What is the matter with me?!

[Rivka]

Why am I fantasizing about using Sonlight Core A with my 5-year-old next year?

 

We aren't Christian.

We can't afford it.

We already have absolutely enormous quantities of children's books.

We have never used an all-in-one curriculum.

 

And yet I am completely longing for it. Is it just that the advertising is really, really good? Is it guilt about how often the younger child's education gets short shrift?

 

Please talk sense into me.

[texasmama]

I like SL Cores, but I am Christian.  :)

 

Here is an idea for you, which is how I have done SL if you want an organized history and lit schedule.  (I don't use the discussion questions.):

 

Buy a used IG on ebay or elsewhere for cheap (I got my Core 100 IG for $35 on ebay.)  The older ones are better anyway.

 

Then fill in with the books used.  You likely have some of them anyway.

 

I've done this for three years, and the cost of the Core and books is about one third of the new price.  Not a bad deal for history and lit for three kids, since I keep the Core and reuse them with my little dd.

 

(Sorry I didn't talk you out of it, but many people get SL on the cheap and also use it secularly.)

[Jess4879]

I get tempted by Sonlight every so often.  It just looks so pretty...

 

I also go through a bit of a crisis every winter (sometimes twice) where I want to try something different, for absolutely NO reason.  I have learnt to restrain myself.  Most of the time.  :lol:

[Walking-Iris]

I get tempted by Sonlight every so often.  It just looks so pretty...

 

I also go through a bit of a crisis every winter (sometimes twice) where I want to try something different, for absolutely NO reason.  I have learnt to restrain myself.  Most of the time.  :lol:

 

 

I have the same fantasy at times. For me I think it's the ease of just buying a thing and having it all sent to me, without having to buy all the separate books and parts. I fantasize about Calvert too. But then I realize that I already have everything I need and there's no need for all that and I just go on with my day!!!!

[maize]

I have the same fantasy at times. For me I think it's the ease of just buying a thing and having it all sent to me, without having to buy all the separate books and parts. I fantasize about Calvert too. But then I realize that I already have everything I need and there's no need for all that and I just go on with my day!!!!

I do this with Memoria Press packages...it just looks so easy, even when I don't think we would really even use half the package...

[Rivka]

Okay, getting the three weeks of free IG samples helped a lot. Most of it was taken up with setting up ridiculous straw men about evolution and then knocking them down again. For example, the IG argues that people who believe in evolution think that humans from a few thousand years ago were stupid and subhuman, which they then point out is easily disproven by, say, looking at Euclid.

 

I feel better now.

[My3girls]

Yeah, sometimes the fantasy needs to be killed by reality.  I see a lot of Christian curriculum that appeals to me like Apologia, but I know it just will not mesh with our family.  Right now, I am fighting off the urge to check out Science in the Beginning and Science in Ancients Times.  We are just not young earth creationists, but the idea of having an all in one science curriculum is so wonderful.  Why can't a secular science curriculum be so appealing?

[mama27]

The Sonlight books are awesome. Get a catalog and read the books!

[quark]

I think of it as a homeschooling rite of passage.

Somewhere around year 5-ish of homeschooling I grew out of :drool5: over Sonlight and Ambleside Online but prior to that, almost every single year, at around this time, I was spending hours on the Sonlight and AO sites. This is what I think the matter with me was:

 

1. definitely the all-in-one box appeal

2. those schedules...so absasmurfly wonderful (I just love weekly grids! I solved my attraction to sonlight schedules by making my own gridded planners and now just use a store bought planner that uses grids.)

3. the whole irresistible idea of getting all our learning done via cuddling on the couch and reading silently or aloud (their ad people are good!). 

 

When I think of homeschooling, being surrounded by books and spending hours just reading is my ideal but real life, my type A personality, my constant pull-push with myself to unschool one day and be structured the next, and my very non sequential learner and his need for higher quality, secular materials...make using AO and SL just about impossible for us.

 

Twice, I caved in and bought some guides (different subjects). I needed to see them twice to realize they really won't work for us.

[Ameena]

FWIW, SL is easy to make secular. And pretty cheaply found used. We do both :) Chuck maybe 2-3 books from each core, ignore the biased IG notes, and it's a great program.

