Curriculum/Sonlight Veterans, Please Help!

[zenjenn]

Next year will be my third year of homeschooling and I need some help on a curriculum choice. I have 2 children, one will be in 3rd grade with minor leaning disabilities (mild dyslexia and speech articulation delays) and the other is an advanced 1st grader. I have never used a formal curriculum except for math.

 

Background: so far, we've been kind of doing a mishmash of whatever. My oldest is finishing up Teaching Textbooks 3, and we did all the American Girl historical character books for social science, supplemented with other books about American History, and a daily writing book with Harcourt Family Press, and we did an introduction to cursive. Since my oldest was struggling with dyslexia issues, I felt it was important to give her the freedom to read whatever and whenever she wanted, so we didn't do formal literature (I did the American Girl books as a read-aloud, as at the beginning of the year she did not have the mental stamina to read at that level, but she has excellent listening comprehension.) The youngest who was in Kindergarten did Math Mammoth 1 and daily writing and reading and some basic social science/language arts (communities, maps, people & places, etc.) They both did science homeschool classes a the local science museum twice a month, social science classes once a month, and twelve weeks of art class.

 

I feel the need to ramp it up next year. My older child is getting to the point where I feel like it's inappropriate to still mess around as much as we have been, and my K child's schooling honestly seemed really half-assed to me - like 90 minutes a day of schooling - but she went from preschool level knowledge to reading at about a 2nd or 3rd grade level, writing proficiently, and completed a 1st grade math curriculum so I just went with it? Go figure.

 

I am looking at Sonlight. Here are my concerns/needs:

 

- We are Jewish. I consider myself religious so some God/Bible themed things are OK, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on something that is completely Jesus'ed up. (I say that playfully, not offensively.) I believe in evolution, old earth, AND God the Creator.

 

- Is there a way to use Sonlight so you can do some of the Core items together with the ages mentioned? There is *also* a chance I will be schooling a friend's 2nd grader, so I may have grade 1, 2, 3. Wondering if I can work these items together so we can discuss things together, but then they each have their own level-appropriate work to use. Theoretically, given that I have a younger advanced child and a slightly delayed older child I could select a curriculum in the middle of them and just do that, but it is important for my older daughter's pride that she has some of her *own* materials that are for big mature third graders, kwim?

 

- Tell me about their science stuff? I'm honestly a bit dubious about the need for much science at these ages - which I say as a science enthusiast and the wife of a physicist. I feel math is the emphasis. They have a *daily* science program - how do they do *daily* science without math? Is it just memorization of scientific terms?

 

- I also want to do daily handwriting, and for my 3rd grader, a typing program, so I need time for that.

 

Any thoughts/insights HIGHLY appreciated!

Edited May 11, 2011 by zenjenn

[zenjenn]

Also a note - I did have my oldest daughter take the SAT test for 2nd graders, and will get the results in early June. Will those results be useful in determining which curriculum to consider?

[calandalsmom]

Yahoo groups has a great secular sonlight group which would help you.

 

I did SL secularly for eons and it can be done.

[MinivanMom]

We are using Sonlight and I have not found it difficult to use secularly. Since they use "real" books for history and science, the books your children actually read are primarily secular. For the most part, the Christian slant comes in how those books are discussed and interpreted. All you really have to do is skip the Bible portion of the program and ignore any Christian slant in the instructor's guide.

 

We just use the main Core (history, read-alouds, readers), but I've found it very easy to adapt. There are usually 2-3 books each year that are evangelical. I just toss those and substitute in something else. We spend maybe 30-ish minutes on Sonlight each day for the history and read-alouds. It is our favorite part of the day, but we are definitely a family that enjoys reading aloud. I combine my oldest two children and that has worked well so far. I choose a Core for my oldest and then adapt it slightly for her younger brother who is "listening in". They do their own math and language arts, so there's definitely still a sense of the older clearly being the 2nd grader.

 

Sonlight science consists of lots of science reading coupled with lots of science experiments. I put together my own science instead, though I have bought individual books from them. I prefer to focus on a single topic each year (Sonlight skips about) and I don't think that tons of experiments are necessary at this level. Sonlight's science packages do have some good living Science books, but I think they deliberately skip books with evolutionary content. There's one level that has several young earth books (maybe Science 5?), so I would be careful to read the description of each book if you decide to buy a science package.

[SnMomof7]

Well, SL is pretty easy to use across fairly large age spans if you are flexible about how you use it. In my opinion, any literature-based core program will yield remarkable results in knowledge gained compared to any public school curric. (I would just ignore those SAT scores for placing your children too). We have been relaxedly using Core A this year for my grade 2 and early, early K girl. It is a bit easy for my grade 2, and a bit advanced for my just-turned-5. SO, I get my grade 2 to do all the listening, the timelines, and the maps. My little K just sort of flits around, does some comprehension questions with us etc. You can definitely combine, you just can't expect your little one to 'get' as much as your older one. Still, it is surprising how much they DO get that you hear coming up in their discussions later :).