Sonlight PreK & Other PreK ?s

[Slache]

My son needs structure and we've been playing school since he was two, but now I'm torn because I think he's ready and wants to do more, but I have more of a late start philosophy. He's already reading, writing, playing piano, and learning Spanish. The Spanish was my call, the rest was him asking me to teach him or teaching himself.

 

As it stands in January (he will be 4) we will be doing:

Spell to Write & Read

Sonlight PK and/or continuing Ambleside Year 0

Spanish

Piano

No math

 

Sonlight PK seems like a nice medium to add, but $350!? Really? So, here are my questions.

 

Can I just get the Instructor's Guide and get the rest from the library?

Are The Early Learners consumable?

Do I need most of the books all year?

Would it be fine to skip or substitute a book?

 

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

[shawthorne44]

There is also a Sonlight group here that you could ask.  I did both preschool cores for a lot cheaper than they wanted.  

 

With P3/4, it was because almost half the books were ones from my childhood that my mother had saved.  So, it made sense to just add the rest as cheaply as I could.  I think I spent $115 on P3/4.  

 

With P4/5, I was eager to buy the core from sonlight.  But, then they added in a bunch of stuff that had been optional.  I didn't want their bible program.  I read one bible story a night, sometimes two if the story ends depressing or she asks for another.  The readers were too young, and there was something else that annoyed me.  So, I pieced it together myself again.  

 

But, yes, you can just buy the IG from them.  And add the books as cheaply as possible.  I made an excel table of the book list. Checked the library for what they had.  Then check the various online used book sources.  Then print that out and take the list to your local big used bookstore.  What I noticed is that there was a minimum and a maximum price for kids books.  I remember they'd had the giant Harper Collns book and the Seuss Horton book for $8, So, the big expensive books were a really good deal locally.  

 

The workbooks are consumable.  They seem worthwhile to me though.  

 

Also, whatever you can't get used you can also likely get from Rainbow Resource, and at a discount equal to the core discount.  

 

Have you checked out Bookshark.  It is a new secular version of Sonlight.  It also doesn't have the required extras of Sonlight.  

People substitute books all the time. You could also schedule in read-aloud time and then just read one of the books.  People complain that the schedule jumps around in the books.  I know mine wants to finish the book we are currently working on.  

 

I've also looked ahead at Core A and added in some that I thought she could handle.  They had My Father's Dragon in there, and DD loved that at 3.  

 

[Aiden]

I'm currently using P4/5 with LA K, after having just finished P3/4.

 

The Developing the Early Learner workbooks are consumable and are worth the price, in my opinion. Also worth it to me is the optional, consumable Get Ready/Get Set/Go for the Code workbooks--and you do need the teacher's manual for some of the pages in those. And I like HWOT, though we're using the PreK set right now instead of the K set that a lot of people use with P4/5 and LA K.

 

Other than the workbooks, it's mostly a book list with scheduled readings, and a few optional activities with some readings. We're following the schedule on a weekly basis (I bookmark all the readings for the week, then choose 1-3 to do each day so that by the end of the week, we've done all the assigned readings except for the ones I decided were still too advanced for my daughter--like Ungle Wiggily and Milly Molly Mandy, which I think she'll love several months from now), but I know lots of people just pick one book, read through it, then move on to the next book. The books are not correlated to each other, the seat work, or the time of year, so you can use them however you like.

 

You could save a lot of money by buying the IG from SL and the consumable workbooks and associated teacher's manuals from wherever you can get the best price. Then, for the read alouds, you could check them out from your library and read a whole book rather than spread over several weeks, or buy them used, or however you would like to do it to save money. If I had easy access to a library, I'd probably check them out, and the order in which we read them would be determined partly by when I could get them at the library! I'd only buy our favorites--at this point, only to week 5 so we haven't even read anything from most of the books, I'd say that The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book is a definite favorite that we'd probably buy.

[shawthorne44]

 

 

The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book is a definite favorite that we'd probably buy.

 

Good to know.  We haven't gotten to that one yet.  

Some of the books in P3/4 and P4/5 are so wonderful I don't understand how anyone could own them and then not read them so much they are too mangled to sell.  

 

In P3/4, I am glad I didn't get the McCloskey collection book.  The individual books are worth getting on their own because the big illustrations are so charming.  

[Tanikit]

I used P3/4 with my older child when she was 2.5 years old and she loved it. I believe they have added more hands on activities, but really it is possible to do the curriculum cheaper by just adding in your own hands on activities and getting the books from the library -that said these are fantastic books and I used the curriculum again with my younger child and she sits paging through them all daily with the elder child joining us for many of the stories again.

 

With my younger child I actually read a lot more than was in the curriculum - so substituting is fine, adding in extras are also fine. I also prefer to just read a book all the way through so did not follow the instructor's guide totally - with P3/4 with my eldest I did follow the order the books were read since she was very young and needed to develop the stamina to listen to the length of some of those stories.

