We are currently using Sonlight for history. Although I tend to be ecclectic and add a lot of additional reading for the children. Sonlight also works well for our family because I am very involved in the actual teaching and discussion.

Whenever I recommend Sonlight I do so with a few caveats:

1) The Sonlight authors are not 7-day creationists. I have not noticed this blatantly in any of the curriculum, but it is good to be aware of that fact.

2) Don’t make the assumption that all of the books that Sonlight recommends will be suitable for your family. There have been several books that have needed some editing and a few that we have skipped all together.

3) Sonlight does not have to be as expensive as it’s listed on the Sonlight homepage. I buy almost all of our books used, but I do purchase the most recent teacher’s guide from Sonlight.

4) I use one level of Sonlight for ALL of our school age children. A lot of people use a different level for each child,but Sonlight is designed to work in the manner that we are using it in our home. I have spoken to several of Sonlight’s curriculum advisers, so this is not just my opinion. We are currently working through Sonlight Level 5 with six children ages 5-12. It does take some tweaking, but I’m working on a few posts about multi-grading and Sonlight is a perfect curriculum to multi-grade. Next year we will begin two levels of Sonlight. Both Level 1 and Level 6 cover the first half of world history, so we integrating both levels as we move through world history.

This is perhaps more information than you wanted, but no curriculum is perfect and I hate to recommend Sonlight without those cautions.

My second choice for history would be Mystery of History. We used that in conjunction with Sonlight a few years ago and as a straight history program I perhaps prefer that to Sonlight, although it is a little more difficult to implement.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to let me know.

Blessings,
Kimberly

Thanks,
Kim