Why has Sonlight fallen in popularity?

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

It seems like for the past 3 years I just don't hear much buzz over Sonlight either here or in IRL. Is anyone here using it for middle school?

[PeterPan]

Well they sorta killed their discussion board a few years ago, and I think that was the start of the spiral.  I think the rise of MFW had something to do with it.  SL was the first, the oldie of something kind of alternative and book-driven that still had clear lesson plans.  Now you can get MFW and have books and clear lesson plans to there's an alternative.  MFW has HUGE booths at conventions, HUGE.

 

But mainly, I think it was what they did to the forums.  They were so popular that they clamped down.  It lost the mystique and free advertising. 

[mumto2]

I tried to use one of the middle school curriculums and a high school one. Neither were overly successful, neither ever got finished. We loved the lower grades. The book choices for middle school didn't seem to work for my ds at all. He suddenly hated SL time. Dd found Church History to be repetitive. She had already read several of the books. The course just wasn't exciting her. It's a topic she loves generally but the fit wasn't right.

 

I think the forum mystic is part of it. I finally wanted to use the forums when they were changing. Huge disappointment and I continually had access problems which took days (sometimes over a week) to resolve. I have bought enough cores for a life membership to those forums and consider it useless. I don't think I ever managed to gain any useful info there.

 

I also think that all the choices actually make it harder for people to figure out what they need. It is confusing now. When I first bought it it was for ds for his kindergarten year, one item number as I remember for bible, science, basic readers, read alouds etc. Easy. I didn't love everything but we used 95% of it. Dd actually insisted on doing his SL too so I supplemented out of the RR catalogue. The accelerated readers (whatever they are called) would have been too easy for her and that would have made me feel like it was the wrong core. My kids are two years apart and were relatively easy to combine at the start.

 

Also that lack of book descriptions in recent catalogues. The catalog print was also super hard to read online for a few years.

[Guest]

I love the idea but can't handle the HUGE changes every year. I want a curriculum that I know what it is. Not that they're going to add language arts to the program. Then take it away. Big changes. Too much for someone that likes to be able to count on something.

 

ETA: They also changed the way they did the 4 or 5 day program and now they're taking that option away altogether.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Guest

[Black-eyed Suzan]

I went to a group IRL and everyone there but me was using it. So maybe people who use it are not talking about curriculum on-line?

[Zoo Keeper]

^ I agree with Phoenix, just. too. many. stinkin' changes. 

 

...and not enough of the change that is actually needed... :leaving:

 

But, who knows, that may change as well. ;) 

 

I may think this year's version of Core __ is just the thing, but you never know until the NEW catalog comes out. 

 

Honestly, I am glad that they are willing to update, but it is a royal pain to keep track of what is what sometimes.  Especially if you are cheap and trying to piece things together used. 

[8circles]

Their inflated ego didn't help.

[8circles]

Dp

Edited March 22, 2016 by 8circles

[Momto4inSoCal]

Well they sorta killed their discussion board a few years ago, and I think that was the start of the spiral. I think the rise of MFW had something to do with it. SL was the first, the oldie of something kind of alternative and book-driven that still had clear lesson plans. Now you can get MFW and have books and clear lesson plans to there's an alternative. MFW has HUGE booths at conventions, HUGE.

 

But mainly, I think it was what they did to the forums. They were so popular that they clamped down. It lost the mystique and free advertising.

Here MFW is huge. I agree with the above. MFW has taken over the book driven world and they claim to be a Charlotte Mason and Classical combination so they are appealing to the big movement in todays homeschool market.

[EmilyGF]

I went to a group IRL and everyone there but me was using it. So maybe people who use it are not talking about curriculum on-line?

I have noticed that people who like piecing things together talk a lot (and blog a lot) online, whereas people who use things as is generally don't. They paid someone to put together a curriculum, so why should they use their time discussing it?

 

Sort of like doing polling that only hits people who still have land lines. Who you sample matters.

 

Emily

[Peaceful Isle]

I've tried to use a few cores, and they never worked for us. They looked beautiful online, but it person I couldn't make it work for our family.

[melmichigan]

I still have my old cores, from back when they were letters. 

 

Threads like this one might have had something to do with their fall from popularity.

Edited March 23, 2016 by melmichigan

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

Oh yeah, true.

