Hi, I am homeschooled and my Mom teaches me and my brother with Sonlight. I love it! This is my firsts year in school that I look forward to doing my work and loving it. I'm learning so much. One thing my family does is my mom doesn't read all the books out loud. She reads the readers, and poems. The history, bible and readers me and my brother do by ourselves. It really helps with the annoying of reading my mom does and she has more time to take care of my baby sister. We use Sonlight in a more independent way I guess. We don't really have any of these problems with Sonlight. I love the Science and history! We use a different math and English though. School takes us about 4-41/2 hours. I'm really sorry you didn't have success with Sonlight.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! I am a mother of 5 (17, 12, 8, 4 and 1) and was so close to getting this!!! You described exactly what I was afraid would happen to me! Love hearing from moms of many, like myself!
Thank you. Your review was very well done because you kept it very personal to you, telling what & why, which allowed me to decide what of those issues might apply to me & which ones wouldn't. Good job!
Spot-on review! I love your videos, btw, and my 5yo loves watching your kids :). I'm a 10-year Sonlighter, but I've been looking for a fresh perspective on things this year since I have seven kids at home K-12th, and a 1yo climbing the walls again! I started with SL thinking I had to check all the boxes and our first core took two years. I since have realized that I really love it, I just have to tailor it to me. I love history, real books, great read-alouds, and the SL schedule, which is what keeps me coming back. I do only the 4-day program and do it very light. I choose my own math and language, and sometimes science just because I rarely have time for SL science. If I substitute anything for a SL book, I add it into the schedule. I even add daily routines and chores to the binder. My binder is my life, lol! I think SL can only work for the large family if you are willing to let the schedule serve you and not be a slave to it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year, but I think I won't try to reinvent the wheel, just tweak SL a LOT! I'm leaning toward two cores, done ultra-light with lots of independent reading and bigs reading to littles. I already own most of the cores and buy used books to fill in the ones I'm missing. Thanks for helping me with my decision-making process!
The Heart of Dakota is a program we just loved. We bought that for 4th grade. We DID buy some things from Sonlight that we were very happy with. We have been happy with Abeka as well as BJU. Queen Homeschool is one I'd recommend for beginning readers. It amazes me how many curriculum choices we are blessed with. Not like back in the 1980's, thanks to parents who broke ground for the rest of us. Keep your videos coming! Have a happy weekend. God bless.
I am not done with the video but I have to say, the points you have raised are EXACTLY what I was thinking about Sonlight! I have 4 kids ages 3-8 I love the idea behind it just as you said, and think the readers are awesome but that schedule would kill me. Especially since this will be my first year homeschooling. This video has confirmed my suspicions and eased my mind about not choosing Sonlight this year.
Just subscribed. I’m so thankful for your honesty. We have a pretty large family, which I was concerned about considering sonlight. I also have a channel with tons of homeschooling content. It would be great to be friends and connect here 😊 looking forward to watching more of your content!
I found this review helpful. We are starting homeschool and totally new to this whole thing. I was considering Sonlight and now I see that I want to use things from it here and there. Thank you!
I agree with you. It does feel like a lot! :-) I'm glad I'm not the only one. I just posted a video about my SL experience as well Why I'm not using Sonlight next year
I am so thankful for your time in putting this together! I have been struggling to decide if we should invest in Sonlight, but I too have many little ones. That's what I was wondering about. And I am a list checker, too. 😂
Thank you! It's definitely not for everyone. I didn't notice any inappropriate books in our set this year, but maybe I need to look a little closer to the lists for the following years. I'm also interested in Abeka readers.
Thank you so much for this video!! I am the same way- I need to check everything off the list and I want to finish 1 thing (book) before I start the next. Your feedback was super helpful ❤️
I'm still in the middle of your video, but I couldn't believe how well you put into words everything I have struggled with using Sonlight. I am still a Sonlight fan, and if someone asks what curriculum I use, I always list Sonlight first, but we have had all of the same issues you mentioned, you could have been reading my mind! I've never really put the problems into words before. I keep thinking that it's something wrong with the way I'm using it. I also have 6 kids. I'm glad I found your videos. Do you have a website? God bless!
Thank you thank you! I love the idea of Sonlights approach charlotte mason influenced learning and literature based. I will be watching your next video and subbing!
Two questions. 1. What extra activities and clubs are your kids in to socialize them and prevent from making them awkward. 2. What are some things that you wish you could do or had the time to do to help socialize them.
