Sonlight?

[Guest jencscott]

I have been homeschooling my kids for two years. I have a 10yr old, 9yr old, 5yr old, and 3yr old. I have been to a conference and went to their class presentation. I would like to just have some feedback from families that are currently using Sonlight or previously used Sonlight. I am considering ordering Core D.

 

Thank You So Much!

[frugalmama]

This is our first year using SL and we are loving it. I can't recommend is highly enough :D This is the first year we're actually relaxed and still getting school done, because SL is all laid out for me and I don't have to tweak it {much}.

 

I don't think you could combine all 4 kids in 1 core though. I would put the two oldest in Core D, and the two youngest in Core P4/5 or Core P3/4 depending on their level.

[freeindeed]

This is our first year using SL and we are loving it. I can't recommend is highly enough :D This is the first year we're actually relaxed and still getting school done, because SL is all laid out for me and I don't have to tweak it {much}.

 

I don't think you could combine all 4 kids in 1 core though. I would put the two oldest in Core D, and the two youngest in Core P4/5 or Core P3/4 depending on their level.

 

:iagree:

I used Core D+E with dd11 and ds9 last year. We loved it. This year dd11 is using Sonlight Core F & it's going very well. Ds9 is using something else b/c he wasn't ready for Core F, but he'll be using it in a couple of years. We plan to stick with Sonlight for the duration. The literature is awesome, the planning is done for you, and the discussions you and your dc have as a result is priceless.

[verymom]

I used Sonlight for two years - Core 1 and Core 2, which are now A & B, I suppose.

 

I didn't love their language arts, but I was really happy with almost everything else. Some of the book choices were a little too Christian for us (that sounds bad, but we're quieter, not so evangelical) but those were easy to work around.

 

I recommend the curriculum, I think it does a good job of balancing a flexible, literature based program that can provide structure to your days.

 

After two years I couldn't afford a third year, but Sonlight also gave me the confidence to 'go it on my own' so to speak. We still follow their History & cherish a lot of the books we received with the curriculum.

[MerryAtHope]

Core D is probably my favorite SL Core.

 

Really like the readers & read-alouds, like some of the history (sometimes I sub in other things). The LA didn't work for us, but it's easy to work around that.

 

Merry :-)

[Spetzi]

This is our second year with Sonlight and we really like it. I don't use aaaalllll of the info given in the instructor's guide, but I still love it (the schedule, maps, etc.) The book selections are very good. They are not as heart-wrenching as I'd feared (my dd is very sensitive).

 

We do the readers much faster than scheduled so I often have to adjust the schedule, but it's not a big deal. That might be harder with the new layout of everything being tied to the week's plan rather than by each book, but I'm sure it would work.

 

I have to get used to so much reading aloud. We always read aloud, but I am reading for an hour straight and it's tough sometimes. However we all enjoy cuddling on the couch (even the 13 yo).

 

I plan to continue with it indefinitely.

[Dinsfamily]

This is my 4th year using SL and we all love it. My dc absolutely love the books and are learning a lot. I'm another who doesn't use the LA, but it is simple to sub out. I'll be using SL cores at least through 6th grade...my long range plans get a little fuzzy around there.

[Peaceful Isle]

I will be the odd ball :) We have been doing Story of the world the last few years and loving it! We decided to change and do sonlight core 3/4, now I think it is D/E, so we could study just American History this year. Anyways, we are about 6 weeks into school, and my oldest daughter is begging to go back to story of the world. :( I was thinking the same thing as well. I really missed the wonderful way Story of the World is presented , and also my kiddos love the Activity guides.

Good thing we bought the sonlight used ;)

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

What is it about SL that is drawing you to it? What are your concerns? Expectations? Are you thinking of combining your children?

I have gone through 9 cores (pre K, A, D, E, F, G, H, 100, and 200) as with any curriculum there are pros and cons but these all depend on what you personally are looking for in a curriculum. Personally I found SL to be a glorified reading curriculum and unless you want to add and tweak it fell short of being a main curriculum in my book, but is perfect to use as a supplement to any History curriculum you use. Just read and discuss, no notebooking or work to show what your student did for history and reading for the year. Their choice of a spine was either boring and hard to keep the interest of my children (with the exception of core 100) or non existent. Mapping was merely marking places on a map with no real connectivity. The "open and go" being spouted is misleading. I did just as much preplanning for the week when using SL then I am doing now making my own curriculum for history. I will say this, SL has claimed to have made some big changes since we stopped using them so these problems could be fixed.

