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Question about sonlight's early cores


cassafraz
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Okay, so I am trying to get a feel for how sonlight works. I am looking only at the "core", so that includes read alouds and history/geography and then the Language Arts. In the early cores (meaning cores Cores a-c), do the read alouds go along with the History at all? I know that in the later cores they are pretty strongly tied, but I can't seem to see a correlation between Curious George and World cultures in core A?

 

Also, I have seen a lot of posts that seem to not like Sonlight's Language Arts, which is included in their core now. What is it that is bad? This is our first year, and we are trying to get our footing! Thanks so much!

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I bought Core A for kindergarten last year and used it for a few weeks. I felt the entire core was disjointed. Fortunately, they did stand by their love it or return it guarantee. I returned almost all of it except for some read alouds, the science read alouds, and some of the singapore math. For me, I couldn't find the continuity in the core. I heard B is better than A. However, since then I found my own groove, so I don't see myself going back to Sonlight for awhile.

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I used core B when I was a baby homeschooler myself. It is a great start and stepping stone to figuring out what works and what needs to go. The read alouds don't match up with history until Core D. Don't get me started on the LA. I think I would rather pet a porcupine then try that again, spelling made us both want to cry and the whole program was so disconjointed. More in detail the spelling would start with little words one week and make a huge leap the next. They also did it by list and memerization. I love AAS. It explains the rules and the whys making it easy to understand and incorperate. Explode the Code was okay but I think AAS/Writeshop is covering that for me. I liked their readers, to a point. The I Can Read it Books started out okay then got really boring and repetive. Another thing is they revamped the lower cores took out some good books and put in a lot of what I call fluff. See if you can find a book list for core A back in 2010. For us using WriteShop for creative writing/grammer is, I think, done in a much more fun for student and enjoyable way for momma (The schedual is much more flexible giving you three ways to follow it). That is just me and what works here. L.A. for Sonlight has worked for others I am just one that has balked and not bought another core because I don't like buying something that doesn't work for us.

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I have several cores (b,c, G, H).

The early cores have a few books tied to the core, but really they are tied to the reader level and each level can go with a different core.

 

So you can have American history with second grade reading level or fourth grade reading level. You can also have world history with those same reading levels,

 

It is easy enough to get simple history readers at the library and really, they will get "the good stuff" in the upper cores.

What I didn't like was the readers that WHERE geared towards a history time, but not the one I was currently teaching.

I have core B with third grade readers and there are a lot of American history readers. I find that to be confusing and I don't let the children read them.

 

Honestly I would just buy the history and get my own readers at the library (if you have a good library) until the later cores.

 

I also dislike the language arts in Sonlight. My number one reason is that they don't allow for a higher reading level to have a lower grammar level.

For instance my second grader reads at a fourth grade level but has had NO former grammar teaching. The LA that comes with the fourth grade readers is way above is grammar level. They don't really have much flexibility in this respect.

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I can't seem to see a correlation between Curious George and World cultures in core A?

 

For what it's worth, it may not be World Cultures, but a very small amount of geography that you get from this book. They do have you look up Africa on a map after reading the first story of how George is found in Africa. I've just looked at core A and will be starting it in the fall, but I'm assuming at some point Africa will come up again within the core and we can build on the basic geography that we learned from Curious George. :001_smile: Otherwise, Curious George is a little fluffy, but a fun easy read that breaks things up a bit.

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