Contributor Reviews Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor. Comments Sonlight Review by Rick Lyden. September 8, Grades Used: 10 Sonlight does a bait and switch.
Sonlight Review by Bethany. February 26, Pros: American history, literature, academic rigor Cons: The package deals do not come with arts and crafts. Not all kindergartners will appreciate chapter books without colorful illustrations for story time.
Grades Used: Kindergarten First off, I want to begin by saying I did a lot of research on curriculum for my son's kindergarten and have an elementary teaching credential. Submit a Review Cancel reply Review guidelines include but are not limited to the following Please only review resources that you have used in your own homeschool. What this means in simple terms: we want real, unbiased reviews of products and resources for which you were not provided a review copy.
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We reserve the right to delete any review or portion of a review that we believe does not meet our guidelines. Cores also include read-aloud books which parents read to children and readers real books rather than textbooks, which children read on their own. Bible instruction uses scripture and other resources, including biographies of missionaries and Christian heroes.
Most Core Packages focus on an area of history, such as the world, the U. Core A, for example, is an introduction to world cultures. Sonlight will help you put together the package that meets your needs, at no additional cost. In upper-elementary through high school, the language arts component is integrated into each Core-level package.
Language arts material in the Core guides incorporates all of the instruction for phonics, grammar, composition, and most other language skills. I am particularly impressed with the weekly writing assignments built into the curriculum. Additional books in the packages might be for handwriting or spelling. Sonlight has created some of their own phonetic readers for the early stages of reading, but after that, they use real books from other sources.
Language Arts Guides are included with the Core and refer to some of the books that come in the corresponding Core Package, so if a child needs a particular level of language arts, that might dictate which Core you choose. Math and science function independent of the Core such that separate packages can be combined with your choice of a Core to customize the curriculum.
For math, Sonlight offers three or more choices for most levels. Science packages include an instructor's guide, an assortment of books, and supplies for experiments and activities. The science courses use a number of books as source material, including informational books, biographies, and activity books.
These courses each have three components: a book with experiments and activity pages, videos, and a kit with supplies. I do believe that if you feel the need to check every box you may feel overwhelmed by it.
I have had 4 cores going each of the past 4 years. I adore the literature rich curriculum and any time I did try something else with the kids, it always bombed, except Shirley Grammar which is parent intensive.
It is worth it. I have reused all the cores from the first kid. God bless. I agree with Jill! I also plan to use their history timeline book for my bookworm so she can enter the dates of interesting events and things she read about and fill out her personal understanding of history.
This is when Laura Ingalls Wilder was born, and this is when Grandpa was born, and this is when the fire happened that I read about…. I love the idea of Sonlight, but the cost is a big issue. So in many ways we are following the same general program as Sonlight, without the same cost, and with more flexibility to not feel tied down.
I love that our kids are getting such a broad worldview from their read-alouds! I love it! We did sonlight for kindergarten. We are still going for a few more weeks here.
My son likes it. It is very flexible as far as time goes. You can chose a 4 or 5 day week. It takes is about an hour and twenty minutes a day that includes math and language arts-k. We love the reading part. The down side is math, science, language arts, spelling, handwriting. All these things were not so good.
We have thought possibly of using the sonlight core and the other things I listed abeka. Now we have decided to just use Abeka. We want to know for sure everything is being taught well and is sufficient. With sonlight I never knew.
I felt a like there needed to be more. More of a challenge. But all families and kids are different. Als if you have more than one child it would be harder. Now as far as cost sonlight plus all that you need for a full grade cost over a thousand dollars a year. I just need more structure and I like the idea of grades and a few test thrown in there. I want to know if my child has to go to school for some reason he is ready to that. God bless! After homeschooling for 14 years and having some kids with learning disabilities, I still struggle some days when I think about doing school for 15 more years….
We have tried a plethora of them over the years, trust me. I have never liked Sonlight for Language arts, so we use other things. If your kids are very young, it might be more fun to do unit studies and lots of hands on activities since they have lots of school ahead of them and you can enjoy that sense of wonder they naturally have! I have confidence in this after graduating 2 of our kids and seeing them both do well after graduating.
I did order their catalog and I use it only to find great books for my kids. I have taken all the read alouds and put it on my homeschool read aloud list. I wish you could just buy the read aloud teacher guides. I enjoyed reading your reasons for not using Sonlight. Every family is different and one curriculum will not fit the needs of every learner. I have used Sonlight for eighteen years with 7 children. I love the literature. My kids often go to the shelf and reread the books. The curriculum is expensive but to me it has been great for home library building.
My 19 year old daughter was home from West Point over the summer and she was grabbing books from the Sonlight shelf to read for pleasure. That was labor intensive. When my oldest children were doing the American history 9th grade core my 5th and 6th grade daughters listened in and did the readers from an earlier American History core It worked.
I hope others will consider using this great curriculum too! This is a limited view but I hope it will help someone else. I love the book-heavy emphasis in Sonlight because both of my boys and I love books. Even on a non-school day, we regularly get through picture books between snuggle time and bedtime.
MBTP featured one or maybe two books for one week, and it was never enough for us! We often dragged out a one week unit into 2 weeks or more as we found multiple related books at the library and home. Also, it is not a unit study program — say we read about owls one week. We want to read 3 more owl fiction books and flip through some NonF books about owls too! I made it about 10 weeks into Sonlight before abandoning the guide and just using it for ideas.
Despite all this, we are doing Sonlight full package A next year- but I already anticipate having to write my own schedule every week. My sons love books and hate worksheets, and Sonlight has fewer worksheets to work around. Ultimately, with two kids mostly doing the same thing, no other kids or job, and with a learning style and personality suited to reading all day, Sonlight will mostly work for us.
Hey Rebecca! Btw I have an auditory 3rd grader go figure! So glad I stumbled on your materials and reviews, Rebekah! I just want to give my two cents worth those are South African Cents, so even less on your side! She sailed through the Readers and yes even she said one or two was very boring. Through Sonlight we were introduced to Apologia Science which made her love Science again, after 6 years of schooling in a private school. My son, two years younger, was less eager but I saw a huge improvement in his writing skills through Current events and the Creative writing.
He started at age 11 with the Eastern Hemisphere Core which was wonderful. After these experiences, I decided to School my youngest 8 year gap between her and her brother from scratch with Sonlight.
This proved to have given us much peace.
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