Sonlight?

[kdescalzi]

Hi

Anyone here using or have used the sonlight curriculum before? Anybody familiar with this HL system?

Tia

[SundayCrepes]

I buy the Sonlight books that work for our family. Usually that means I don't get the religious book. I also screen out a few of the secular books, but those are few and far between. I don't use their curriculums.

But the books are just sooooo good.

[onlyzombiecat]

I have used it with my dd.

What would you like to know about Sonlight curriculum?

[minuway]

We've used Sonlight for K and now for 1st grade. I like the Core, but we switched to different Science and Language Arts programs this year. Their book picks are great - its a literature based approach to learning history/geography with your literature read alouds and   readers thrown in. If you like reading out loud together, you'll probably like it. I like being able to have multiple kids at multiple levels reading the same thing. However, I don't like the amount of skipping around in books - 2 pages here, then 2 pages in another book - so we often change around the schedule to meet our needs in that area. I'd rather just read a chapter in one day, and my kids can handle listening that long, so that's what we do. The schedule for us last year was like my homeschool training wheels - after using it last year, I feel confident to change it up however I want, but last year I appreciated the detail of the schedule.  Even though we are Christian, we do sometimes skip some of the religious books because I want to focus on different things than the books emphasize. 

Right now we use Sonlight Core B, but are also reading The Story of the World because dh sometimes reads their history to them often and just likes it better than the "spine" text that goes with Core B (A Child's History of the World) and I like the hands on activities that the accompanying SOTW student activity book has. In case you're interested, we use Core B, with 2nd grade readers, First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind / Explode the Code,  Singapore Math, and Real Science 4 Kids as our main subjects. So although you could buy the full curriculum package from them, I prefer to use it only for history/literature and fill in with other programs for other subjects.  HTH!

[KimPM]

We are using Sonlight Core B similarly to minuway above. We did Core K, now called Core A, last year and he loved most of it. We are going thru Core B at half-speed, as he is already ahead for his age and I am slowing him down in this to do more of other things this year. He's liking it so far. We did Sonlight Science K last year, but we're doing Noeo this year as he wanted to study chemistry. I decided to try the Sonlight LA this year to help him open up his imagination, and I think it's helping. I'm using the LA1, but I pick and choose out of their schedule what I want him to do. Right now I am using the LA largely for the creative thinking & creative writing exercises. He's way far ahead of the LA1 in reading to use their readers and phonics at this level. But he is speeding through this LA, so I have the LA2 all ready to go.

What I do for the Sonlight books is look up the book list on their website, before I buy it for the year, and try to gauge whether I think each is a worthwhile book to use or not. I have added books and subtracted books. But having a basic schedule already laid out is great for me. I don't have to do any daily planning ahead of time (ie. none the night before).

Everything else (math, language, etc) we get elsewhere. In fact, this year I even bought my sonlight books mostly used.
Edited by KimPM - 11/11/11 at 6:38pm

[Tjej]

We're doing Sonlight K this year (now Core A), and we've really enjoyed it.  If your kids like to listen to books, you'll enjoy it.  If they don't at all, it will be hard going.

This year we have the science and LA, so we're using them (well, I'm also using FLL for LA).  I really like a different science program I'm looking into (BFSU), so we'll probably do that next year (and maybe a little this year).

We have the schedule.  We usually complete the scheduled stuff in chunks, though.  We do each week's stuff one week, but we'll read all the poems at a time, then all or half the stuff in the history/geography book, etc.  I like having the schedule, even though I don't break the days up the way they do.  It makes it easy for reporting, it's easy for me to not have to plan much or think about how everything will need to be divided up to cover a year's worth of material, etc. 

My kids really enjoy the books.  I would say it does expect a fair bit of thinking from fairly little kids, so it isn't a fluffy cirriculum.  It isn't HARD either, but it does aim high. 

Tjej