 

Overall core D and E were my favorites. The books were not too heavy in content and kept an energetic boy eager to read more.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Are you also looking to include SL LA and SL Science?

 

SL LA...major fail. I tried to like it. The actual idea they have for LA is awesome. How they execute it is full of problems.

 

SL Science...gets the job done. The student gets science in a fun way. The book choices are great. It is a light science curriculum but you can beef it up if you need to. Just be aware, the experiments usually do not go with the reading. They are a separate unit. They are fun though and the Discover and DO DVD's are great.

[boscopup]

We just started using Core D at the end of last year (well, technically an old Core 3 - 3/D/4/E didn't change much the last several years until the big 2012 changes). We are about 7 or 8 weeks in (we're on break now, so I forget where we are :lol:), and we've learned quite a bit and are both enjoying it. We previously did SOTW 1 and 2 for 1st and 2nd grade, and DS had read volumes 3 and 4 on his own for fun, so I decided to take a 2 year detour into US History. I picked up this core IG for very cheap and got a lot of the books used.

 

Pros:

-The book choices are excellent. I think the only one we haven't liked so far was Secret of the Andes (VERY S-L-O-W), but we plugged through it and finished it, and we were able to make some connections with what we were reading in the history portion about the Incans, so that was pretty cool. The other books, we've enjoyed quite a bit. We have not yet started the Landmark books (main spine for this core), but will soon. My son is a history buff, so I think he'll like them.

-Having all the books we need is very helpful to me (I suppose I could have done that with SOTW, but then I had to choose which books to buy).

-Sonlight has me reading aloud regularly, which is great.

-The amount of reading has been very doable for us - not too much, not too little. It gets done, and history is NOT the focus of our homeschool.

 

Cons:

-Expensive, though the high cost is the BOOKS. The IG wasn't priced that bad until they stuck LA back in there. :glare:

-Their LA is not very good, so I don't use it.

-The mapwork is not as good as that of SOTW, IMO. I liked that SOTW had neat exercises that were easy for my young child to do on his own. The SL maps are labeling spots, which means *I* have to do it still.

-The timeline figures do not include everything. I like the timeline and the figures, but sometimes there are things you're supposed to put on the timeline, and you find out they don't have a figure for it, so you have to write it in yourself. Not a huge deal, but it's a minor con for me.

 

I'm also using P4/5 with my K'er this year. We are really enjoying it. The one main thing I tweak about the schedule is that Mother Goose Treasury (or whatever it's called) is scheduled across 3-4 days in the week, yet each day is only a whopping 3-4 lines sometimes. I end up reading a couple pages or even the whole week's worth instead. It's not worth getting a book out just to read 4 lines! But that's the main book I've had that issue with, and it was easily remedied. I have a photocopy of the schedule that I keep in the tote bag with the week's books, and I just mark things off as we get them done. The other books have been fine as scheduled because they have longer stories. I wouldn't want to read more than one Uncle Wiggly story in a day. :lol:

 

We plan to continue with Sonlight Core E next year. I'm not sure what I'll do with DS2 yet, as I'd like to combine him and DS3 if we continue with Sonlight, and they'd be best doing Core A together 2 years from now. DS1 and DS2 cannot combine, so I will definitely be doing at least 2 cores, and I'm fine with that. Core D takes about an hour total per day, including the child's reading and my reading. So it's not that bad. P4/5 takes about 15-20 minutes, then I tack LoF Elementary on to the end of it. :)

[kolamum]

We're using Sonlight. We enjoy it quite a lot, we're currently using 2012 Core E.

 

I love that it's all laid out for me. I love the choice of books. I love that my children love the books. I love that I can share the same books I read as a kid with them. I love the way the new mapping works.

 

My kids love keeping their timeline notebooks {not the same as the book of time}, & beefing it up constantly with their notebooking pages {not provided by sonlight, but that's okay..}

 

We are also using their Science, which we've only just started so I can't give a full on anything about it yet. I will say that my children enjoyed what they've done so far, & so did my dh who got into it with them.

 

Their LA.. I'm not sure on it. :lol: They've changed it again this year, & I like the looks of it but we had other plans so we didn't go with it. It's now built right into the new cores so you get it one way or another.

 

I love the scheduled Bible Reading, all though this year we're mostly doing GrapeVine OT which my kids love. :)

[Mom0012]

This is our 8th year with SL. It's the best part of our homeschooling day and my kids have learned so much!

 

I do not use SL's LA.

