Homeschool Curriculum Review: Why Sonlight Might Be the Perfect Fit for Your Family
Do you dream of a homeschool curriculum that has lesson plans all laid out for you? Do you want your children to read lots of good literature instead of just boring textbooks? Are you also looking for some flexibility when it comes to certain subjects like math and English? If so, then Sonlight homeschool curriculum might be just what you need!
Sonlight was a Great Choice for Us.
I used Sonlight homeschool curriculum for 2 years with my children, so I have hands on knowledge of it, and I think it may be a great option for other homeschooling families as well. My children and I thoroughly enjoyed World History using the Sonlight Curriculum. It was split into 2 years, World History 1 followed by World History 2. I believe these are currently listed as levels G and H on the Sonlight website, and they are recommended for ages 12 to 15. While I don’t remember the exact ages of my children when we did these 2 years of Sonlight, they were somewhere in that range. Any that were younger would have joined in on the read aloud books and stories.
What Makes Sonlight Different from other homeschool Curricula?
I would say the thing that makes Sonlight different from most other homeschool curricula is the great literature. There are so many good books in the Sonlight curriculum. Why does that matter? Well, reading great books helps children with many things such as vocabulary and increased language skills. It also helps increase attention spans and helps develop imagination and concentration.
Sonlight not only includes good books for the student to read silently but also includes books for the parent to read aloud to their children. Reading aloud to my children was one of my favorite things we did together. We read so many great stories that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Reading great stories aloud is a wonderful way to end each school day. It gives your children something to look forward to when all their other work is finished.
No Boring History with Sonlight Curriculum.
You won’t find any boring history textbooks with little snippets about famous people or a watered down version of a historical event. Instead your children will read books that are connected to the historical time period being studied which allows for a much more thorough understanding of the people, places, and cultures of the time. If that wasn’t enough, Sonlight also incorporates those same literature books into their language arts program. Passages from those books are used for dictation and grammar assignments as well as writing. Instead of reading snippets about a series of events in a history book and then answering review questions, your children will get a real understanding and perspective of what it was like during a certain event or period of time. They do a great job of tying it all together.
I absolutely loved Sonight timeline books. Each page covers a certain amount of time and they provide all the timeline figures to add each year. Each child keeps their timeline book through all their school years and adds to it year after year. It can serve as a great review throughout the years and also gives your children a big picture of when things happened in relation to each other.
Sonlight’s Teacher’s Guides and Lesson Plans.
The Sonlight Teacher’s guide or instructor’s guide is complete and ready to go. All you do is open it up, find the day’s assignments and get started. It’s that easy. They offer 2 different schedules. You can choose between a 4 or 5 day schedule depending on what you prefer. If you like to do school 4 days a week and use the 5th day as a make up day or maybe you have a park day with other homeschoolers than the 4 day schedule would work better for you. Of course, there are a few less books with the 4 day schedule than the 5 day.
The Teacher’s guide was so easy that when we were using Sonlight, If my children woke up early and wanted to get started on their school work they were able to just open up the guide and see for themselves what needed to be done each day and get started.
My Sonlight Guide
As I was writing this blog post, I decided to go find my Sonlight teacher’s guide. I knew I still had it in a tote somewhere. I found it along with all the literature books.
Please note, this guide is several years old, and some things may have changed a little in the newer versions, but most of it would still apply. So, there are 4 sections, the first of which contains the table of contents along with some notes and an overview of the guide. Section 2 contains the schedule for 36 weeks along with notes, review questions, dictation passages, map activitites, and so on. Section 3 contains lots of information for the parent. It has explanations on lots of things taught through the year. For example, there are simple explanations with examples for some punctuation and parts of speech. There are instructions for doing a research paper, some field trip forms, among other items. The last section gives more guidance on using the guide along with some other tips.
The Layout
This particular guide contains the 5 day schedule. Each week has a one page schedule. It is on both the front and back side of the page. There are 11 sections on the schedule. It includes bible, history/geography, Read-alouds, readers, spelling, handwriting, Grammar/Mechanics, Vocabulary, and creative expression. It gives the pages to be read for each book and/or the assignment to be completed for each subject on that particular day. There are also blank spaces for you to write in Math, science and electives.
After that one page weekly schedule, there are several pages of notes. Included in the notes are review questions for passages read that week, dictation passages, map and timeline activities, language arts assignments or activities, and various explanations about things mentioned in the books to help you and your children better understand them.
Sonlight Gives You Options.
The only thing that might be a little confusing is all the different things Sonlight offers. They have several options for math, English and grammar, handwriting, science, etc. For example, for math they offer Horizons, Saxon, Math-U-See, Singapore among others from their website. So these aren’t math curricula published by Sonlight, but they offer them on their site as options. Options are a great thing to have, but they can also make it hard to decide on what to purchase. The beauty of Sonlight is that you can purchase one component such as history or you can purchase every subject from them. I recommend calling the people at Sonlight who can help you decide what options would be best for your children.
By the way, here is my blog post on choosing a homeschool math curriculum if you are interested. https://whatabouthomeschooling.com/homeschool-math-curriculum/
A Gentle Reminder: The Teacher’s Guide is Just a Guide.
Now as with any other curriculum, you have to remember that not everything is going to be right for your family. You may not like one of the books they have in the schedule. That’s fine. You can substitute it or just skip it altogether. Now of course, you won’t get any tie ins if you substitute any of the books like the review questions etc., but you are not tied to any teacher’s guide or lesson plan book for any curricula and that holds true to Sonlight as well.
The Teacher’s guide is just a guide to help you. It is not a master that you have to obey. You can pick and choose what is best for you and your children and leave out the rest.
Sonlight is Not a Perfect Curriculum.
One criticism, and it’s not really a criticism as much as a personal preference, that I have heard from others concerning Sonlight is the pace of the books. By that I mean the passages or chapters to read every day may seem a bit too much. Some families prefer smaller chunks of reading each day and prefer to go through books at a slower pace depending on the book. If you are familiar with Charlotte Mason, this is something that she advocated for as well.
Now, no curriculum is 100% perfect for everyone. However, Sonlight is a great choice if you want a literature rich curriculum and a company that offers everything in one place.
I remember the first time I was introduced to Sonlight. A friend of mine purchased the kindergarten curriculum package, and she showed me the box that came in the mail. It was full of everything they needed for the whole year. I was pretty impressed!
Sonlight Has Even More!
Sonlight now offers some virtual options as well. They also have an app where they host a community where you can connect with other families using Sonlight. They also have a podcast.
What to Learn More About Sonlight?
If Sonlight sounds appealing to you, go their website here, look around, and read all about it. You can even try out a sample of their curricula for free to see if it is a good fit for your family.
NOTE: At the time of this writing, I am not affiliated with Sonlight, and do not earn any commissions or anything else from them for recommending their curriculum. I just believe it is a great curriculum that many homeschool families would love.