• One of my best friends just had a baby and I was honored to be at the birth. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever participated in. I have had three c-sections, so the wonder of a woman's body just functioning correctly was truly beautiful. (It helped that she pushed once and the baby came out. I was worried that the doctor wouldn't be there to catch the baby at all!) What a gift to hold her hand while she welcomed her new daughter.

  After my birth class I had a very negative view of having others attend my birth. I was warned that people would be a huge nuisance and that they would just make me angry. After attending a birth, I felt like it bonded everyone there. We were her cheerleaders, supporters and extra prayer warriors for when it got tough. I would do it again in a heartbeat if the opportunity ever arises.

  What are your thoughts or experiences? Have you had people attend and loved it? Hated it? Participated with someone else's and had your mind changed one way or another?


Sweet Vivvi and Me


• I am getting ready to teach my second class at my church on style, color and clothing fit based on the book, It's SO You! by Mary Sheehan Warren. I taught this once last year and then we all went home, went through our closets, and had a clothing exchange. I'm glad those that participated liked it enough to encourage me to do it again! I'm also glad to be on the other side of my pregnancy and hope to score some cute clothes. I'll talk more on all of those fun things when I have higher brain function.
• I am really enjoying a cookbook I saw at my mom's house called The Stocked Kitchen. (I will admit it is no longer at her house, but currently residing on my counter for easy reference). It is a system where you have one shopping list and then you can make over 300 recipes using a combination of those ingredients. The few I've tried have been very yummy and it's nice to know if I have the list, I have what's needed. It's a nice reassuring book to have when I'm less inspired for dinner.
• Speaking of books, I am currently wanting to reread several titles from the Sonlight Summer Reader Packages. I could use a hammock day (or, just an evening would be nice) to dive back into these favorite worlds. This was such a fun project to work on! If your kids love reading, I really hope you will give these a chance. Super fun!

So, that concludes my assorted thoughts...I will try for a single, more thought out topic next time.

Until then,
Jonelle

But still, you may want more. Your children may be voracious readers whom you simply can't satiate. You need a constant flow of reading material and books to keep them going. On the other hand, your children may be more like me: Reading just a few carefully selected titles. In that case, you want to make sure the books they read are the best of the best in literature.

We've known this is a real need for over seven years. And this year, we've finally been able to make our solution a reality. Introducing: Sonlight Summer Readers.

These competitively priced book packs contain some of the best reading you'll ever have the privilege to do. And of all the amazing books I've read (and had read to me), one of my all time favorites is making its way to the forefront again. Years ago it was included in a "Holzmann Family Favorites" Christmas Sale, so it's nice to have it back again.

Here's the important thing: None of these books are included in Sonlight's homeschooling curriculum packages. They won't show up in your Core or Mulit-Subject Packages.

In other words: These fantastic reader packages make great summer readers and gifts. In fact, I think it would be fun way to introduce families to the joy of reading (together) without the pressure of "school" and "learning." Families can fall in love with literature together. And, who knows, maybe these books can inspire them to look more closely at a literature-based approach to education.

If you haven't checked out Sonlight's new Summer Reader Packages, you should. ...right now.

 ~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Today my blog post is simply one of encouragement. Please allow me to be a "cheerleader" for a moment and say Good job!! You've come through another school year ... complete with its highs and lows ... and you should be proud of your hard work.

If your homeschooling "season" is drawing to an end as you graduate your last, let me offer a hearty well done, thou good and faithful servant. In my very humble opinion, there is no greater or more difficult job than raising children. That you have chosen and commited to not only parent them, but to also educate them, is no small feat.

If your homeschooling is about to go on summer break, let me suggest that sometime over the summer you check out the "encouragement" page of the  Homeschool 101 section on our web site. A hiatus from school is the perfect time to "fill your tank" for next fall. Keep up the good work, and don't grow weary in doing well.

May your summer be filled with wonderful adventures with your family.

