- How We Homeschool: An Overview
- Multi-level Homeschooling: Little Ones Part 1
- How We Do It: Family Worship
- Multi-level Homeschooling: The Homeschool Room
- Multi-level Homeschooling: Little Ones Part 2
- Teaching Reading
- A Child’s World
- Multi-Level Homeschooling with Sonlight
- Memorization System Tutorial
- Why Teach Greek?
- Teaching with Nature Journals
- Daily Bible Reading
- Teaching Handwriting
- Multi-level Homeschooling: Our Schedule
- Homeschooling Multi-grades: Have Questions?
- Sonlight: A More Specific Schedule
I mentioned in one of my last question and answer posts that our family has successfully used Sonlight Curriculum as a basis for multi-level teaching in our home. Many of you were interested in a more detailed post about Sonlight pros and cons and using it with multi-levels.
If you haven’t read my previous posts on how we homeschool or why we homeschool you may wish to as they will give you a basis of where we are coming from and why Sonlight is a good fit for us. Before I go any further let me mention that while Sonlight is a great program for our family, I always hesitate to recommend it to others because every home and homeschool is different and just because we enjoy it and it is a good fit for us, doesn’t mean that it will fit in your home or work with your style of homeschooling.
Our family has been using Sonlight since the winter of 2004, Amber was 7, Kaitlin was 5, Matthew 4 and Alyssa 3. We also had 3 preschool children.
What is Sonlight? Sonlight is a literature based Bible, history, literature and reading curriculum that is fully scheduled on a day by day basis. We have also used Sonlight for language arts and science. They sell those components separately.
We use Sonlight as the basis for our curriculum, but it is not the only thing we use. We do a lot of additional memorization and Bible reading as well as considerable amounts of extra read alouds. (We like to read aloud for at least two hours each day.)
Click here for a glimpse at a Sonlight Instructor’s Guide.
How we use Sonlight:
- I read all assignments aloud to the children. This will be changing as we prepare to transition into working with two levels of Sonlight beginning next year and our older children (13, 11, 10 and 9) will begin to work on some assignments independently. However, up until this year I have read all the assignments aloud with the exception of the children’s reading assignment. For their reading assignment our independent readers are assigned to read it aloud to our beginning or non-readers.
- We discuss all assignments together as a group. This is the part that is optional for the smaller children, depending on what is being discussed. We are currently discussing economics and the price-wage spiral, inflation, money supply, etc. I’m allowing the younger ones to be excused from those discussions.
- We work through hands-on projects together.
- We always look up what we are discussing on the map. I begin by asking the youngest children to locate what we are talking about.
- We keep up with our time line.
- We don’t always do the discussion or comprehension questions but we always discuss our readings.
- We talk about Sonlight most nights at the dinner table. It keeps daddy current with the conversation and is built-in review for the children.
In number 1, I mentioned that we will be beginning two levels of Sonlight next year. We are arriving at a point that this will be best for our children. Both Sonlight level 6 and Sonlight level 1 cover the first half of world history, while Sonlight level 7 and Sonlight level 2 cover the second half of world history. So even though we will be working with two different levels, we will still be studying the same things and be able to maintain the family conversation.
What we love about Sonlight:
- Literature selection – Even homeschoolers who don’t use Sonlight curriculum use Sonlight’s reading lists because they choose books that are not only well written with quality content, but are fun and fascinating to read. I attribute the fact that our children all enjoy school to the superb literary selections that Sonlight chooses.
- Pre-planning is already done, I spend my time teaching my children not lesson planning – Lessons are planned out on a daily basis, I simply open the instructor’s guide and begin working through the assignments with the children. A lot of homeschoolers have said that Sonlight is time consuming for the parent and I’m not going to disagree with that. However, all of that time is spent directly reading to or teaching my children. That is what I want to be doing with my time. There is a difference between having a program that requires significant amounts of time to lesson plan, research and pre-read and a program that requires significant amounts of time teaching your children. Sonlight falls into the latter category.
- Method of teaching – Sonlight’s method of teaching is organic and laid back. Important information is not presented to the children in a list or condensed paragraph that they must then memorize and be quizzed over. It is presented in the context of literature, of a story and is thought about, discussed and perhaps researched.
- Simple to teach multi-levels – I have used one level of Sonlight with children ranging in age from 13-4. Of course, our 4 year old is not getting the specific political tensions between the Japanese and the western world, but she knows that Commodore Perry is the man who opened trade with Japan and she can find Japan on the map. She may not understand the why’s and how’s of the Great Depression, but she knows that a lot of people lost their jobs.
- Flexibility – Sonlight is especially well suited to covering more or less than is written in the curriculum. Our children enjoyed studying about the War Between the States. Since Sonlight is literature based it is simple to choose additional books and resources and add them to our schedule as we studied that particular time period.