[DhanyaCali]

We're a couple months in to P4/5. 

 

You do not need all the books for the whole year, you could roughly split it into semesters

 

1 Berstain Bears nature, Uncle wiggly, , DEL consumable workbooks 1 and 2, things people do, the year at maple hill farm, what's under the sea, american tall tales CD

 

2 stories from Africa (available from SL only) new toes for tia, peter rabbit, brer rabbit, oh uncle wiggly still, why do tigers have stripes, Dr suess's ABC, 1st thousand words, a child's book of art, Milly molly mandy storybook, how to dig a hole to the other side of the world, what's smaller than a pygmy shrew, then and now, how do you life a lion, the gods must be angry (i didn't get that one), is a blue whale the biggest...,

 

both Bible, children's book of virtue, mother goose (any comprehensive volume will do) eric carle's animals animals, lion bedtime book,  stories from around the world

 

Sorry for the lack of capitalization,  just sat here with my IG open in front of me flipping through it.

 

If you want to do the Library that could save you money, especially if they have a generous renewal policy!

 

You will not likely see significant savings buying used unless you own a bunch of the books already. I didn't! Maybe saved $50 buying the books used online and still have to get a couple. There are lots of threads on the SL forum from people who tried, most do not end up saving (there are the thrifty through who spend the whole year carrying the catalog around to 10 cent used bookstores).

 

I'm skipping The God's must be crazy because we have hare Krishna relatives and I don't want to really bring up  idol/deity worship. Lots of people skip the Bible, I like it as a light daytime addition to our Bible bedtime stories. As stated above lots of people skip around, or read  the books at once. I'm following the IG pretty closely so as not to finish all the books in a week, lol! We do lots of other reading too, but I don't consider that "adding on" to school, reading for pleasure is just our lifestyle. I have added on workbooks, ETC primers and some other fun kumon ones, and DS4 will be starting math (rightstart A) in the fall, we'll probably be almost done with p4/5 by then. And I add any random activity I feel inspired to do by pinterest, lol.

 

Hope this helps, my last tip is to get your IG spiral bound at staples instead of buying the bulky 3 ringed binder from SL. It's so convenient! 

[DhanyaCali]

Okay also came back to link to this thread about people's different experiences piecing together a core, you should be able to see it.

 

https://forums.sonlight.com/topic/331139-anyone-pieced-together-a-core/?hl=%2Bpiecing&do=findComment&comment=4579370

[Slache]

We're a couple months in to P4/5. 

 

You do not need all the books for the whole year, you could roughly split it into semesters

 

1 Berstain Bears nature, Uncle wiggly, , DEL consumable workbooks 1 and 2, things people do, the year at maple hill farm, what's under the sea, american tall tales CD

 

2 stories from Africa (available from SL only) new toes for tia, peter rabbit, brer rabbit, oh uncle wiggly still, why do tigers have stripes, Dr suess's ABC, 1st thousand words, a child's book of art, Milly molly mandy storybook, how to dig a hole to the other side of the world, what's smaller than a pygmy shrew, then and now, how do you life a lion, the gods must be angry (i didn't get that one), is a blue whale the biggest...,

 

both Bible, children's book of virtue, mother goose (any comprehensive volume will do) eric carle's animals animals, lion bedtime book,  stories from around the world

 

Sorry for the lack of capitalization,  just sat here with my IG open in front of me flipping through it.

 

If you want to do the Library that could save you money, especially if they have a generous renewal policy!

 

You will not likely see significant savings buying used unless you own a bunch of the books already. I didn't! Maybe saved $50 buying the books used online and still have to get a couple. There are lots of threads on the SL forum from people who tried, most do not end up saving (there are the thrifty through who spend the whole year carrying the catalog around to 10 cent used bookstores).

 

I'm skipping The God's must be crazy because we have hare Krishna relatives and I don't want to really bring up  idol/deity worship. Lots of people skip the Bible, I like it as a light daytime addition to our Bible bedtime stories. As stated above lots of people skip around, or read  the books at once. I'm following the IG pretty closely so as not to finish all the books in a week, lol! We do lots of other reading too, but I don't consider that "adding on" to school, reading for pleasure is just our lifestyle. I have added on workbooks, ETC primers and some other fun kumon ones, and DS4 will be starting math (rightstart A) in the fall, we'll probably be almost done with p4/5 by then. And I add any random activity I feel inspired to do by pinterest, lol.

 

Hope this helps, my last tip is to get your IG spiral bound at staples instead of buying the bulky 3 ringed binder from SL. It's so convenient! 

 

Thank you!!! This is great!!!

[WeeBeaks]

When I did SL cores, we always purchased just IGs or books hard to find elsewhere and saved loads of money.  We have a good library though, which makes a big difference.

 

And even though we don't do SL any longer, books from most of the cores we did are still floating around on bookcases and enjoyed often here.  Good investments.