[sweetpea3829]

Every time I get tempted by Sonlight, I head on over to their website and am immediately overwhelmed by the plethora of Cores and choices and grades and ages, lol.  

 

 

[KeepItGoing]

I used Sonlight for years, and was totally in love with them. But I fell thoroughly out of love and no longer recommend it.

 

You can get all the major benefits of Sonlight if you just read books together. With my first two, I think reading aloud such great books was really, really important in their development and in their attitudes toward school. I eventually moved away from it as the heart of our program, though, because their understanding of so many issues turned out to be so superficial. Novels are wonderful, but they don't substitute for in-depth study of history, for example.

 

And the schedules? No good for us—everything was disjointed because they'd recommend one page from this book and two pages from that book and six pages from this other one. If I tried to do that, I'd lose my young kids' interest in between books. We never followed their schedule after the first couple of weeks of trying; we just read the books. (I remember when I bought a book that was to be our main history book that year. My daughter sat down and read it in one session! And she remembered it, too. Now what?)

 

For language arts? I shouldn't address this because it's been ten years since I saw their LA program and it might not be that bad any more, but when I last tried to use it it was really bad, both difficult and not gramatically accurate.

 

Again, perhaps they've improved—but when I last looked, the higher in the curriculum you got, the more the curriculum seemed to be reflecting the beliefs and preferences of the person who wrote the curriculum, rather than what the average kid ought to be studying.

 

I kept buying most of their books for a year or two after I gave up the curriculum itself. Use their catalog. But there's really no point in buying the curriculum.

[Alte Veste Academy]

 

I feel better now.

 

Or is that...for now? In my experience, Sonlightus Potentialus is a recurrent virus, rebounding yearly (or semiannually, depending on mid-year overall health). 

[Alte Veste Academy]

I think of it as a homeschooling rite of passage.
Somewhere around year 5-ish of homeschooling I grew out of :drool5: over Sonlight and Ambleside Online but prior to that, almost every single year, at around this time, I was spending hours on the Sonlight and AO sites.

Hmmm. Interesting. I wonder if the presence of the 2nd and 3rd children keep me vulnerable to reinfection.

ETA: I don't think I'm ever going to post again. 5555 posts. That's fun.

[ondreeuh]

 

Please talk sense into me.

 

1) For a non-Christian, the notes will be completely irrelevant for the cores, as will the Bible portion of the schedule. So you are basically left with a grid schedule.

 

2) The grid schedule breaks everything up into tiny pieces. It's incredibly easy to get behind when you are picking up 5 different books each day

 

3) The science experiments are independent of the reading (mostly)

 

4) A good portion of the books are sappy

 

5) The LA is a mishmash of skill levels.

 

6) It is SO MUCH READING. Overkill in my house.

 

 

Not everyone will agree with me, but that's my take on it. I AM enjoying Science A because it is a great overview of science, and the encyclopedia includes easy activities to demonstrate the scientific principles. I don't even use the schedule, though. I just look at the activity pages and see the page numbers on there. You could totally just get the student pages. I think A looks like the best one, though.
 

I would get the history/geography books that appeal to you, and read them through one at a time (rather than spreading them all out over weeks). At one point I coordinated the chapters in CHOW with the Usborne Book of World History and I might use that for a couple years of world history, supplementing with the SOTW CDs. It's easy to read a chapter in CHOW, then read the encyclopedia and choose a couple of things to investigate further.

[lewelma]

ETA: I don't think I'm ever going to post again. 5555 posts. That's fun.

Ah but you did. I see 5556. :)

[texasmama]

1) For a non-Christian, the notes will be completely irrelevant for the cores, as will the Bible portion of the schedule. So you are basically left with a grid schedule.  Christian and I don't use the notes or the Bible.  I like the schedule.

 

2) The grid schedule breaks everything up into tiny pieces. It's incredibly easy to get behind when you are picking up 5 different books each day  Never got behind or off track until I was working 25 hours a week and my boys didn't do their independent reading as they should - then we got behind and off track.

 

3) The science experiments are independent of the reading (mostly) Never used science so N/A.