- Teaches children to think- Because Sonlight uses literature to teach, the children are accustomed to thinking, discussing and analyzing almost everything that they read. We sometimes have a difficult time getting through our reading assignments because of the questions and conversations that are sparked by the content.
- Incorporates geography and timeline work with day to day assignments.
- Creates a family conversation – When we began to use Sonlight this is how I described the change in our homeschool. Whereas before the children had been reading and studying more independently (yes even at 7, 5 and 4) Sonlight created a conversation. We were learning together and “school” was the most popular topic of conversation. When the Olympics occurred just a few years after we had studied Greece our family was able to discuss what we had learned because we had learned it together. (This would be true of most multi-level program.)
- Presents a balanced and honest view of history – With one exception Mark and I have been very please at the balanced approach with which history has been presented.
These strong points of Sonlight work with how we homeschool to create a strong back bone for our curriculum. It also helps us in our goal of strong family relationships. The beauty of having the basics mapped out for us is that it gives us a solid plan to cover everything, yet allows us to customize it as we see fit.
What we don’t love about Sonlight:
- Doesn’t thoroughly integrate Biblical history – This is my biggest criticism of the program and would be a deal breaker if we wished our children to work more independently but because I’m directly involved in teaching Sonlight to the children, I control how much Bible history is included.
- There have been a few literature selections that we felt were inappropriate. – Again, because I’m reading nearly everything aloud, this becomes a non-issue. However, I do not recommend that parents give Sonlight to their children to work through independently. I try to read the independent readers before the children get to them and there have been some that we have had our children skip.
- Sonlight’s independent readers tend to be below our children’s reading level. This is easily solved with all of the additional reading that our children do on their own. Sonlight schedules readers that are easier than the child’s reading level for the purpose of encouraging the children’s love of literature and making sure not to discourage them with books that are a struggle for them to work through. This was most problematic for level 1 and level 2 of Sonlight and we assigned a lot of extra reading. Now however, our children read so much that I don’t usually assign specific books but allow them to read where their interest lies. (Our 9 year old is currently enjoying “20,000 Leagues under the Sea”.)
We use Sonlight to teach multi-levels simply by exposing the younger children to the information and the discussion, by encouraging them to be involved in map work, asking questions aimed at their comprehension level after each reading and including them in the dinner table discussion by asking them questions about the basic people, places and events, whereas the older children focus more on the “whys” and “hows”. We also select additional read alouds if we feel that they need more exposure to a specific time period. We incorporate all our children similarly with science and I will be writing a separate post about using Sonlight language arts for multi-levels, or rather my version of Sonlight language arts. 
Each year when we reevaluate our goals, plans, where we are and where we are going, we consider switching away from Sonlight and research other multi-level teaching programs. Every time we have come to the conclusion that, for us, Sonlight is the best fit.
So there you have some basic information about Sonlight in our homeschool. What did I miss? What do you still wonder? Want to come over for a day of school at our house?
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My family used Sonlight from 1997-2000 and we loved it. I think what a lot of parents mean by “time-consuming” is not in the planning, but in how much you have to be involved in the teaching of the material. That was why we stopped using it. Although we loved it, my mom needed something where we could work more independently, at the point in time.
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Since this is my first year using Sonlight and I have little ones, too, I’d love a more specific break-down of your schedule. Do you do your read aloud time all at once or do you break it into two or three different times of the day? Do you schedule it for while babies and toddlers are napping? At what point do you do map and timeline activities? Do you use just the one timeline for all your kids and study it together as a group?
Thanks in advance for helping me get our homeschool machine running more smoothly.
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Raising Olives Reply:
October 1st, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Celee – We usually do our read aloud time all at once. Occasionally we will finish up some reading in the late afternoon. We usually read aloud while the little ones are awake. I like for them to listen. We work with the map and the time line immediately after we read what we are going to mark on them. We use only one time line for everyone.
Tristan – We have used Sonlight Science for the past 4 years.
Tristan and Jill – There has only been one book that we didn’t have the children read at all. It was for a number of reasons but primarily because it spoke about a 12 year old swimming in her panties. The book was not a great work of literature and we thought that it added very little to the topics that we were covering, so we simply skipped it. There have been other books that we have edited because we tend to be very picky about language (we don’t use words like “gosh”, “gee”, “heck” or “darn” and when we come to them in a book we just mark them out.
The one point that we felt Sonlight was not fair and balanced in history was their view of Columbus and the South American Indians. They gave the idea of the noble savage and horrible, greedy discoverer and while some of that is true their was not the balance that we have observed throughout the rest of the program.
Angela – Feel free to pass along any hints to make my life easier.
