interesting but really hard to read aloud because of all the old-fashioned language. Silas had some great literature in his history extension package! 

I loved being able to open the Guide, see exactly which books we would be using for the day, which supplies I needed to gather, and some of the "Key Ideas" which helped me see at a glance what we would be learning about.

WHAT WE DIDN'T LOVE

There were a few things we didn't love about Preparing Hearts for His Glory. The science portion is very disjointed in my opinion. Some days and weeks were full and fun, while others were dull, boring, and short. We didn't enjoy the constellation theme and substituted with a space unit from Gather 'Round Homeschool. Toward the end, we just read the book sections and asked the questions, skipping the experiments and demonstrations.

We also skipped the Bible memory as we were doing Bible Drill with our church, and we didn't enjoy the memory CD that was included and scheduled in. 

I don't love their math, grammar, and reading program choices, so we used our own. Toward the end of the year, I felt like I was only using the Guide for our history lessons (which I was!), and it felt wasted.

Heart of Dakota is also very expensive, as there are so many books to read. You could use your library if you wanted to, but our library doesn't have a good selection and the Interlibrary Loan isn't very user-friendly. 

We weren't crazy about Drawn into the Heart of Reading, which is the reading program by Heart of Dakota. The worksheets were hard to fill in and it was so time-consuming. We dropped it after just a few months of trying to make it work for us.

OUR TAKEAWAY

Heart of Dakota is a great program, but this coming year we are choosing to use something different. We wanted something more independent for the boys instead of teacher intensive.  With a baby due right after the start of the schoolyear, I need something that is going to be streamlined. Heart of Dakota is also very expensive, and I feel like I could use that money on some better resources. 

I can't wait to share what we will be using for this coming schoolyear!

Heart of Dakota - Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Getting Started

 This year we chose to go with Heart of Dakota for my children's main curriculum. I needed something open and go, already planned out for me, with all of the Charlotte Mason-y elements I love like living literature, narration, dictation, and enrichment.

Silas is going into 6th grade and Titus is going into 4th grade. We decided to use Preparing Hearts for His Glory with both of the boys. I love the way it does a broad sweep of world history, something the boys haven't studied yet. Last year we used Expedition Earth, which gave them a really fun overview of world geography. I think that will be beneficial to their world history study this year.

I also love how each week there is a history project - sometimes an art project, sometimes a hands-on project, sometimes a research project. The variety will keep the boys from getting bored. Plus they love anything crafty and hands-on!

Silas will also be using the Independent History portion of Preparing, where he will read a different book in addition to our studies and compete a separate notebook page. This will really prepare him to start working more independently next year. I placed the boys notebook pages (which are really beautiful) into three-ring binder. I divided them into three sections (four for Silas) - Written Narrations, Vocabulary, and Timeline (and Independent History for Silas). Easy!

During the time that Silas is working on his independent history, Titus will be working on his handwriting using A Reason for Handwriting T (Transition), teaching him how to write in cursive. We worked on this some last year, but his penmanship really needs some fine-tuning. 

They will be studying science this year using living books such as the One Small Square books, narrating, notebooking, and experimenting. I really like how there is one experiment scheduled each week, and they are totally doable! The supplies needed are easy to find and they aren't elaborate or time-consuming, yet they are engaging and fun! They'll be using unlined paper, three-hole punched and placed into a three ring binder - probably behind their history pages!

The other subjects that I always want to cover but usually don't get around to doing are already scheduled in the teacher's guide! Poetry, art, and scripture memory are already planned out for me, making things so simple. They'll be using a CD to memorize scripture chunks. I also like how they have their independent Bible study scheduled in.

We decided to go with Rod and Staff grammar this year, the boy's first year using it! I used this with my older kids and it was an excellent grammar program. I chose R&S 3 for Titus and R&S 4 for Silas since it's a rigorous program. We'll be using a plain notebook for their written work. They will also be using the dictation included in the teacher's guide, also in the same notebook.

We are continuing with Masterbooks Math Lessons for a Living Education 6 and 4. I like this math program for elementary, although I know many who think it's too light or too easy. It does start out slow in the early books, but it quickly builds up speed and becomes more difficult. It's a solid math program! We've used everything except Kindergarten. 

For reading, we're going to use Drawn into the Heart of Reading by Heart of Dakota. I bought the 2-3 level book for Titus and 4-5 level for Silas. In my experience, leveling down in this program is wise! They'll be reading books from 9 (I believe) genres. I didn't buy the book packs, but I will be using the suggested book list to choose these books. 

I have all of our books on a built-in bookshelf in our den/homeschool room. I have a cube shelf for the kid's daily books. Each child has a column of cubes. In the top, there is a bin for their math and grammar books, as well as any independent reading books. In the middle shelf, they keep their individual supplies - colored pencils, pencils, sharpeners, markers, calculators, and other items like that. The bottom shelves are empty right now.

I have all of our history, science, and read-aloud books on this tall shelf, right next to the cube shelves. I have them separated loosely by subject. I will grab the books we need each week and put them in a basket so they'll be easy to access. 

Setting up Preparing Hearts for His Glory was really easy. I am so excited to begin this curriculum! What are you using this year?