Question for Sonlight users in Highschool

[Love2Smile]

I'd love to know how your day goes with SL for highschool. Which cores you are using or have used and how long your day is.

 

How is the LA componant of SL? I have read that the writing instruction is very minimal and people sometimes use something else.

 

How do you kids handle reading all the books? What if your child is used to textbook style but you don't feel they are learning much, just studying to a test (ala public school)

 

As you can see from my sig, we use textbooks. (abeka). One month in and I am feeling burnt out. My highschooler is done with school by noon and that's with ALL subjects because all she does is read and answer questions. Basically looking at questions and then looking for the answer.

 

I do try to have discussions with her, but my main focus is my 6th grader who also uses abeka and needs more interaction.

 

My 9th grader reads VERY WELL, fast and writes very creatively.

She needs some instruction on "real writing" though, and I'm not too happy with Abeka's style.

 

Sooooo, I bought Beautiful Feets Ancient history for her to use this year (9th) in the hopes of going to SL next year. So she has her anciet history covered. In 8th grade she did american history in public school

 

The thing is this...she is LAZY! yes, very lazy when it comes to school.

I don't like the fact that she is just doing the least possible to get it done.

I would prefer her to read great literature and get something out of it.

See my dilema? Yes, I am the parent and I know they need to do what I tell them to...

 

So, just want some thoughts, etc....

 

btw... I do have the WTM newest book, however in this stage of the game I am looking for a curriculum company to purchase from such as SL or BF. I don't have the experience or the confidence to put together my own curriculum.

 

Right now after writing all of this, I want her to work harder and longer and that may mean having her do BF along with Abeka's geography this year and next year SL...

 

So now i'm rambling....

 

Anyway please let me know how you like SL for highschool! :)P

[Chris in VA]

We did most of the older version of Sonlight 300. It's been updated and they use a new spine now.

We didn't do the writing (didn't like it), the Bible (had our own already) or some of the literature (we did the GB's and "nearly GB's"). I liked it alright, but at that point, there were 15 books that had absolutely no "helps" included--just a "read this and enjoy it" paragraph or two, no comprehension or analysis questions of any kind. I supplemented heavily with SparkNotes online, printing out the synopsis for each chapter and asking my own questions to check for comprehension.

Since we had had two years of Omnibus already, ds was used to the reading load. He used the DK 20th Century Day by Day (the really, really fat book) supplemented by another year by year history for the first 30 years of the century.

I wish there had been more literary analysis, more explicit instruction on writing, and more commentary/questions and even tests for the books, esp for the 15 that had nothing.

It was ok, but the history questions were really just recall, and I wanted to go deeper but didn't know how to. Now they have a new spine, so I hope they have fixed that. The literature was really good--lots of classics. He read things like The Metamorphosis, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on The Western Front, The Hiding Place, One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich, etc.

If I had tweaked it by adding a strong writing instruction component and had better questions to help him make historical connections, it could have been an awesome year. Instead, it was just pretty good.

[jibaker103]

My 9th grader reads VERY WELL, fast and writes very creatively. She needs some instruction on "real writing" though, and I'm not too happy with Abeka's style.

 

The thing is this...she is LAZY! yes, very lazy when it comes to school.

I don't like the fact that she is just doing the least possible to get it done.

I would prefer her to read great literature and get something out of it.

See my dilema? Yes, I am the parent and I know they need to do what I tell them to...

 

Right now after writing all of this, I want her to work harder and longer and that may mean having her do BF along with Abeka's geography this year and next year SL...

 

Your daughter is a lot like my son!!! He's in 8th grade and reads at 11.5 grade level and is a fabulous creative writer. He is also very, very very lazy. He will skate by with trying to do just the minimum so he can do what's really important to him. :rolleyes: I think it's a combination of age, puberty, and hormones more than anything. You just got to ride it out by counting to 10 before saying anything!! :lol:

 

The best I have found to help with writing is IEW. I love the way it breaks down the righting process for organization and gives checklists to follow so that my son cannot stick in dialogue into an essay or report, change the assignment, go off on tangents, etc. like most creative writers do.:willy_nilly: He was fighting me over it at first but he just turned in his final draft of an essay on the Queen of Egypt and he as well as I was so proud!!

 

I would go to the IEW website and check out all of the options available. I can tell you that you do want to decide if you prefer watching DVDs to learn what to do, watch a DVD to have your child learn from a teacher, you be the teacher, or use a guide for you to help instruct. Personally we couldn't stand watching all of those DVDs so we went with a themed based lesson. I now feel confident enough to go off on our own and incorporate the units into his other subjects so that he is writing across the curriculum.

 

I also wanted to share with you how I have incorporated literature based, some textbook, and a little hands on so Noah can feel a little comfortable coming out of ps in 7th and still expand his reading and literary analysis through whole books. I am using BF senior guides, World History: The Human Odyssey, Trail Guide to World Geography, and reading lists from BF, TWTM, and SL. This will be our World History and Geography spread out over 2 years. We will then do American History for 2 more years pretty much using the same curriculum.

 

I'm not sure why you were moving from BF to SL but I thought I would give you another prospective. If your interested I can give more details just let me know!

