Thank you for sharing. We are also using Bookshark level D with my 8 yr old and 10 yr old. The schedule actually works amazing for us. We do all of our independent work first and then we all come together, and do the read alouds. My kiddos enjoy playing legos, using wikki stix, coloring, etc. I agree that the reference books are a bit tedious. We kind of glaze over them. The books are outstanding and they really do come together. We’re currently on week 4. Every family is so different and I love how Bookshark promotes that we use the curriculum and not to let it use us. ☺️
Another option might be to space the level out over a longer span of time. 🤷🏻♀️ I set level B aside when I first got it, brought it out the following year and now we’re well in to level C. It’s going much better now. Sometimes you just need time. I just go down the list to the next thing now. Sometimes we do half of the things scheduled that day and come back to it the next day and pick up where we left off. No one says you have to get it done in exactly 36 weeks 😊 Blessings! Glad she’s enjoying the readers. We love them too.
Its always interesting how the same curriculum works differently for different families. I use bookshark level f for my daughter (my son uses an online homeschool), but we heavily adapt it because my daughter is special needs. I use all the readers and read alouds as read alouds, and only do one at a time. They are all in order on the bookshelf, so I just grab the next one when we finish the one before it. To get through all the books, we read aloud every day, regardless if its a school day or not. For independent reading we go to the library and occasionally I buy new hi-lo books to add to her bookshelf. We keep mostly to the schedule of the history and science non fiction texts on school days when we also do math and language arts. Level f comes with notebooking pages for history and worksheets for science, but we just discuss them all instead of filling them in. I find that it is all "just the right amount" for her. All in all a school day takes us 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours, including reading aloud.
We also started Book Shark this year for grade 5, level D. After 1 week we stopped and went back to History Quest. I agree with everything you said. I was following the teacher guide and it was too much. I am a person who doesn’t do well piecing things together and I was overwhelmed. The books are amazing, but it took too much time of our day. Now our days are much smoother, shorter and happier. I appreciate your honesty. Thank you 😊
I find with some literature based curriculum they use a lot of those "reference" books that are dry facts that are hard to remember. Thats why I personally prefer living books and following more of a Charlotte Mason approach.
Having same experience with sonlight D with my 9 year old. Loves to read. But problem book are very mature. Content is more middle school. I agree, I switched bju and just reading the books. Really tried wanted love sonlight. My child reads 2 chapters book no problem.
Thank you for affirming my decision to starting my soon-to-be 2nd grader on textbook-style History before switching to a literature-based curriculum. 😀 I plan on just using Sonlight or Bookshark readers (still not sure which to try first). I had the same thought that for her to understand the deeper stories behind historic events, we need to do a general survey of them first.
We tried Bookshark and quickly realized we couldn't do it. My 8yr old can't sit for that much reading. We use the independent readers from ELA and that's it. For history, we switched to Notgrass. They have read alouds you can add as well, but it's a wonderful program.
I’m trying to decide between Book Shark & Moving Beyond the Page. My boys love history so I like that about Book Shark, but I also like how Moving Beyond the Page seems a bit more to the point with the lessons, like you mentioned in this video. Do you think I could do Moving Beyond the page as our main curriculum and do Book Shark History for history as an add on? Or would that be too much since MBTP already has some History in it? My boys love reading but hate writing… not sure how much writing there is in either one of these… iI would love for you to do a video comparing these 2 curriculums! Thanks! Your videos have been so helpful!
We did this level last year and also found the history overwhelming. Their world history is banging but for US history I was not a fan. It’s still such a great curriculum but yes level D is overwhelming
This is our first year with Bookshark and I liked your idea on doing audio books. We are also struggling with Mocassin Trail by Jarvis Mcgraw. You mentioned you had found an audio book. I have searched everywhere and cannot find the audio version of this book. Can you share your link to this audio book as well as any other books in the Bookshark series? Thank you for sharing your experience.
That wasn’t the book I was referring too, It was peacemaker but if you just search on google for by the book title and audio book you might be able to find something ☺️
