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Little Hearts for His Glory An Early Learning Program for Ages 5-7 By Carrie Austin Teacher’s Guide $34.99 Economy Package: Teacher’s Guide & essential books $ 69.00 Additional resources $ 51.00 Review by Jolene Underwood |
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If you haven’t yet heard about the products created by Carrie Austin, you are sure to hear about them in the coming years. Carrie’s first product was a reading program, Drawn Into the Heart of Reading, which has been well received in the homeschooling community and was awarded the honor of being one of Cathy Duffy’s Top 100 Picks. Quickly following the success of this program came a product in a different genre, a comprehensive program for preschoolers called Little Hands to Heaven. Now, I am excited to review Carrie’s next comprehensive program for kindergarten or first graders, Little Hearts for His Glory. I believe there will be many homes happy to use the economical and easy to use programs she has put together. Little Hands to Heaven was designed for preschool children aged 2-5 and is comprised of easy to use daily lessons for learning letters, numbers, counting, art and science at a very introductory level. It also includes fun with music and daily Bible study. Little Hearts for His Glory is a great follow-up program for children aged 5-7. This release follows a similar lay out and easy to use format while extending the scope of study to include history, fine motor skills and literature readings. Both of these programs are affordably priced, require little to no preparation and include a great number of activities for young children that even the busy and unorganized mom can use! (That includes a great many of us huh?) One of the things I like best about this series is that Carrie has provided a number of activities in a well-rounded array of studies, at an affordable rate. To top it off, daily activities are framed by topic on each page and make it easy for mom (or dad) to pick up the book and start using it. Oh! And it only takes about 90 minutes in your day to complete a full day’s studies! Components Similar to its predecessor, this curriculum utilizes daily lessons for basics such as phonics and math while rotating other areas of study such as art, science and drama. Each week, or five days of lessons, comprises one unit and there are 34 units included which would correspond with many private and public school schedules. A full day’s lessons can be viewed by simply laying the book open. On the left page are the Learning Through History assignments and on the right is Learning the Basics. Both pages comprise instruction for one day of lessons. Learning Through History, the left page, lays out the theme of history study for the week. History is covered chronologically from creation, the history of the Israelites and Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection to the explorers and the Reformation to the founding, spreading and preserving of America and finishes up with a study on “Living for Jesus”. Reading selections for historical studies come from your own Bible or The Family Time Bible by Kenneth N. Taylor and two wonderful children books by Christian Liberty Press, History for Little Pilgrims and History Stories for Children. In addition to “Reading About History”, each day includes selected readings from the Bible or a devotional book for the “Bible Study”. Other components include “Rhyme’s in Motion” for gross motor skills, “Corresponding Music” , with songs from Steve Green’s “Hide ‘Em In Your Heart” CD, and a daily rotation of either “Science Discovery”, “Artistic Expression”, “Dramatic Play” or “Thinking Games”. Each of these rotating sections include instruction that will help the parent/teacher lead an activity or discussion with their child. For example, in Unit 12, Day 2, “Dramatic Play” guides the teacher through an interactive lesson on what it might have been like to be at the baptism of Jesus. You and your child(ren) can act out parts and you can engage them in conversation about the event. The “Science Discovery” sections include the use of a chosen text from My Father’s World curriculum. Carrie enhances the use of these texts with her many hands-on and discussion activities.. Learning Through the Basics, the right page of the book when laid out, focuses on skills that will be covered each day. This includes “Fine Motor Skills”, “Storytime”, “Phonics Choices” and “Math Exploration. The phonics instruction remains the same and serves as a reminder to use a phonics option best suited for your child’s needs, on a daily basis. Recommendations from Carrie for teaching phonics include Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt or The Reading Lesson by Michael Levin and Charan Langton. If you prefer a different phonics program, you can still opt for a different selection and will be reminded daily to use it. “Fine Motor Skills” are accomplished primarily through handwriting instruction. Carrie provides daily assignments in utilizing either Getty & Dubay’s Italic books, A Reason for Handwriting or your own handwriting selection. “Math Exploration” includes daily instruction for using Singapore Math and/or numerous hands-on activities and mathematical teaching ideas that Carrie has included. Specific pages of text for Singapore Math Kindergarten Mathematics are provided and there is an index in the back with optional pages from a higher level Singapore book if needed. Finally, this page includes daily “Storytime” for fiction read-alouds. I have to admit, this section is my favorite – because of the book selections! I was so excited to see that this curriculum utilizes books written by Thornton Burgess from the 1950’s. I remember loving these stories as a child and checking them out of our school library one after another. I’ve read several to my boys and they loved listening to them as well. These wonderful animal stories share information about animal habitats and behavior indirectly with lovable stories. In addition, Carrie has added numerous ideas to enhance the storytime selections such as having the student act out part of the story with props, stuffed toys, to portray the animals. Some of the other suggestions include writing down a specific sentence with a couple of the words blanked out and having the child supplement the blanks with their own word choices. These activities for “Storytime” rotate by day to include comprehension questions, narration, critical thinking, writing practice and discussions for personal and moral application. Packaging Little Hearts for His Glory as a stand alone guide is priced at $34.99. To use it in it’s most basic form, you can use your own Bible and, if you have it already, your own math, phonics and handwriting programs. However, to use the program to its fullest, you will at least need to purchase the two history books, the Thornton Burgess Books and either two workbooks from Rod & Staff or Thinking Skills Grade 1 which are used in the “Fine Motor Skills” sections. Heart of Dakota Publishing has made purchasing this all very easy for you in Economy Package that includes Little Hearts for His Glory and these resources for $61.00. If you are interested in utilizing the science text, math texts, the devotional book and music CD, these can be purchased as a package for an additional $51.00. Note: These prices are current as of the date of the review in 2006.
Where might this be a good fit? Or not? I meet many homeschoolers that have been teaching a long time and many that are new to the whole adventure. When I meet someone who is fairly new to homeschooling and has a young child getting ready to “start”, there are a handful of products that I am comfortable recommending. The reason for this is that there are SO many options that it can be easily overwhelming. Also, so many parents are looking for coverage in all subjects at very early ages and there are few programs that do so, inexpensively, and with material that is even worthwhile. The first comprehensive product offered by Carrie Austin and Heart of Dakota Publishing, Little Hands to Heaven is one that I have recommended to several people. Now that this product line has been expanded to include Little Hearts for His Glory and the most recent publication, Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory, I will have more to recommend for the early years. In fact, these products can meet the needs of seasoned and veteran homeschoolers as well. Picture the family with several children. An older child can teach the kindergartener the lessons in the book while mom attends to one of the other children, or the older child can just assist with some of the lessons so that the young child receives special time from mom, or dad, and an older sibling. This book is just for them, the young child, and for their special learning time. Where won’t this fit? Well, if you are not interested in providing an education that is centered around Christ and the Bible, than this won’t be a good idea for you. In fact, if that is how you feel, you probably haven’t even read this far in the review. This curriculum is very Christ-centered and wonderfully helpful in keeping lessons from God’s Word instrumental throughout daily teaching. Personal Notes
Little Hearts for His Glory provides a simple lay-out, room for writing notes and checking off assignments, the usage of great literature, the inclusion of Bible reading and coverage of the basics; all of these make for a balanced, parent friendly program. None of these activities are time consuming and all are easy to implement with little to no planning. Reading, writing, singing, wiggling, discussing, playing and interacting. What a great combination for you and your youngster! Further
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