 

I know I'm using MFW for my son next year. It has already arrived and I have spent hours looking through it and I am very happy with the quality of education- far far superior to what I expected, I admit.

[8circles]

 

Threads like this one might have had something to do with their fall from popularity.

 

Yes.  Topics like that thread were significant in my decision to leave SL.

[sweetpea3829]

I'll tell you why I never used it.  

 

1) It's expensive

 

2) Their website is confusing as all get out.  As a first year homeschool parent, I went to their website, having heard good things about them, and spent five minutes and then left and did not return for several years.  I could not figure out what the heck was what.  What did I need?  When I went back, fairly recently, I was more grounded in all of the various options available to homeschoolers....so their website wasn't quite as confusing.  But it still is.  

 

3) Did I mention they're expensive?  

[HomeAgain]

They seem unsure of themselves.  They change direction, add, subtract, don't listen to their market, and you never know what you will get year-to-year.  Add in the sheer amount of time it takes (having 2 or 3 cores going would overwhelm most parents!), and they don't seem feasible. 

[UCF612]

We used SL our first year because I had no idea what I needed/wanted. My best friend used it, loved it, and told me what I needed to order. I only used the Core, not science or math (I did my own thing for those subjects and enjoyed them more than anything we did with SL). By the end of the year I felt like I'd spent so much money on nothing. We liked some of the books but not enough for the cost. The LA did little for my son and I ended up spending more money to get AAR1 (which worked wonderfully for him). I quickly learned I like picking subjects individually. My friend however still loves Sonlight.

 

There are a lot of choices out there now.

[ktgrok]

Their attitude drives me nuts. TOG on the other hand is so gracious. But TOG is too much for us, lol. But I adore them as a company. 

[mschickie]

I know quite a few folks who have used Sonlight and still do.  I used it up through Core E.  I was not a huge fan of Core F and then I started using Mystery of History which I liked better than Story of the World so I used a modified Sonlight for 5th, 6th , 7th grades doing World History.  I might go back next year or just keep pulling out what I like from their program, I really have not decided yet.

[Targhee]

I think the world of HSing, and the curricular offerings, have exploded and people can just be more particular.

 

If they still want literature based history around which everything else is woven there's MFW, HOD, and there's Wayfarers and BYL at much more reasonable costs.

 

I also think many people have recognized there are a multitude of ways to learn - it doesn't have to be workbook vs living book. There are programs out there reaching students who are less linguistic-centered in their learning.

[Storygirl]

I can only speak for myself. Being a bookish person who loves history and historical fiction, I was very enthusiastic about Sonlight in the beginning. I used PreK and K levels about ten years ago. I bought Core D and used bits of it, and I always looked forward to doing Core F one day.

 

But I couldn't make it work for our family.

* I found I couldn't use their lesson plans as written (I have to tinker), and I got to the point where I was reworking them so much that I wondered why I bought the lesson plans to begin with.

 

* My kids needed more than just reading. I added hands on projects and workbooks until I felt like I was needing to add too much and ending up with too many extra pieces of things.

 

* I disliked their language arts. I didn't want to pay for a program that included so much that I wouldn't use.

 

* I wanted to study American history in early elementary and not wait until third grade to learn about our own country.

 

* I still look at their catalog every year and think maybe I could use it. But I think many of their literature selections in the middle school and high school ages are either too young for the grade level or are books that I've already read with my kids.

 

* I wanted literature questions that were deeper and more thoughtful.

 

* I needed something more independent for my oldest child when I was devoting  a lot of time to working with my youngest three.

 

* Some of my kids have learning challenges and need a particular kind of help that Sonlight doesn't provide.

 

I really thought in the beginning that it was my dream curriculum. In truth, it may have worked very well for me as a child, which is why it held such appeal. But I couldn't make it work for my children.

 

[Carol in Cal.]

1.  Lots of fine competition

2.  Being harassed and accused of being faintly anti-Christian in the Color7.  ado conference kerfluffle

3.  Being accused of being too Christian elsewhere

4.  Trying to change too fast to be able to be viewed as reliable

5.  Not being novel enough anymore (I think that at one time they were pretty much the only laid out alternative to school in a box type programs--the middle ground between that and unschooling)

6.  Not having experience with homeschooling high school and having fairly weak offerings at that level

7.  Interpreting their return guarantee in a way that made it seem worthless and deceptive

8.  Selling a lot of books that are available on Amazon for far less, at full price, not packed well enough to return, and hence not returnable through their own fault

 

Personally, I think their time has come and gone.  I love what they were, but I don't see their value add at this point being worth the expense.