 

4) A good portion of the books are sappy I evidently love sappy. ;)

 

5) The LA is a mishmash of skill levels.  Hated LA when I used it five years ago.  Ditched it and haven't used it since.

 

6) It is SO MUCH READING. Overkill in my house.  I ADD books to it.  :D

 

 

 

I'm not fighting with you.  I promise.  Just had to respond with our experience.  (Yes, I know you said that not everyone would agree with you, and I think the OP's plea was a bit tongue in cheek.  At this point, we're just having fun.)

[FO4UR]

Sonlight bakes the bread, changes the diapers, and sews the denim jumpers too. :tongue_smilie:   If they would only add a housekeeper...

 

 

For those looking for secular science that comes in tidy kits, check out Science in a Nutshell by Delta.  Add regular library trips...or an Amazon addiction...and that is a great way to get science d.o.n.e. 

[MerryAtHope]

Why am I fantasizing about using Sonlight Core A with my 5-year-old next year?

 

We aren't Christian.

We can't afford it.

We already have absolutely enormous quantities of children's books.

We have never used an all-in-one curriculum.

 

And yet I am completely longing for it. Is it just that the advertising is really, really good? Is it guilt about how often the younger child's education gets short shrift?

 

Please talk sense into me.

 

What is it that Core A offers that you want? Maybe you can "make your own core" with what you have. It's pretty easy to make up a one-page schedule like SL does listing books to use in order of use. And if you have lots of books, you can probably put together a good set of read-alouds & readers, history & science to use. 

[ocelotmom]

I love their booklists. I first fell in love with Sonlight when I found that their booklist contained books that I loved as a kid, that I thought no one else had ever heard of. Most books we've read from the list have been hits, even where I wasn't already familiar with them. I turn to the booklists when I want a book on a particular subject/time period, and tend to grab books I recognize when I find them cheap at thrift stores.

 

I feel no desire for the IGs, though.

[Alte Veste Academy]

Ah but you did. I see 5556. :)

I have no self-control. :lol:

[stripe]

Please talk sense into me.

Subscribe to their emails. Once you start getting one with the term "THUMB" in them, you will no longer want to send them your money. The catalog, however, may be useful to you for book ideas.

[boscopup]

Try it out to truly cure it, but use an older, used IG. They're easily found for very cheap. And you're not missing anything from the new LA integration or any updated notes (I'm a YE believing Christian, and I don't trust anything John Holzmann writes - read his posts on this forum and you'll quickly understand).

The books are enjoyable, but they basically have you read them in a certain order. I haven't used Core A, but in Coors D and E, we had a history spine (that we liked), a read aloud, amd a reader for the kid each day. You'd usually read something like a chapter a day. I thought the readers were too easy for my young-for-Core son, but he is advanced in that area. So he'd usually read the reader in a day instead of 2-3 weeks.

What sent me away from Sonlight was us getting burned out on historical fiction. The books were good, but there was just not much non-fiction to balance it out. Meanwhile I was using TOG LG books for my first grader, and those were nice non-fiction books. It was a breath of fresh air. So we switched completely and are very happy. I'm glad I tried Sonlight first though. And it's easy to try those lower cores using library books.

Just don't buy new. I don't think the LA integration is worth it, and you can't buy an IG without the LA now. That upped the price.

[Rivka]

I think of it as a homeschooling rite of passage.

Somewhere around year 5-ish of homeschooling I grew out of :drool5: over Sonlight and Ambleside Online but prior to that, almost every single year, at around this time, I was spending hours on the Sonlight and AO sites.

 

 

Thanks to this post I spent hours on the Ambleside Online site last night. You guessed it, fantasizing about how a CM cuddling-on-the-couch-reading gridded schedule would be the answer to all of my homeschool burnout.

 

Sonlight bakes the bread, changes the diapers, and sews the denim jumpers too. :tongue_smilie:   If they would only add a housekeeper...

 

 

That's definitely the appeal, isn't it? Except the denim jumpers. I have way too much going on up top to wear jumpers.

 

What is it that Core A offers that you want? Maybe you can "make your own core" with what you have. It's pretty easy to make up a one-page schedule like SL does listing books to use in order of use. And if you have lots of books, you can probably put together a good set of read-alouds & readers, history & science to use. 