[Love2Smile]

Your daughter is a lot like my son!!! He's in 8th grade and reads at 11.5 grade level and is a fabulous creative writer. He is also very, very very lazy. He will skate by with trying to do just the minimum so he can do what's really important to him. :rolleyes: I think it's a combination of age, puberty, and hormones more than anything. You just got to ride it out by counting to 10 before saying anything!! :lol:

 

The best I have found to help with writing is IEW. I love the way it breaks down the righting process for organization and gives checklists to follow so that my son cannot stick in dialogue into an essay or report, change the assignment, go off on tangents, etc. like most creative writers do.:willy_nilly: He was fighting me over it at first but he just turned in his final draft of an essay on the Queen of Egypt and he as well as I was so proud!!

 

I would go to the IEW website and check out all of the options available. I can tell you that you do want to decide if you prefer watching DVDs to learn what to do, watch a DVD to have your child learn from a teacher, you be the teacher, or use a guide for you to help instruct. Personally we couldn't stand watching all of those DVDs so we went with a themed based lesson. I now feel confident enough to go off on our own and incorporate the units into his other subjects so that he is writing across the curriculum.

 

I also wanted to share with you how I have incorporated literature based, some textbook, and a little hands on so Noah can feel a little comfortable coming out of ps in 7th and still expand his reading and literary analysis through whole books. I am using BF senior guides, World History: The Human Odyssey, Trail Guide to World Geography, and reading lists from BF, TWTM, and SL. This will be our World History and Geography spread out over 2 years. We will then do American History for 2 more years pretty much using the same curriculum.

 

I'm not sure why you were moving from BF to SL but I thought I would give you another prospective. If your interested I can give more details just let me know!

Jennifer,

THanks for posting. I remember you from another post I had regarding BF.

So right now I am using BF Ancients. Have you used that one?

I know which BF guides you are talking about. The World His/american ones that are for 2 years right? But it sounds like you are spreading them out 4 years with your added curriculums?

I was looking at the trail guides and they look awesome! I was going to add those in next year with the Medievel BF study guides from BF.

I'm not sure why I wanted to switch to SL. I guess I wanted her my busy, and they require more reading. But if I used BF's guides, Trail Guides and maybe some Abeka, she'd be plenty busy huh?

I have never heard of Human Odyssy. Is there a site?

 

Thanks for responding. I'd also like to know what you think of BF's Senior guides

[jibaker103]

Jennifer,

THanks for posting. I remember you from another post I had regarding BF.

So right now I am using BF Ancients. Have you used that one?

I know which BF guides you are talking about. The World His/american ones that are for 2 years right? But it sounds like you are spreading them out 4 years with your added curriculums?

I was looking at the trail guides and they look awesome! I was going to add those in next year with the Medievel BF study guides from BF.

I'm not sure why I wanted to switch to SL. I guess I wanted her my busy, and they require more reading. But if I used BF's guides, Trail Guides and maybe some Abeka, she'd be plenty busy huh?

I have never heard of Human Odyssy. Is there a site?

 

Thanks for responding. I'd also like to know what you think of BF's Senior guides

It's nice to be remembered...thanks! I am actually using Ancient Sr. right now. We are starting Lesson 20 today. The plan is to use Ancients, Medieval, and Early American for our 2 years of World History along with Trail Guide to World History. The US & World History Parts 1-4 will be used for our 2 years of American History along with Trail Guide to US Geography.

 

World History: The Human Odyssey is textbook written by Jackson Spielvogel I picked up the 5th edition either from Amazon or Albris for around $5. We are using this to cover the other parts of the world that BF doesn't cover.

 

I am also incorporating World Literature by using BF, TWTM, and SL book lists with Drawn into the Heart of Reading (DITHOR) to incorporate reflection and analysis into his reading, Teaching the Classics for literary discussions, and IEW Unit #9 for Critiques.

 

So far my ds has been buzzing through everything but some of it is being lazy and not caring about the quality of his work. Therefore I'm starting to slow him down, force him to read all directions first before starting, use a daily checklist of assignments to make sure he is not skipping questions, etc. Next step is to get him to answer questions in paragraph form instead of 1-3 short sentences! :lol:

[Julie in MN]

I'd love to know how your day goes with SL for highschool. Which cores you are using or have used and how long your day is.

 

How is the LA componant of SL? I have read that the writing instruction is very minimal and people sometimes use something else.

 

How do you kids handle reading all the books? What if your child is used to textbook style but you don't feel they are learning much, just studying to a test (ala public school)

 

This is just one experience with one child...

 

1. We did BF ancients, but by the time we got to Rome, it was way too much reading and too little gleaned from reading for my dd. Also, I felt a big piece of explaining ancient history was missing when it didn't start with creation & the fall.

 

2. She did SL for American History. It was mostly absorbing a huge amount of facts using the Hakim series & answering questions about her memory of those facts. Not considered high school level by SL but I was okay with that for that particular subject & child. I haven't used any other SL years.

 

3. I found myself dropping the SL literature until it was all gone. Many books were unimportant to me. Apparently their philosophy is to have some light reading, which ordinarily I agree with, but I wanted to make my own choices & the questions were all elementary level, IMHO. So we did separate lit. I would get individual book guides from Smarr, Glencoe online, etc., and had her read books I had chosen.

 

4. She did IEW for a bit. It was helpful for a child who was afraid to give her own opinion or even her own summary of information. It didn't help her become a great writer (accurate, but not great), and her writing test scores were mediocre, but it helped her get beyond where she had been.

 

5. Another source for bringing kids up to a higher level of writing is MCT. Some of his talks about writing are here:

http://www.rfwp.com/downloads.php#10

 

6. My youngest will use MFW and I am very excited that I will get what I want without all the work this time.

 

Julie