[MinivanMom]

I agree with all the above reasons, but I have to say that the Sonlight catalog was hugely instrumental in our decision to homeschool. When my children were very small and I didn't know any homeschoolers in real life, it helped me to visualize what homeschooling could look like. I loved those catalogs.

[SebastianCat]

We have used SL from (the old) pre-K through Core H. But we will be switching to MFW for high school. I think a big part of why many people don't care for SL comes from their "grade level" designations, which I think are too high. Veteran moms on their forums recommend that they place their children into the Core in which their child (or all children, if combining) are at the middle or the top of the recommended age range, yet SL sells the package for the absolute youngest age in their grade level packages. The majority of the subject matter is very mature for the youngest recommended age.

 

We've stuck with it because SL fits our approach and my kids are voracious readers, but will be switching to MFW for high school because I want something a bit more cohesive. At least one of my children wants to pursue a STEM based career, so we will focus less on history and more on math and science during high school.

[Tess in the Burbs]

I did 6 cores with SL.  Great years.  I tried to put together my own thing one year to save costs, but I didn't.  It seems expensive, but you are buying a ton of books!  We have kept them all :-)  

 

My kids asked to do something else.  One went to Notgrass and likes that style.  He's my history guy, so I had to add in tons of readers for him.  My other child went to Biblioplan.  Laid out schedule, but we pick the books from the book lists and then purchase them.  We could have used the library. And some we will get on the kindle.  Similar, but the spine appeals to her and she finally likes history!  

 

I agree that the changes over the years were bad.  Everything they are changing this year...they have had LA separate before...why go back when you were so adamant about not doing it that way?  And for years not having the book descriptions....it was hard to really understand the program.  They said they would never bring back those descriptions and they have.  I agree it's hard to trust your money with a company that changes every few years.  

 

The competition is much stronger now and has been out there.   I was shocked at how much Biblioplan had improved over their first few years.  it's way better now, and I see them  growing for the Christian homeschoolers.  It's not overwhelming but still laid out for you.  

 

A company improving a product is one thing, but they kept going back and forth on main things(like the LA being in or out of the IG).  

[Laura Corin]

In my case, unsolicited offensive email from John and Sarita about the need to evangelise those in India who were 'in bondage' due to their having the 'wrong' ancient faith.

[ktgrok]

wait, they took ou the language arts and put back book descriptions? In the catalog? 

 

Now I want a catalog. Darn you people!

[Laurel-in-CA]

Yep, book descriptions are back in the catalog this year and LA has been separated from history/bible/lit. Those are positive steps, IMHO.

 

The reason we stopped with SL was that my ds wanted JUST ONE book, please, mom, for each subject in high school. That is so NOT SL's style. We'd always veered off in the LA anyhow, following TWTM suggestions with a more structured grammar text.

[ktgrok]

well darn. Now I need to request a catalog, just to look at the book descriptions. Sigh. 

 

 

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

Oh yeah it's all coming.l back, the way they kept changing and re - naming cores and putting LA in (just to sell it) and taking it out and then saying each year how important al the changes were, Yada Yada Yada

 

Still, I wonder if my book loving girl would enjoy it for 7th grade or if it would be overkill.

[Zoo Keeper]

To be fair, I'm not selling the older Cores I do have (elementary cores), and I confess to stalking some IG's for high school on Ebay...so they must be doing (or have done) something right for me, in spite of all the presto-change-o. :tongue_smilie:

 

 

[melmichigan]

To be fair, I'm not selling the older Cores I do have (elementary cores), and I confess to stalking some IG's for high school on Ebay...so they must be doing (or have done) something right for me, in spite of all the presto-change-o. :tongue_smilie:

All my old cores through 100 are complete and on the shelves to this day.  I have the old core 300, and the British Literature course IG's on the shelf.  I think the copyrights are around 2009. 

Edited March 23, 2016 by melmichigan

[mumto2]

All my cores through 100 are complete and on the shelves to this day. I have the old core 300, and the British Literature course IG's on the shelf. I think the copyrights are around 2009.

I still have my cores also. Even the ones we didn't like as well. I liked the books Ds hated and someday I will finish all the books in the core dd didn't care for.