 

Lisa

[Mom22ns]

We used Cores D+E and 100 one year and Cores 6 and 7 the next two years. For D+E/100 I used the History of US as the spine (from Core 100) and then each child used the readers from their own core and they both listened to the read alouds from D+E. It was probably our favorite year of history ever.

 

We love the book choices and flexibility of SL. My caveat is that you must make the schedule your friend not your enemy. If you or your kids can't put a book down, great! If you are trudging through a book and it takes a bit longer than suggested, oh well. We found these things all balance out. Use the schedule as a guide. If there are books you don't like, skip them or replace them (we removed missionary books).

 

I buy SL IGs used and use the library for most of the books. My average cost for a year of SL is $100. It doesn't have to be ridiculously expensive unless you have no library access. If you have more money than time for organizing library runs, that works too!

[Soror]

Check out these past threads:

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/search.php?searchid=12989870

[...................]

We've done Pre-k and most of Core 3.

 

I liked it. I loved the Pre-k. I found some of Core 3 to be tedious, but you can

Always skip some books. I liked how it's open to different viewpoints.

 

We aren't using now because of time and cost. I find it easier to let my children read on their own, and during Quiet Time, than to read aloud to them for 2 hours every day. By the time we get Bible, 3 Rs, foreign Language done, I just don't have two - three more hours in me.

 

I usually read aloud for about half and hour per day using SOTW and related history books, fiction and non fiction.

 

Cost is alsO a factor... SL is $$$$ compared to what I did.

 

Hope that helps.

[Tess in the Burbs]

I used SL for 4 years for history and am doing my 4th yaer now with the Science. We have never done the LA.

 

I like SL. I bought it based on the return policy and we found it was what I needed to get history and science done consistently. Life happens and I found with SOTW only 2 days it was too easy to skip and get too far behind. I loved the schedule and used the discussion questions as I wanted...mostly we just talked after reading. They have remembered way more than I ever expected! Science gets done and they enjoy it.

 

I left SL to do my own thing but honestly, all that planning done for me is worth every penny. I have the G IG but put so much into my own planning for this year I can't throw it out. So we are trying to do SOTW Logic Style but I found myself just trying to line up SL lit/history books and missing the easy schedule to follow. I think it's worth the money to have the planning done for you.

 

I do think with your ages you would need 2 cores OR just do Core 3 with the olders and focus on the three Rs with the youngers....you don't need a SL core to enjoy them/read with them/play with them/nature study/field trips....

[KAM]

We are finishing up Core D this year (with dd11 and ds9). We plan to go on to Core E in a couple of months. We have really enjoyed it. The books are good, the kids are enjoying all the American History, and they LOVE the TOPS kits included with the Science portion. I am not using the language arts portion. I bought it, but I just don't like the looks of it.

 

I am also using Core B with ds7.

[3peasinapod]

We have used 4 cores, and doing Core C now. We love it, and I plan on using it at least through Core F (Eastern Hemisphere). We love the base of good books that I can stretch out from. I do add notebooking at least 2 to 3 times a week with foldables. We occasionally do an activity that I add here and there, but not every week. I am more likely to use the notes now that they are behind the schedule, and I don't find them messy, but easy to use. We combine our children (3rd and 4th grade) and do another core for our K'er. I tried other things for a year, but I come back to SL for ease of use and excellent books scheduled in a cohesive manner that would take me hours upon hours to do myself.

 

I have also done 3 of their sciences and am currently working on Science D. I loved them all except Science C, which I won't repeat with my youngest. I disliked the book Usborne Book of Knowledge, whcih was the base of nearly all of the year, but did like the other books.

 

I had not used their LA up until this year, when I chose LAK for my youngest, but I will not continue with that. I don't really like it. It makes no sense, even though the problems in years past were supposed to have been fixed, there are still strange assignments and skipping around in books that makes no sense. For first grade, we're going to use FLL, WWE, OPGTR, ETC, HWT, and SL readers.

Edited September 11, 2012 by 3peasinapod

[Mommy22alyns]

Don't use the LA. The science does "get the job done." The supply kits and experiment DVDs are nice to have.

 

For us personally, SL 1 (B) was a major fail. Rebecca needs & wants activities and CHOW still traumatizes her two years later. :tongue_smilie: We did SOTW at first, and she still remembers things from that 3-4 years later. But nothing from SL. It was like a wasted year for us.

 

Many people do use it with great success though. It really depends on your kids and your style.