I notice you seem to enjoy hounding homeschool moms on here with this question. Our kids don’t live in boxes or caves, with no human contact, and I weary of the flawed stereotype. My kids have tons of neighborhood friends, church friends, and fellow homeschooled friends. They are some of the most sociable kids I know and make friends wherever they go! :) Just because a kid is homeschooled doesn’t make them awkward. Just because a kid goes to school doesn’t make them properly socialized, either. Some of the most awkward and rude kids I’ve been around go to public school. Knowing how to properly interact with others is a valuable life skill that doesn’t just magically appear in a classroom because you’re sitting there. It is taught. Homeschool moms are fully capable of teaching this.
Sonlight was the first curriculum I had ever heard of four years ago when we started homeschooling. I have planned to order from them a couple of times but didn't because I didn't care for the book list. I never understood why a Christian based curriculum would have bad language or distasteful subjects in ANY books!? We use the Bible so much more than they suggest. I'm just glad we didn't buy the whole Core, which I was confused as to what to order on which grade level. GREAT REVIEW!
Is there any way you could be more specific about why you did not choose Sonlight for Language Arts? I am considering only buying their LA first grade set for next year but would love to hear more feedback first. Thanks!
THANK YOU SO MUCH for your take on this, especially from the standpoint of having six kids. I too have six, ages 8 down to 4 months. I had been heavily leaning towards this, but I don't know ANYTHING about it, so I appreciate your take on this. I am ordering a catalogue, but it sounds like it might be too much for me. :) THANKS!
I've never used Sonlight but am considering it. I'm glad to have come across your video. In the core package that you used, did you received actual lesson plans or was it just a schedule that came with the core package? Thanks for taking the time to put all thoughts on video.
Hi, thanks for your honest opinion. I'm researching homeschool curriculum for Grade 1 next year, and I'm considering Sonlight only for science and history. I"ve looked at their language arts and just can't convince myself to go with it. Also, we did MUS for kindergarten and I"m debating going with MUS next year or trying a different math curriculum. Just wondering, would you share what curriculum you use for language arts/reading and math?
Hi! You mentioned that you didn't their LA program. Could you please mention a few reasons why? I did their LA placement test today for my son heading into 3rd grade next year, and he did really badly on the LA 1 placement test! I did indeed find it a bit too dense even as a mom, and I'm wondering if that's just the placement test or the whole program.
I know you posted this video a while back but I'd love to hear what about Sonlight language arts you didnt like. I am considering it for next year (1st grade) and would love some insight from someone who used it. Thanks!!
If you use canned currriculum you can get a religiously slanted curriculum this way and you will pay for it. You probably do not have the teaching background to make lessons and lesssen plans from scratch. It is hard to home school. Ben there done that. And I have 27 years classroom teaching and 15 years college teaching......still it is a challenge to teach all subjects preparing everything from scratch. My problems are teaching keyboard music, drama, and foreign language. I would guess you might have several areas you might not easily teach from scratch. Somehow you need good textbooks to follow which will help you organize the subject material. I would use the New Century Bible which is at children's reading level for reading, recitation, and religious instruction. For art start with readers digest paint by number acrylic set then go to charcoal and graphite.Get a sketch book and have your kids learn to sketch objects by breaking them down into basic shapes. Then blow up photos they take on canvas and have them paint them using acrylic. The have them sketch in one two and then three point perspective and then paint in oil. Hang their good pictures on your living room wall and let them replace them as they paint better pictures. You draw and paint with them....they will love it and will try to do better than you...let them!See what I'm suggesting: systematic progressive learning, partly student directed with modeling , reinforcement , and reward. By the way I was not trained in art but taught physics chemistry anatomy and math most of the time. You CAN teach any subject if you master it yourself. If you can include clothing design and sewing also making receipes and following them, measuring, and the chemistry of cooking, food groups and groups of chemicals in foods and how the basic processes of the kitchen(like hydration, dehydration, carmelization, crystallization, sublimization, neutralization, distillation, decomposition, fractionization etc.) affect their physical and chemical and molecular structure......teach them to garden and raise and butcher animals...deal with nutrition, soil composition, fertilization, nitrogen cycle, etc and make the whole learning experience come alive. If necessary enroll them in a college class where a real artist or real chemist is teaching the Coeurse I'm trying to give you a pattern and a way to really quality teach and you see you don't get this out of a tv dinner! In music have them make a dulcimer or guitar and then learn to play it and read and write music and play in a group and get so they can make compose songs and entertain others.....now you also play with them! And learning becomes exciting! God bless you and those you teach!