Still on the journey ...
~Judy Wnuk
Sonlight Customer Champion

I'm going to film because Sarita is speaking at two conventions this year. If you happen to be there, you'll get to meet her... and I'll be around as well <smile>. But conventions offer more than just a possibility of bumping into fun people. You can also meet with your Sonlight Curriculum Consultant (another very fun person!) and get your questions answered.

So, I'm off! Please pray that travel goes smoothly and all my equipment makes it there intact. My mom and I are traveling a lot these new few weeks, so your prayers are most appreciated.

Thank you! And I hope I get to meet at least one of you at either the Texas or North Carolina homeschool convention in the coming days.

 ~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Opening the Box

For the first time in my homeschooling experience I feel like I have made some really good moves to make our homeschool experience better. I use to be so scared to pick and choose from different curriculum. I think a good bit of parents are. You have concerns about them not "meshing" well together, or making it more confusing on the children (and yourself). I want to confirm to anyone struggling in this area that it can be done. You just have to put enough trust in yourself that YOU know what is best for your children.

Having a Blast in Their Space Shuttle

Emily shares much more about her homeschool history, encouragement, as well as her Box Day (with more pictures) on her blog.

Read the rest of Emily's Box Day Story here.

Whether we like it or not, the medium of film is a powerful cultural force. Motion pictures, television, online videos, and even video on demand on smartphones are realities of our world. But how do they relate to homeschooling? Before we get there, let's look at some differences between print and film.

Are there differences between print and film? Of course. They are different mediums. Print, for instance, is mostly conceptual, dealing with linear ideas. Film, on the other hand, is mostly visual, dealing with images that may or may not be linear. Print typically requires concentrated thought, while film generally requires little concentrated thought. Print excels in building rational arguments, but film favors entertainment over rigorous rational discourse. Print requires literacy, while film generally does not. Print is usually a quiet endeavor, involving an interplay between the author and reader. Film, though, is noisy, involving sounds, music, etc. Print records the great ideas of human history, while film is mostly transient and fleeting (especially much television). Finally, we could say print is active, while film is passive. That is to say, if we are good readers we engage printed ideas actively, but when we watch film we are mostly passive observers. There are exceptions to each of these points, but on the whole I believe these differences are representative of what is typical of each medium.

With that said, we could also add that print and film share some similarities. Both, for example, can tell a story, evoke emotions, share ideas, entertain, can be artistic, and are capable of communicating truth or error.

Must print and film engage in battle? Not necessarily. Film can often serve as an engaging supplement or complement to literature-rich homeschooling pursuits. After all, it's one thing to read about something and another to see it in action. With parental monitoring sites like YouTube offer a wealth of educational supplements that will excite your children and move them to want to learn more about various subjects. This is one reason Sonlight incorporated links to video clips in many of our Sonlight Science programs a few years ago.

I've written elsewhere that film is the "new literature." I don't mean that literature will disappear, but that we've largely shifted from a culture that asks, "Have you read?" to "Have you seen?"

Sonlight is literature rich. We value the written word and the ability of literature-based stories to make a difference in lives, whether it's shaping character, exposing us to different cultural ideas, or just entertaining us with characters that come to life. Understanding the differences between film and print can help us better understand these mediums, as well as how to better incorporate them in our efforts to educate our children.

Do you incorporate video when you teach your children? Let us know how you do it and how your children respond.

Robert Velarde
Author/Educator/Philosopher

For example, after Sonlight got started, my mom and dad pretty much did everything. You can read more of the story of the early days of Sonlight, but if something needed to be done, my parents would just make it happen.

As Sonlight grew, so did the need for more resources. That's when diseconomies of scale come into play. You can't just add a second person to your team and be twice as effective. Now you have to meet and discuss, divvy up responsibility, communicate vision. Bring on more people and it takes longer. This also requires oversight and management, time devoted to helping your team work together, a person to make sure it all comes together in the end.

And that's the trade off: One person can instantly address a handful of requests. But you can't serve very many people that way. So you have to grow. But in so doing, things take longer. You can serve more people, but it's much more involved.

As an example, I just got out of a meeting where we discussed how we can best serve those waiting on our back-ordered packages. When it was just my mom and dad, they would come up with an idea and it was done. Today, we can't do that.