 

This is good advice, and I have sort of started to do this. I have a long list of potential read-alouds for my kindergartener. I've been planning one week at a time, which works decently enough for my older child - all of her materials are planned out, so I can just grab the next set of lessons and write them into my BEAUTIFUL HOMEMADE GRID. But my little guy seems to get shortchanged by this method. Sometimes I plan an awesome week for him and it actually gets done, and sometimes... not. I'm thinking that now that I have two kids, I need to do more conscious forward planning. I really could just fill out my own gridded list a few months at a time, and that would probably help a lot.

[Rivka]

Subscribe to their emails. Once you start getting one with the term "THUMB" in them, you will no longer want to send them your money. The catalog, however, may be useful to you for book ideas.

 

Googled. Oh my. We have plenty of unreached people in our own house, so we could just pray for each other every day and save a lot of time.

[ByGrace3]

I do this every spring....and then I look at the 3 week sample :lol:

What I actually do and find a great compromise. I pick my own spine and more picture/non fiction books that work for the multiple ages that I have and add in all the SL readers and read alouds. What I love about SL is the books, not the choppy schedule. So we just read the books. :)

[KristenR]

Yeah, sometimes the fantasy needs to be killed by reality.  I see a lot of Christian curriculum that appeals to me like Apologia, but I know it just will not mesh with our family.  Right now, I am fighting off the urge to check out Science in the Beginning and Science in Ancients Times.  We are just not young earth creationists, but the idea of having an all in one science curriculum is so wonderful.  Why can't a secular science curriculum be so appealing?

 

I actually talked to the author of those books, Science in the Beginning and Science In Ancient Times and am in the works to possibly review it from a secular perspective.  He seems to be it can be done, just as I've done with other materials.  FWIW, he was extremely helpful and kind in his correspondence to me.  

[Lang Syne Boardie]

I know the feeling of really needing something open-and-go, deliberate, professional, and complete for a younger child. Something to show him (and yourself) that his school matters and you got this just for him instead of treating him like a tag-along to an older child. That's how I got into SL in the first place. I could plan their school or I could teach them but I didn't have time to do both, at least not that particular year. And Core A (K, when I used it) is a really great course.

If I were you, I would do SL just for this year if I could get my hands on an old IG. It probably needs to be 2005 at the latest. Almost all of my SL cores are that old.

Back in those days, there was absolutely no THUMB nonsense. And concerning the evolution-containing pages of Usborne books for Science, the only mention of this in the SL IG was that, "We are not scheduling these pages. Please read or skip them as your family's needs dictate." So Sonlight became one boxed curriculum that evolution-believing Christians could actually use, because Sonlight used Usborne books for science which are secular.

The IGs were less scripted, as well. Instead of lists of canned questions for you to ask the dc about the books, simple summaries of concepts that should have been picked up were there, just to give you a jumping-off place for discussions. Plus you'd have timeline dates and mapping suggestions, some vocabulary words, some nature study and cultural awareness stuff...it was good.

The old Sonlight was evangelical and decidedly Christian but not offensive, more trusting of the parent's intuition and capabilities, and more open to a range of opinion concerning hot button issues. The Christian aspect of it was easily ignored by parents of other faiths, because that perspective was mostly found in the parent IGs which the young children never even read. Sonlight to little kids was simply the books they were reading, and the discussions they had with their parents which would of course reflect their parents' beliefs and perspectives and not the curriculum company's.

The old Sonlight was John Holzmann and the new Sonlight I don't recognize.

There is an old Core K IG on ebay for $35.99. I don't know what year it is; you'd have to contact her. But she includes a pic of an old SL catalog to show you that it's "K," not "A," which means it's pre-THUMB (pre-hyper evangelical focus) at least. So you could get what you want to use for your son without buying from Sonlight or trying to use their new guides which IMO are not at all appropriate for your family. (Or mine.)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like-new-Sonlight-Intro-to-World-Cultures-instructors-guide-core-k-homeschool-/191113901707?pt=US_Texbook_Education&hash=item2c7f46b68b

 

[Rivka]

I know the feeling of really needing something open-and-go, deliberate, professional, and complete for a younger child. Something to show him (and yourself) that his school matters and you got this just for him instead of treating him like a tag-along to an older child. That's how I got into SL in the first place. I could plan their school or I could teach them but I didn't have time to do both, at least not that particular year. And Core A (K, when I used it) is a really great course.
 