[JulieA97]

I adore Sonlight. Granted my son is young so we just have P4/5. I drool over the catalog and planned to use it next year before we decided on a private school instead. Sonlight fits our family very well and my son loves the books. MFW and HOD would be awful fits for my son. We still plan to use the catalog as a reading list for afterschooling.

 

There are several large, very active Sonlight Facebook groups that seem to have replaced the discussion board. Also, some families have moved to Bookshark from Sonlight for various reasons. Sonlight isn't for everyone, just as MFW, HOD, TOG, and others aren't for everyone.

[FriedClams]

We used SL very enthusiastically through core 100. Core 200 lit and bible were great, but a heavy science and math load drove us to something lighter for history.

 

We'll be changing to MFW for next year. I like their mix of bible and Notgrass history. I like their 4 day week and project emphasis for high school. I'm hoping it's a fit for us through high school.

[Farrar]

It's funny to me that people here seem to think they've been a bit unsure of themselves or wishy washy... I think they're really willing victims of the battles over homeschooling and who "owns" it - it mostly played out through the various conference kerfuffles, but I think it also played out in Sonlight's forums and changing program. They tried to win everyone on the spectrum of Christians who homeschool and ended up losing their market share as a result.

 

I never have been an SL person, obviously. But they sort of fascinate me. When we first started, secularizing Sonlight was so popular that I even looked into them. Now no one secularlizes SL. Part of that is BookShark and new competitors like BYL, but part of it is that they sabotaged their own goodwill in the larger community. I think they did it not because they were wishy washy really, but because they thought they could get away with it. Oops for them.

[melmichigan]

nm 

 

Edited March 23, 2016 by melmichigan

[Julie of KY]

I love my SL cores and still do them with my kids. I agree about the problems with changing every year and getting rid of the forums. I own complete cores preK through middle school, but tend to pick and choose my own thing for high school - adding in favorite SL books as well.

 

I've used SL for 13 years now, but the marketing makes it hard to understand and with no forums to ask lots of questions I feel like it's harder to recommend to new people.

[Slache]

How do y'all know so much about this? That they're switching to MOH, the catalog is changing, and that LA is being taken out of the core? When does the catalog come out?

[Spy Car]

Any well-thinking person on this forum rightly fled from materials written by John Holtzman (Sonlight) after reading his shocking comments in the "Is Holzman white washing slavery in Sonlight core 100?" thread three year ago. 

 

Absolutely removes Sonlight as a trusted source of materials for educating children. No mystery why people have given up on Sonlight.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/468105-is-holzman-white-washing-slavery-in-sonlight-core-100/

 

Bill

[MrsWeasley]

Sonlight is very popular in my homeschool group.

[SkateLeft]

I honestly just think there are more options now. There's just a lot more diversity in the homeschooling community than there used to be.

 

When I first started homeschooling many years ago in northern California, SL and Oak Meadow were pretty much the only two big packaged programs out there.  There weren't loads of resources on the internet, and homeschooling didn't have the market that it has now.

 

There are just so many other choices now.

[melmichigan]

Any well-thinking person on this forum rightly fled from materials written by John Holtzman (Sonlight) after reading his shocking comments in the "Is Holzman white washing slavery in Sonlight core 100?" thread three year ago. 

 

Absolutely removes Sonlight as a trusted source of materials for educating children. No mystery why people have given up on Sonlight.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/468105-is-holzman-white-washing-slavery-in-sonlight-core-100/

 

Bill

Yes, I had always secularized SL, so I hadn't read the notes to the cores until that thread came up.   :blink:  :svengo:

 

There are just so many more wonderful options now.

 

Katie, I confess to still having all my catalogs, just for the book descriptions.

Edited March 23, 2016 by melmichigan

[Haiku]

Imo, it's because they are inconsistent, John Holzmann is a crackpot, and they act like their customers have obligations to them rather than the other way around.

[ebrindam]

I agree with all the above reasons, but I have to say that the Sonlight catalog was hugely instrumental in our decision to homeschool. When my children were very small and I didn't know any homeschoolers in real life, it helped me to visualize what homeschooling could look like. I loved those catalogs.

 

Totally agree! Sonlight made me want to homeschool. All those books! But we don't use it.