But we can serve more people than my parents could on their own. I've often heard the term of "turning the ship" to indicate how long it takes a large group of people to make any kind of change. A small kayak allows one person to make a major course change immediately. But if you want to do something that will affect, say, hundreds of passengers, that craft can't be nearly as nimble.

Sonlight has always been--and continues to be--dedicated to serving you on your homeschooling journey. As we've pioneered and championed the literature-based approach to learning, many people have jumped on board... so we built a bigger boat <smile>.

But now it takes longer to make things happen. We're still nowhere near a faceless giant corporation--and we don't want to become that--but we're not exactly a mom and pop shop anymore. That's both good and bad. Bad because things take longer because every decision affects many people. Good because we can serve you and your friends, and their friends, and that family down the street, the missionaries in that country over there...

This has been big year for us. Not just in all the updates and changes we've made to our curriculum. We also released more information earlier than ever. But we learned a lot about how to do that as well. And every year provides new challenges and opportunities. We are so grateful for the opportunity we have to serve you. And we're also grateful for your patience as we learn and grow.

I think we can see similar benefits and disadvantages in homeschooling and educational institutions, mega churches and house gatherings, assembly line cars and handmade custom vehicles, respected electronic brands and the repair shop on the corner, even preparing food for your spouse and a neighborhood picnic.

Thank you for coming along with us on this journey. We're thrilled to be part of your homeschooling adventure.

 ~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

P.S. Does "economies of scale" fascinate you? If so, check out Sonlight's Economics Program. There's much to learn about economic theory and how it applies to our lives!

Yes, we're nerds. But we were having a blast.

...bark, bit, byte, ballroom, burst, boink, bellboy, bell bottoms, bath, blustery, blue...

I know some people play games in groups where they go around a circle with a poem that terminates with an opportunity to enter an adjective. If you can't come up with one in rhythm, you're out: "Schrodinger's cat is a __________ cat." Or, have you ever played Scattergories? Brilliant!

...besmirch, beeswax, bigot, birth, biplane, bisect, beige, banister, benign, buck, black...

Games like these are not just fun. They challenge your recall and creativity. They allow us to bounce off the ideas of another. They also introduce us to words we didn't know before.

...bask, band-aid, brand, burnt, belie, busk, bob, bow, bough, beau, built...

As we played, I realized there was something that bound us together: It was our common love of books.

...bouquet, bank, banquet, bellows, best, bland, blister, bedfellows, botox, bug, bishop...

Reading good literature, I've been told, is one of the most effective ways of improving your vocabulary. And reading is fun, so it's a double win. One of the things I dislike about "educational games" is that the game itself rarely is actually, truly enjoyable. It's just slightly less wearisome than flat out repetition and memorization, so we put up with it. The simple ability to enjoy reveling in creative use of a skill? That I like much better.

...borked, beautiful, bigamy, blasphemy, beneath, betwixt, bend, billfold, bygone, botany, Bishkek...

This morning I watched Why Math Instruction Is Unnecessary (one of today's Other Posts of Note). The conclusion John Bennett reaches sounds familiar: Let's focus students' advanced study on games which develop their mental abilities.

What games and activities do your children spontaneously engage in that reinforce what they have learned?

 ~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

P.S. While writing this up, I was reminded of my post on poetry. Give it a read if you're feeling brave.

...bear, blunt, bake, bodacious, bulwark, boulder, body, bovine, billiard, burka, bunt...

A homeschool mom emailed me recently to ask these questions. Though I don't know the particulars of her very bright daughter, I can share a few tips I've discovered throughout the years.

Sonlight student Joshua N uses an electromagnet he created in Sonlight Science E

Four tips for teaching accelerated learners

1. Use a Curriculum as your Foundation

   If you're of the "unschooling" persuasion, you'll probably disagree with me here, and that's OK. But I firmly believe that you can best help your children by using some sort of curriculum as the foundation of your homeschool.