 

Unsurprisingly, Tibbie understands me perfectly.

 

I will think about that used core K. The funny thing is that part of what I would like about Sonlight is that it would give me permission to have non-elaborate plans for him, and when I think of it that way it does raise the question of "why can't you give yourself permission to have non-elaborate plans?" I mean, I could get (or select from my shelves) some Usborne-style books and some literature read-alouds, and I could break them up into gridded bits, and that would essentially be the same as a Sonlight core.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I think of it as a homeschooling rite of passage.

Somewhere around year 5-ish of homeschooling I grew out of :drool5: over Sonlight and Ambleside Online but prior to that, almost every single year, at around this time, I was spending hours on the Sonlight and AO sites. This is what I think the matter with me was:

 

1. definitely the all-in-one box appeal

2. those schedules...so absasmurfly wonderful (I just love weekly grids! I solved my attraction to sonlight schedules by making my own gridded planners and now just use a store bought planner that uses grids.)

3. the whole irresistible idea of getting all our learning done via cuddling on the couch and reading silently or aloud (their ad people are good!). 

 

When I think of homeschooling, being surrounded by books and spending hours just reading is my ideal but real life, my type A personality, my constant pull-push with myself to unschool one day and be structured the next, and my very non sequential learner and his need for higher quality, secular materials...make using AO and SL just about impossible for us.

 

Twice, I caved in and bought some guides (different subjects). I needed to see them twice to realize they really won't work for us.

 

This! Not that the actual curricula appeal to me, but I share your love of beautiful grid schedules and the fantasy that we'll just all sit around reading all day . . .  :smilielol5:

[stripe]

I know the feeling of really needing something open-and-go, deliberate, professional, and complete for a younger child. Something to show him (and yourself) that his school matters and you got this just for him instead of treating him like a tag-along to an older child. 

I think you have it just right, only, I think the appeal is probably the same for the older child. There is something about a shiny workbook that says "I care!" in a way that an assortment of various stuff, including internet downloads that the child never really interacts with, just doesn't.

[ocelotmom]

I think you have it just right, only, I think the appeal is probably the same for the older child. There is something about a shiny workbook that says "I care!" in a way that an assortment of various stuff, including internet downloads that the child never really interacts with, just doesn't.

My daughter was the opposite at around 5. We had tons of workbooks sitting around, but if I didn't find and print a worksheet especially for her, it wasn't special enough.

[mommymilkies]

Or is that...for now? In my experience, Sonlightus Potentialus is a recurrent virus, rebounding yearly (or semiannually, depending on mid-year overall health). 

:iagree:  :lol:

 

Unsurprisingly, Tibbie understands me perfectly.

 

I will think about that used core K. The funny thing is that part of what I would like about Sonlight is that it would give me permission to have non-elaborate plans for him, and when I think of it that way it does raise the question of "why can't you give yourself permission to have non-elaborate plans?" I mean, I could get (or select from my shelves) some Usborne-style books and some literature read-alouds, and I could break them up into gridded bits, and that would essentially be the same as a Sonlight core.

Oh my, yes.  I have bought sooooo many Core guides.  I will say I actually like them but the newer ones were so evangelical I had to stop using them (no offense).  I have an older Core H (?) that is freaking amazing, though, and I will use that one.  Definitely find an older one if you cave and try it.  I really want the ease of a premade cuddle on the couch kind of learning experience.  I am so sick of scheduling!

[ondreeuh]

Unsurprisingly, Tibbie understands me perfectly.

 

I will think about that used core K. The funny thing is that part of what I would like about Sonlight is that it would give me permission to have non-elaborate plans for him, and when I think of it that way it does raise the question of "why can't you give yourself permission to have non-elaborate plans?" I mean, I could get (or select from my shelves) some Usborne-style books and some literature read-alouds, and I could break them up into gridded bits, and that would essentially be the same as a Sonlight core.

