Sonlight - Complete Curriculum
Ratings Summary:
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Category
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Average
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Count
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| Effectiveness |
4.29 |
7 |
| Usability |
3.86 |
7 |
| Price/Value |
3.71 |
7 |
| Overall Average |
3.95 |
7 |
Sonlight Complete Curriculum can be acquired in packets that include a wide range of subjects, including Math, Science, Language Arts, History/Geography as well as Christian Studies, SAT Preparation, Critical Thinking, Economics, Money Management, and many others. Sonlight offers placement tests to help you begin your child at his/her specific learning level within each subject, as each subject is based on age or grade level for better individual study. Instructor's guide are also available.
http://www.sonlight.com
User Reviews
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| Reviewed by newfrontiersacademy |
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Created at
9:17 PM EDT on
April 29, 2009
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Category
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Score
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| Effectiveness |
5 |
| Usability |
4 |
| Price/Value |
3 |
| Overall Average |
4 |
We love Sonlight. There are a few books that I did not like and I'm not a fan of their Science curriculum, but I have found some real gems with this curriculum. It is the fun way to learn history. If you do not love reading, it will not be for you.
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| Reviewed by MicheleMM |
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Created at
2:13 PM EDT on
October 29, 2008
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Category
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Score
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| Effectiveness |
5 |
| Usability |
5 |
| Price/Value |
5 |
| Overall Average |
5 |
I homeschool seven children and someone mentioned to me years ago to try the Sonlight curriculum. I gave it a whirl one year and loved it. In addition the kids liked it too. Someone would wonder why I’m not using it anymore. Well I’ll explain that. This review is going to be mixed. I really don’t have anything negative to say about the curriculum. I believe that it is set up well and that the educational intent is excellent.
The idea behind Sonlight is that readers are educated people. If you know how to read well you will be able to write well also. In addition you are learning about history, science, literature, poems, language and religion. The more you read the better informed you are. I can’t agree more with this. I have learned so much from reading. I can also see this in my children. When they read they are telling me about things that they have now learned.
That year that I gave the Sonlight curriculum a try, my children loved it. They liked having less to write. They still had some Paces from School of Tommorow’s ACE & Christi’s series, but having some of the subjects dropped was a lighter load for them. They enjoyed reading about those subjects that I dropped from the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum. It is easier to read than to have to always read and write. I still remember one of the first books that my son was required to read “21 Balloons” by William Pene du Bois. He really liked that book. He kept talking about it to me.
The only reason that I didn’t continue with this curriculum is that I was trying to use the books from the library instead of just ordering them all. I also was afraid that some of the kids may actually not be reading and I personally did not have questions about the books for them to answer. Neither did I read all the books myself so I had no way of testing them. Overall though, if you had a way of testing their knowledge of the books they read, this is an excellent way to teach. It also helps them become avid readers.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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| Reviewed by AprilD |
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Created at
1:35 PM EDT on
May 26, 2008
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Category
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Score
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| Effectiveness |
3 |
| Usability |
3 |
| Price/Value |
3 |
| Overall Average |
3 |
A few years ago, our family used the Sonlight Core K, Introduction to the World: Cultures. I found Sonlight to be a great living books curriculum, with interesting reading selections and a helpful schedule. I did think that some of the read-alouds were much too advanced for kindergarteners, while others were perfect for the age. For instance, my children were a good age for My Father’s Dragon, The Boxcar Children, and the Wizard of Oz. The Family Under the Bridge, The Hundred Dresses, and a few more, however, were mostly over their heads, even if they did somewhat tolerate me reading them.
Sonlight organizes their “Core” curriculum around a basic “spine,” with various historical fiction books and works of general literature added in. In this case, the spine is the Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia, which my children enjoyed. They schedule out everything over 36 weeks, including optional Bible study and easy readers. Sonlight is definitely a Christian-oriented company, with an evangelical mission, but there are many secular homeschoolers (or homeschoolers from other religions) who adapt Sonlight to suit their needs. Sonlight chooses probably 90% secular books and materials. Almost all of Sonlight's selected books do speak to universally relevant themes of good character and learning about the world we share.
In our case, however, we did not complete the entire core. I felt that many of the read-alouds were too complex for the advertised level, and about two years later, I have to say that I’m not sure my children remember any of the books we read. They tend to remember the picture books that we read over and over at that age, rather than the chapter books that we read only once. I still think reading the books wasn’t a waste of time, as they did enjoy them at the time, and they did get us in the habit of developing a positive family culture of reading. I do suspect that my children would have gotten more out of these books if we had waited a year, until first grade. Even though we moved on from Sonlight into a more self-designed course of study, they remember many more of the Sonlight-type books we read from that first grade year.
The other issue we had with Sonlight was that they don’t include hands-on activities. Sonlight is almost entirely about reading, rather than doing, which works great for some people and not as well for others. I’ve found that a few well-chosen and productive activities or projects tend to really “stick” in my children’s minds, creating a) memorable experiences and b) tangible materials that they can look back through and review. Many homeschoolers choose to supplement Sonlight with lapbooking, notebooking, or activity books related to the Sonlight materials. Sonlight has so much reading scheduled, however, that you may want to cut some of the assigned readings to make time for hands-on activities, if you go that route.
