Has anyone used Sonlight 5 with 8-10yr olds?

[Siobhan NZ]

We are going to Asia for a year or two, and will be without easy access to usual resources (like the library). So I am considering purchasing Sonlight 5 as it's contextually relevant to the area we will be in (it focusses on non-European/American countries/history), and provides a great amount of literature. My 8 and 10 yr old girls are good readers and writers but this may be stretching them too far?? I have never used Sonlight so any general comments about Sonlight would be appreciated too.

Edited April 9, 2009 by Siobhan NZ

[Mandy in TN]

I love SL5. However, if you are concerned about adapting, it is difficult to adapt without totally writing your own coordinating book list and curriculum. I know a woman who had pre-k through junior high age children and was happily using Christian Cottage School's Eastern Hemisphere curriculum. It is their Volume II, For God So Loved the World.

 

Here is the link to the CD and review at Rainbow Resource. They also sell the printed version. Here it is on their website. With this you can look through the booklists and purchase the books for each unit that will work for your daughters knowing that they will tie-in with the teaching materials.

 

Just another option!

HTH-

Mandy

Edited April 9, 2009 by Mandy in TN

[Siobhan NZ]

Thanks, I'll look that up :)

[Shelly in the Country]

I love Sonlight and have been using it a year ahead of my 9yo dd's "grade level" for a few years now. She is a really strong reader and told me the other day she wouldn't mind a little more reading actually when I asked her to give me a year-end review of Core 4. Sonlight picks some really engaging books for their Cores. We're not doing Core 5 this coming year, because I wanted to try TOG Year 1 to stick to a 4 year history cycle, but I think we may come back around to it. That said, I would not have been concerned about using it with her even this past year. You could pick out some books from Core 5 and get them from the library to look them over to see if they match up with the reading level your kids are on right now to gauge how difficult they might be. I sometimes just look up books at www.lexile.com to get a Lexile number on the book I'm curious about. Then I'll take something my dd has told me about reading recently that she enjoyed and look up that Lexile number as well. I try to get a sense of how hard the book will be for her. As for writing, I've never used SL's Language Arts so I have no idea how challenging that would be. HTH