 

YES. For me, it has to do with not trusting myself to do a good enough job (or not trusting myself to not overdo it). Sure, I can coordinate a dozen resources and make a schedule, but I don't "trust" it the same way I do with a purchased one. Some if is because psychologically, we attach more value to something we paid for than something we got for free. But another reason is that it is relieving to put the decision-making into someone else's hands and just follow the plan.

 

Experience has shown me that professionals often get it wrong too, though. Just because it is beautifully photographed in a glossy catalog doesn't mean it's actually well-balanced and coordinated.

 

I am drawn to Calvert for my youngest. I like that it hasn't undergone radical changes over the years, so people's reviews are generally pretty accurate. The programs are actually tested in a school, so the company has real feedback from their own people about what works. I don't think Winter Promise or Sonlight do any "beta testing" of that scope.

 

I am too cheap to buy Calvert, so I have been using OneNote to make a notebook with 150 pages. Each page has a list of assignments. Math* and Reading/LA are scheduled every day; science and history alternate (2 days history, 2 days science). I plugged in geography every 4th day, and scattered health around, assigning lessons on days when the workload was otherwise light. I linked all sorts of videos and online activities, and pasted in directions for experiments. The idea is that each page is a day's worth of work, but sn't scheduled for a specific day on the calendar. And because I have only 150 days, we can go at a slower pace or take a break for a unit study here and there. I chose well-reviewed textbooks for the reading, science, math, and health, and the only "homeschool" program I'm using is Adventures in America. I'm essentially trying to create my own Calvert-style lesson manual with the resources I want to use.

 

*Math is just a placeholder - I am not scheduling individual lessons, since I want to be free to speed up or slow down as needed.

[FO4UR]

Unsurprisingly, Tibbie understands me perfectly.

 

I will think about that used core K. The funny thing is that part of what I would like about Sonlight is that it would give me permission to have non-elaborate plans for him, and when I think of it that way it does raise the question of "why can't you give yourself permission to have non-elaborate plans?" I mean, I could get (or select from my shelves) some Usborne-style books and some literature read-alouds, and I could break them up into gridded bits, and that would essentially be the same as a Sonlight core.

 

 

You could designate a special shelf just for said child, and fill it with the wonderful books you already own.  You could even rotate the selections periodically, for season changes and waxing/waning interest.  The you could designate time in your school day just to sit with said child on the couch, allowing the child to pick and choose books off the special shelf.  No grid.

 

 

It's a wild idea.  :coolgleamA:

 

 

(I still do literature like this.)

[My3girls]

I actually talked to the author of those books, Science in the Beginning and Science In Ancient Times and am in the works to possibly review it from a secular perspective. He seems to be it can be done, just as I've done with other materials. FWIW, he was extremely helpful and kind in his correspondence to me.

Definitely post the details!

[Rivka]

Okay, I spent $20 on four used Usborne books to be my "spine," three of which are used in Core A.

 

I fixed up my existing schedule grid to make it more planning-friendly, and got my husband to agree to cover the kids so I can plan a whole quarter at a time. It's even color-coded by kid!

 

I made a nice, big list of kindy-appropriate read-alouds.

 

I am considering coil-binding the plan printouts and calling it "Chalice Light."  :tongue_smilie:

[RosieCotton]

I do this every spring....and then I look at the 3 week sample :lol:

What I actually do and find a great compromise. I pick my own spine and more picture/non fiction books that work for the multiple ages that I have and add in all the SL readers and read alouds. What I love about SL is the books, not the choppy schedule. So we just read the books. :)

 

This is what we do also - love love love the books!

Which is what is most important for us now --Grammar stage.

 

Got many from the library too which saved us money. :)

[Lang Syne Boardie]

Okay, I spent $20 on four used Usborne books to be my "spine," three of which are used in Core A.

 

I fixed up my existing schedule grid to make it more planning-friendly, and got my husband to agree to cover the kids so I can plan a whole quarter at a time. It's even color-coded by kid!

 

I made a nice, big list of kindy-appropriate read-alouds.

 

I am considering coil-binding the plan printouts and calling it "Chalice Light."  :tongue_smilie:

GENIUS! It'll be better for your family because its yours.

As to the bolded, you know you have to. :D