[abacus2]

I have to ask- what exactly constitutes a conference kerfluffle? That sounds WAY more exciting than any homeschool conference I've ever been too. :)

 

I could be remembering wrong, but I believe Sonlight was uninvited from their hometown conference because they allowed the possibility that a Christian could believe the earth was old without having rejected true faith and the Bible.

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

In that case I'd be on Sl's side

Edited March 24, 2016 by Calming Tea

[sewingmama]

In The beginning I was always so tempted by Sonlight but never gave it a try because:

 

Expense and shipping ...imagine the cost shipping all that to Australia..I've noticed they have recently introduced an online version...but too late. We went with Moving Beyond The Page because they started up their online version years ago.

 

Confusion...the website is overwhelming and its hard to know what you need

 

Age range...I attempted a few times just to use it as a booklist but the books were too hard for my kids. At 9,8 and 6 they are now starting to enjoy books from the first few levels...and my kids are great readers but the books didnt peak their interest till then.

 

Difficult to use with all the page flipping and such.

 

We use MBTP as well as BYL. We love the books for BYL and the activities for MBTP are great. Plus bonus...they are secular. We are religious but I prefer to keep religion out of schoolwork.

 

Plus the biggest turnoff seems to be their customer service. I will always stick with MBTP because of their outstanding customer service. Sonlight doesn't seem to understand how loyalty works and offend their customers regularly.

[Aiden]

How do y'all know so much about this? That they're switching to MOH, the catalog is changing, and that LA is being taken out of the core? When does the catalog come out?

 

I know because I'm still on the SL forums, though not as active there as I am here (and I'm not all that active here). The catalog has been mailed, I believe; some may have already received theirs. I'm not sure if the online catalog is available yet or not. The new products will be available for order on 1 April.

 

 

More general comments, not specifically in response to Slache:

 

We used Sonlight for preschool (P3/4) and preK (P4/5). Even at those young ages, I tweaked. And I did not at all like the K LA that we added to P4/5. And I used it at the younger ages rather than the older, so I felt that the books were a little too advanced for my child, but--especially after reading TWTM--I didn't want to delay Core A (intro to world cultures) until 1st and not start history until 2nd, and I didn't want to do their cycle--world cultures, 1-2 years of world history, 1-2 years of American history, repeat. I didn't get the impression that their materials would help me discuss the books with my daughter as she got older, and I need help with that.

 

And as conservative a Christian as I am, I still find a good bit of their marketing statements and some of their books (some missionary ones) to be too fundamentalist for me. I was uncertain about supporting them financially for those reasons. And then there was a big kerfluffle when they attached specific grades to the cores. I had started considering slowing down our progression through the cores, but I realized that if I did that, then I'd end up teaching my daughter with products that were labeled a grade or two below where I considered her to be, and if she picked up on that, or if my husband's employer--who pays for our homeschool expenses--picked up on that, it would be trouble. And then I realized that these kerfluffles tend to happen regularly with Sonlight, and I decided that I couldn't trust them enough to plan for more than a year or two in advance, and I'm a serious long term planner--I'm fine with changing the plan from year to year, but I want to be able to tweak a plan, not be forced to create a new one because my product supplier radically changed something.

 

So I switched to Tapestry of Grace, and I really like it (so far, at least, one year in). I do look at the Sonlight website and book lists, and I've pulled several of their books to add to our studies, or to have available for fun literature. I'll get the catalog this year--I really want to see these book descriptions I've been hearing about for years. Removing LA from the core makes me more likely to go back to SL at some point, but even then, it isn't that likely, because my overall concerns about the company haven't changed and because I like TOG, and it's easy enough to pick up additional books from the SL list if I want to.

 

I think bittersweet is a good word to describe how I feel about Sonlight. They were my entry into homeschooling. Having their "perfectly laid out" plans, and still feeling the need to tweak them, taught me a lot about how I use curriculum--specifically, that although I like something that has a plan, it needs to be not so planned that it messes everything up when I tweak it! They gave me the confidence to branch out into something that fits me better, but that I would have found overwhelming had I started with it. But I still also have a little bit of the ick factor at some aspects of the company--even though I know Christians who are less conservative than I am who love Sonlight, and I still want to love them. I just ... don't.

[ktgrok]

If someone else could run them I'd love them. But yes, they've managed to annoy both super conservative Christians AND liberal Christians. Honestly, that's kind of hard to do. And it's not because they've been so middle of the road. It's because they have a knack for being offensive.