[Mommy22alyns]

I wouldn't want to read more than one Uncle Wiggly story in a day. :lol:

 

:lol: I haaaaaaaaated Uncle Wiggily! Sylvia loved it though, so I didn't drop it. *sigh*

[Professormom]

Just a couple of quick thoughts...

 

Older SL Science didn't do a good job of lining up experiments with readings. That was fixed a few years back.

 

SL will give you learning but in a very different way than most programs, so it is a little difficult to compare. If you love to read and your kids love to read, they will learn. If they don't like to read, it could likely convert them;). The books are terrific. I used it all the way through Core E and, even though I am using TOG this year (primarily because of the four-year timeline and being able to combine ages, I just couldn't get away from my WTM roots:tongue_smilie:), I am STILL incorporating a lot of SL into our year. (I have the new F and G as well.).

 

Core E is a great core as well, there lots of wars to cover that hit closer to our time and giving that age group a good understanding of the issues and connections without scarring them for life, lol, is challenging. SL does a good job of this.

[melmichigan]

What is it about SL that is drawing you to it? What are your concerns? Expectations? Are you thinking of combining your children?

I have gone through 9 cores (pre K, A, D, E, F, G, H, 100, and 200) as with any curriculum there are pros and cons but these all depend on what you personally are looking for in a curriculum. Personally I found SL to be a glorified reading curriculum and unless you want to add and tweak it fell short of being a main curriculum in my book, but is perfect to use as a supplement to any History curriculum you use. Just read and discuss, no notebooking or work to show what your student did for history and reading for the year. Their choice of a spine was either boring and hard to keep the interest of my children (with the exception of core 100) or non existent. Mapping was merely marking places on a map with no real connectivity. The "open and go" being spouted is misleading. I did just as much preplanning for the week when using SL then I am doing now making my own curriculum for history. I will say this, SL has claimed to have made some big changes since we stopped using them so these problems could be fixed.

 

:iagree: I have P3/4, and A-100 on the shelves and I agree with the bold above. I do not use the LA or the science. I love the books used in SL (before the changes that they have made, so up until 2010). My kids go through all the Readers, now called Grades 1-4/5 and then start the Readers that go with each core beginning with Core D. That is the reading portion of their school work across the board. I adjust the read alouds, usually two at a time because of levels, to follow our history cycle. As they get older if they are no longer avid readers than I will adjust literature choices for our history cycle, but so far it hasn't been a problem. I've learned not to let a curriculum rule me.

Edited September 12, 2012 by melmichigan
had to look up the cores letters, yuck!

[Lara in Colo]

This is my first year with SL and I am just beginning to get my feet under me.

 

I am using B and G this year

 

I have tried the LA--- hate it.

I am still reserving judgement on the Bible curriculum.

 

G uses SOTW and I supplement with the activity sheets for both cores.

 

I find the IG hard to use since it is all the same look so I colored all the different areas a different color (history, reader, read aloud, etc..---this way I can find it faster).

 

Science is decent and I actually DO it-- bonus, since, for some reason I just never get around to science.

 

What I don't like:

 

I have a 2nd grader that reads at a 3-4 grade level, yet is still 1-2 grade grammar. The LA won't work at all for him.

 

The readers for the 3-4 grades seem to be more lined up with the American history, not world, so I feel like I should be saving them for a couple of years to read with core D. And I spend quite a lot of time looking for world history readers for this age group.

 

I would like for the History to be separate from the Bible and the LA.

[Peaceful Isle]

Why is the OP n/a now ? :confused:

[melmichigan]

Why is the OP n/a now ? :confused:

Does it do that if it's the first post now?

[frugalmama]

Why is the OP n/a now ? :confused:

 

Does it do that if it's the first post now?

 

I think she deleted her account :confused:

[Kathryn]

Why is the OP n/a now ? :confused:

 

Very interesting. I thought it seemed a weird first post for some reason.

[Bear23]

nm

[Mom0012]

I think she deleted her account :confused:

 

Well, maybe she read something on the general board that got her blood pressure up?:001_smile: I highly doubt it could have anything to do with this thread.

 

Lisa

[Momof2littles]

I was enjoying the experience in this post! Who cares about the OP!! I care about the answers to the question though! :bigear:

[Peaceful Isle]

I think she deleted her account :confused:

 

That's too bad :(

There are such wonderful ladies on the forum, that give awesome advice. Maybe she will come back and try again someday.

[JESSICAinMD]

This is my first year of using sonlight. I wish I tried it earlier. Life is so much smoother. It is so nice to have everything ready for school. The book selections are wonderful. My kids are learning so much! I agree with the other posters about using 2 cores.