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I would love to come to a day at your house! Let me bring my children and we can have a lot of fun.
I’m glad you posted about how you use Sonlight. I have looked at it before and still consider it. I would love to know how it works on a day for each of your ages. Do you have to buy extra materials for extra children? For example next year I would have ages 9, almost 6, 4 1/2, almost 3, 1 1/2.
I also look forward to your post about Sonlight Language Arts. Do you use Sonlight Science as well or something else?
I know every family is different. Do you mind mentioning the one exception to the balanced and honest view of history here and why you skipped some of the read alouds (what you felt was inappropriate?)
You are simply a wealth of knowledge! Write en ebook please!
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Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences with Sonlight!
~Luke
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Thank you for your post on Sonlight Curriculum. My children are still young (4 and 2). However, I have been reading Sonlight catalogs and researching alternatives for the last few years. People seem to think (from reviews) that Sonlight’s read alouds tend to be geared toward the higher end of the age spectrum. I want to start P4/5 next year when the kids are 5 and 3, but I was afraid the books/concepts mught be over their heads. After reading your post about what your 4 year old was able to pick up from upper cores…it gives me more confidence in starting Sonlight next year. Thanks for the post!
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I’m also curious about the literature selections you felt were inappropriate and why? Thanks for sharing.
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I’ve just started that phase of needing two groups, doing levels 1 and 6. The funny thing is that my 6 and 7 year olds want to be there for the 9,10,11,&13 yr olds stuff. The hard thing is providing supervision for the baby, 2,3,&5 year olds during TWO quiet reading times, and still getting all the individual work and chores done. It is very challenging, and I wish you were ahead of me, so you could tell me what to do.
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Thank you, but now I have follow up questions. How old is your youngest? I mean, do you have a crawler that is getting into mischief while you’re reading? Would you require a 3 year old to sit still during reading, or allow him to work a puzzle or something while you’re reading. We do require him to sit still for family worship, but that doesn’t last as long as our Sonlight reading does. I want to make sure I’m not demanding too much from my little ones, but I do not want to neglect training them. Thank you for all your help!
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Raising Olives Reply:
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Celee,
Sorry I should have been more clear. I posted about what our little ones do during read alouds here and here (this second link is probably more specifically what you are asking about). Our youngest is currently 1 1/2, but up until this year we’ve always had 3-4 children under the age of 3, so we have done all that. I use blanket time (described in that second post) with crawling babies. I explain more about it in my posts, but for read aloud time none of the children are required to sit still.
Also, the babiest baby is often taking his morning nap during most of school. Sorry I wasn’t clear on that, I always think of nap time as the afternoon when everyone is quiet and forget about that morning nap time for the youngest.
Hope that clears it up for you.
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Thank you so much! I’ve used blanket and chair time with my 3 year old and he’s doing great. It’s the 11 mo that is quite demanding right now. So we try to do our read-alouds while she’s napping. We can’t get it all in during her morning nap, though, so we have to come back to it in the afternoon.
I’ll go back and read those earlier posts on multi-level homeschooling, too. Thank you for specifically answering my questions! I’m sure I’ll have more, but I’ll go back and read everything in the series first.
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This is what is working so far, sort of. After breakfast we have family worship, then I do the younger group school – which takes 30-45 min, while the big kids each take a day to engage the pre-schoolers, baby stays with me. Then we do individual stuff till and after lunch, with the older group school during nap time. It is just hard to keep everyone engaged and productive.
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I am late reading this post, but I will put my two cents in, too. We love Sonlight and are on our 10th year. I usually have 2 different cores going, along the same time period. (I have 6 children, 5 that I teach.)I pick and chose the best of the two to read aloud to everyone. Sometimes it is a read aloud from the younger core, sometimes the older, and sometimes it is a reader from the older core that I want my littles to get in on. Then I read the history aloud from the older core. To make sure the older ones get all of their core in, they do more reading on their own. So, they read some of the read alouds for their core, along with most of the readers for that core. The littles are sometimes read to at their level, and most of the times it is above, but they still get a lot out of it. We do our reading in the afternoon when the baby and preschooler are sleeping. We usually read for longer than nap time, so they wake up and join us for the end. That way we have quite time without the little ones, but they also learn to sit quietly while we are reading.
I am glad to see that you, Kimberly, continue to do a hands on curriculum with many childern. It seems like many families who have lots of children eventually switch to curriculum that is more hands off from the parents. It takes us all day to get our school work done, but we continue to like it. Times when we get more into individual work and less reading, everyone’s satisfaction with school goes down, especially mine!
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Angela and Amy – Thanks so much for chiming in here. It is encouraging to hear how things work in your homes. I really value having those who are farther along the path than I am and I appreciate your taking the time to share how you are working with two levels of Sonlight.
