Designed to open the eyes of early elementary age children to the much bigger world of which they are a part so that they yearn to learn more. You may wish to use this program, with minor modification, as the basis for teaching one child in K through 2nd, or more than one child in Pre-K through 2nd grades.
Curriculum Overview:
Cuddle up with the little ones as you discover together the wonders of the world way beyond the borders of your town and far beyond the limits of most early elementary students' imaginations. As with the Sonlight Curriculum® Pre-K program, our purpose this year is to establish the fundamental attitude that learning is fun. We like learning!
The Sonlight Curriculum® Core K program is a "wonder" year. It is meant to introduce your children to a wide range of topics that, we hope, will whet their appetites to find out more. The beautifully illustrated Usborne Living Long Ago, Wild Places, and Children's Encyclopedia lead you on your adventures. A small sampling of the kinds of places you'll go, people you'll see, and questions you'll ask:
- Why are Watussi men over 6 feet tall, on average, while their pygmy neighbors are less than 4-1/2 feet high?
- How have languages diverged?
- What kinds of houses do people around the world live in?
- What kinds of foods do they eat?
- What sports do they play?
- Are there differences in their arts, music, fashion, modes of transportation?
- and countless others
In history, you will spend a week studying the biblical account of creation, then touch on the evolutionary view. Then you're off on a hop-skip-and-jump survey of those portions of history where biblical and secular scholars generally agree: one-day stops in Ancient Egypt, Rome, Medieval Europe, England at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and more. You will study world geography and climates, and how people have learned to grow food in the midst of deserts. Interspersed among these tantalizing glimpses of other times and other places, you and your children will meet 15 (Protestant) heroes of the faith including people like:
- William and Catherine Booth, the founders of the Salvation Army
- David Livingstone, one of the early European explorers of southern Africa
- Menno Simons, the founder of the pacifistic group of Christians we now know as Mennonites
- and a dozen more.
Again, none of these studies is in depth. We look at just enough to pique your children's interest, and leave them pleading for more. Meanwhile, you and your children will enjoy a huge stack of Read-Aloud adventures beginning with the Robinson Crusoe-like story of two brothers and two sisters, orphans, who decide to fend for themselves in a railroad boxcar during the Great Depression. Little do they realize that the grandfather whom they have never met really loves and wants to care for them. But The Boxcar Children is just the beginning.
- The fascinating story of William Tell ( The Apple and the Arrow),
- The hilarious exploits retold in My Father's Dragon
- The Story of Dr. Doolittle and his great floating zoo
- James Herriot's animal stories for children
- A biography of Johnny Appleseed
- The heart-rending and thought-provoking tale of The Hundred Dresses
- and many more!
In Sonlight Curriculum® K, we provide an instructor's guide that has model questions (and, in many cases, answers) for all the Read-Alouds. These are questions and answers that address your children's general comprehension of the stories you are reading as well as details of science and nature that you might otherwise overlook (for example, "What is a tortoise?" "What are tangerines?" and "What is a boar?"--items mentioned in My Father's Dragon, and discussed in Week 6) Cultural literacy questions ("What is linen?" "What is an alphorn?"--from The Apple and the Arrow, discussed in Week 5) Geography ("Locate Brazil on a map." "Locate Devon and Wales."--from The Story of Doctor Doolittle, week 20), and so forth.
If you follow our Bible program, you and your child will read the entire biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation in the long-cherished Egermeier's Story Bible, a version that, while simplifying the text for young people, remains remarkably true to the original. Please note that the Bible program is not included in the Core package anymore. However, Bible readings are still scheduled in the Instructor's Guides. See the K Bible program.
Includes all History and Read-Aloud books, plus a Core Instructor's Guide KTB. The Regular Readers program is designed to be used by children entering Kindergarten with little or no knowledge of the alphabet or letter sounds. If your child is already able to read three-letter, short-vowel words, you should use our Advanced Readers program.
Estimated time requirement for all kindergarten subjects, including Science, Math and Language Arts, using either the Five-Day or Four-Day program as scheduled: Child: 1-1.5 hrs/day; Parent: 45 mins to 1 hr/day direct involvement.
Read about what "extras" you get when you purchase a Core program on our Special Offers page.
Have questions? Talk to the real experts in our Sonlight Curriculum Discussion Forums--other families who are using this very curriculum right now. We have a special forum just for this curriculum level:
- Core K - Introduction to the World Curriculum Discussion Forum
- Instructor's Guide Samples
- How Can I Possibly Use a K Program with a Second Grader?