We also used the Sonlight K Science program, and while I enjoyed the books, I found it frustrating that the science experiments that were scheduled didn’t usually correlate with the science reading assignments. I felt as though the experiments were thrown in with little explanation, and I’m not sure children would really understand why they were doing them, how they related to scientific principles, or how they worked in general. We ended up reading all the science books, but skipping many of the experiments. (Remember, I said before that I wanted activities, but ones that are relevant to what we are studying!) We do still pull out the experiment book every now and then, when the girls are bored and looking for a project to do, but I consider those to be “fun” activities that might not necessarily convey much in the way of scientific information. I know that now that Sonlight has the "Discover and Do" DVDs available, many homeschoolers really enjoy watching them, and it could be that those add some additional scientific content that I haven’t seen in the other materials!
In summary, you will probably like Sonlight if you want a detailed schedule of living books for studying history, literature, and geography, and if you don’t like to do a lot of “hands-on” activities and projects. (There really are quite a few families out there that fit that description, and this would be a great program for them.) You may find it helpful to use a level lower than “normal” in Sonlight, due to the advanced nature of their read-alouds. Christians will mostly like the evangelical focus of Sonlight, (though some may be put off by use of fantasy books like The Wizard of Oz), while secular homeschoolers or homeschoolers from other religions might like Sonlight if they don’t mind overlooking, replacing, or otherwise explaining the occasional overt Christian content.
Sonlight has very active user forums that can be a great source of support and ideas. The forums are only available by subscription, however, which is included free in purchases from Sonlight over a certain dollar amount. There is a lively resale market for Sonlight materials, and you may be able to buy most of your materials used or resell them when you are done, as a high percentage of Sonlight materials are non-consumable.
What Sonlight does best, in my experience, is to market themselves in a way that can really make homeschoolers feel good about what they are doing with their children. This is a factor that shouldn’t be underestimated – homeschooling can be drudgery if you don’t feel enthusiastic about what you are doing and why. Even though I found that Sonlight wasn’t the perfect fit for us, I still salivate over their annual catalog! It is a motivational tool, in and of itself.
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| Reviewed by codapop |
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Created at
7:12 PM EDT on
March 19, 2008
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Category
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Score
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| Effectiveness |
3 |
| Usability |
3 |
| Price/Value |
3 |
| Overall Average |
3 |
I used Sonlight K with my oldest son. I chose not to use it with my other children.
Sonlight is a literature based curriculum. I loved the books that we read together for this curriculum. I still have them and I still use them with my other children.
My issue with this curriculum was simply that it was a "boxed" or "canned" curriculum. It was recommended to me because I was a first time homeschooler and it was simpler for me to start out with this sort of curriculum. I wanted a Christian curriculum as well. It served its purpose and was probably the best choice for a beginning homeschooler. I changed the next year to choosing my own curriculums for the different subjects.
With Sonlight you receive an instruction manual that has a four or five day schedule. It is broken down into weekly sheets. The weekly sheet is made up of daily lesson plans in the different subject areas for that particular grade such as Bible, History/Geography, Read Alouds, Advanced Readers (if this applies), Miscellaneous (such as field trips), physical education, and a place for other notes. We found this to be overwhelming and ended up always feeling behind. We would be on day 2 of week 12 in Bible and day 4 of week 11 in history and day 5 of week 11 in Read alouds. It is true what another reviewer noted that it is "like an all you can eat buffet". This simply did not work for us.
So while I do like the idea of a literature based curriculum and the books that Sonlight uses, the "boxed" approach simply did not work for us. If you enjoy this type of curriculum then Sonlight is a great choice. For a family that likes to make their own schedule and choose from the many great curriculums out there for different subjects it simply is not a good choice.
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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| Reviewed by emmiedahl |
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Created at
7:25 PM EDT on
March 16, 2008
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Category
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Score
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| Effectiveness |
4 |
| Usability |
4 |
| Price/Value |
4 |
| Overall Average |
4 |
Sonlight Curriculum is a literature-based curriculum that uses history as the core is learning. Children learn through unit-based, multi-subject lessons. Because it is literature based, your family will be freed from the drudgery of workbooks and traditional texts. This is our first year using Sonlight, and I am impressed with the quality of the materials and the thoughtfulness of the lesson plans.
What I like about Sonlight: Children will learn eagerly and retain information when they read the engaging books with memorable characters. It also places the subjects in a context, in contrast to traditional history books that are little more than dry lists of names and dates. All materials are included with the Core packages, so I don’t have to run to the mall or library for supplemental materials every weekend. I also like the excellently planned Instructor’s Guides, which free me to spend my time teaching instead of planning and scheduling. The four day schedule leaves wiggle room for all of our extracurricular activities. Also, having all of our subjects wrapped into one core lesson with a few supplementary activities is more time and energy efficient than some of the other boxed curricula we have tried.
What I don’t like about Sonlight: Sonlight is very time consuming and requires almost continuous parental guidance. This makes it difficult, even impossible, for parents with large families spread between several different grades. Also, the lessons tend to be advanced and require a level of critical thinking that is sometimes beyond what one would expect from a child. This can be remedied by buying the curriculum one grade below your child’s usual level. Also, some of the books address topics that I consider too controversial for the intended age group. These books can simply be skipped, but I hate buying curriculum I can’t use.
Despite its drawbacks, this is a curriculum that families and children love passionately. There is no beating the convenience of receiving your entire year’s history, language arts, science, math, foreign language, and electives with one quick order. The literature-based approach creates solid readers who understand not just the subjects but the meaning and context of the subjects. Sonlight provides the solid, well-rounded education that we all wish we had been given.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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