This year has been a more challenging homeschool year for us for a number of reasons, but I think it will be great preparation for working with two different levels of Sonlight next year and the new challenges that will bring.
I envision doing something very similar to what you are describing, Amy. Focusing on the older ones for read alouds, having them do more independent reading (or reading as a group, but without mom) and adding in extra read alouds for the younger ones.
Angela – I just noticed that we have children almost exactly the same ages. Mine are currently 13, 11, 10, 9, 7, 6, 4, 3 and 1. I think only two of our children are different ages and that only by a year (or more likely by a few months).
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HI Kimberly,
Great post on Sonlight.
We are working on some schedule shifts with multi-level homeschooling.
Specifically, with a 4th grader and 3rd grader… then three little ones 3 and under.
I also do not want them to be independent… but all working and learning together.
How would you recc doing this?
They have Math and English and Spelling – separate right?
When they do their own reading / readers … your kiddos read aloud — but how many at once? In different locations?
My 4th and 3rd have different readers… or I could put them together, listen together, and take turns reading aloud?
Can you help me with some specifics?
Do your kids do handwriting worksheets?
I’ve used Sonlight Science, so I get that. They all use the same level and read the book a loud, then do the experiment together?
What is your specific schedule for each child… to keep them all going and learning?
thanks for any help you have to share!
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Raising Olives Reply:
October 29th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
No worries about running out of blog topics while I have you around.
I currently have two posts about Sonlight that I’m working on, I’ll try to answer some of your questions more thoroughly in those.
We actually only do Math separately, all language arts are taught together although all the children may have some independent work assigned.
Our older kids (9 and up) read silently and they do this after lunch during rest time. I often let them take turns and read aloud to each other.
Yes, our kids have handwriting books.
Sonlight Science exactly as you described. I read the book aloud to everyone and they work through the experiment together.
I will be posting more about our specific schedule soon (it’s one of the posts I’m working on, if I don’t fully answer your question there, feel free to ask again.
)
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I’m really looking forward to more posts on this topic. In my “great curriculum search”, I have been looking around at Sonlight, and the only drawback I can really find is the potential difficulty in teaching 2 different Cores. That, and trying to figure out which Core(s) we’d have to start with. So, if I’ve followed your blog correctly, you use FIAR for your littles, and let them sit in and absorb from the Sonlight lessons, as well? I really appreciate all the informative homeschooling posts you have, its so helpful to get a peek into how others do it, especially those with larger families than mine!
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Raising Olives Reply:
November 18th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Yes! You have exactly what we do. Next year we will face the 2 core dilemma. I have big plans and high hopes that it will work out beautifully, but not having actually done it…. We’ll wait and see. My advantage in beginning two cores at this point in time is that I’ll have had 6 years of Sonlight under my belt and I’ve already gone through core 1 once, so hopefully I have a good grasp of how to combine the cores into one mega, multi-level world history course.
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After 2 years of considering, I’m ready to order Sonlight for the first time. My kids are 13 and 9, and 4 and 1, so I’ll be ordering Core 5 for the older kids, and will do FIAR with the little boys. I was finally sold on it after reading about your experiences and how you accomplish it with more kids than me! I LOVE that we will all be learning the same thing. It’s what I’ve always done, but I have been writing my own lessons and doing research, finding books, etc. When I wasn’t prepared, it didn’t get done.
I’m so excited, and really looking forward to more posts on Sonlight!
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
January 15th, 2010 at 5:58 am
Your ages are similar to ours and we are finishing up Core 5 this year. I think that you will be happy with your decision. Next year you’ll all be ready to move to 6 and 1.
Please let me know if there are some specifics that you’d like me to post about Sonlight.
Thanks friend!
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I realize this is similar to other ?s, but I’m going to ask anyway.I had decided to make my own curriculum (I know, crazy) but then read Amy’s posts on Sonlight.
We’ve used MFW’s CtG and are now doing RtR.Next year, the girls will be 8th and 5th…the boys 2nd and K.
What would you buy?
BTW…My Ker will be doing MFW’s K (which I love), so he’s not really an issue.
Thanks for your help.
Have a good day.
– Kathi
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
January 27th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
I think that MFW is My Father’s World. What are CtG and RtR?
Are you asking what level of Sonlight? or which curriculum?
If you’re thinking of going with Sonlight, I would consider using Core 6 with your 8th and 5th (I will be doing that next year with my 5th-8th graders) and Core 1 with the 2nd and K (I will be doing that next year with my 3rd-K kids). Both Core 1 and 6 are world history, so I envision being able to incorporate the cores together.
I know that Celee (see her comment above for a link to her blog) is doing 1 and 6 together this year. She may have better info on that idea than I do since she’s doing it and I’m just planning to do it.
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