   My learning in school came in unrelated snippets. One week we studied the pilgrims. Then we moved to ancient China. Then we studied space. I never learned the big-picture of history and how the world works until I pieced it all together on my own and kept on learning as an adult.

   Using a history-based curriculum (like Sonlight) gives your children the framework of knowledge they need. As you move through time you give them a cohesive map of knowledge they will build on their entire lives. As they learn new information, they can "place" that knowledge in the appropriate place in their mental map.

   For example, if your child becomes fascinated with Ancient Egypt, that interest will pay off all the more because they'll be able to place what they learn within the general framework of history. They'll know when Egyptian kingdoms came onto the world scene and how they influenced the cultures around them.

   Without a curriculum, students don't gain this "map" of knowledge. They learn in bits and pieces and only fit it all together if they're lucky (or if mom exhausts herself creating her own program to fit everything together).

   A curriculum keeps you on track and makes sure your children learn the important things they need to. The big-picture doesn't get lost in their detailed curiosity about butterflies or the engineering principles of Egyptian pyramids.

   But here's the catch. The curriculum isn't the ending point. It's a jumping off point. We'll look at that in tip #3.

2. Use a literature-based curriculum as your foundation

   In the past twenty plus years, I've seen Sonlight's literature-based programs work splendidly for learners across the spectrum.

   Why? Because one piece of literature (unlike one textbook) can speak to children at a variety of levels. Little ones can listen in to understand the general ideas and more advanced students can appreciate the nuances of the text and find connections with other concepts they've learned.

   Literature-based curriculum provides the flexibility to speed up and slow down as best suits your family. It naturally leads students into all sorts of self-led learning. As you read Charlotte's Web, you can easily slow down and detour into learning about spiders. As you read Johnny Tremain, you can dive further into the intricacies of the American Revolution.

   Furthermore, as one mom wrote on the Forums, "Great literature is a hallmark of the truly educated mind." I agree. Literature provides the cultural literacy, vocabulary and global awareness children need. Even gifted kids need to learn empathy and develop emotional intelligence to interact with others (which reading can provide). Before they can learn to write they need to learn the rhythm and flow of good writing by hearing good examples. They need to discover the joy of books as a lifelong source of new knowledge.

   Even gifted children aren't born knowing all of this, but literature inherently teaches it.

3. Go broad!

   Do you have a genius in your fold? Enjoy your accelerated freedom and help them explore the world around them. You'll know you're hitting what you need to because of the curriculum you use as your foundation. So enjoy some tangents and enrich that foundation!

   As Deanna in CO wrote on the forums, "Gifted kids are still kids, after all, and the world is an enormous place, with tons of different kinds of things to learn."* If your children fly through their programs, enrich their studies with a broad spectrum of other areas they may never think to explore.

   For example, could you add any of these areas to your children's plate?

   • A foreign language (or several foreign languages)
     • Consider that the educated class of past eras often learned many languages as children and teenagers. I've heard that J. R.R. Tolkien knew at least twelve!
     • Could you add Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, Latin, Biblical Greek, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, sign language … or other languages that could prove useful?
   • Computer programming
   • Electrical engineering
   • Music theory
   • Mechanical engineering (from fixing cars to designing machines)
   • Robotics
   • Creative Writing (Encourage your child to write stories, plays and poetry, or participate in the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program to help your child write her first novel.)
4. Use more than one program per subject
   Is your child flying through math? Deepen and broaden his understanding by using more than one math program at a time.

   I highly recommend Life of Fred for accelerated math students. It approaches math from a different perspective and helps students see the big picture of math. It's a great starting point or a fabulous addition to your current math regimen.

   Enrich your Sonlight Core with extra courses that go deeper into a particular subject. Check out The Teaching Company for lots of courses that examine particular eras or themes of history. (But please use discretion as you decide on courses; The Teaching Company courses are created for secular adult learners.) Your Core will keep you on track with the big-picture movement through history, and your extra courses will broaden your child's appreciation of specific ideas that catch their interest.

I hope these thoughts help as you consider how to homeschool your gifted learner. But I know I only scratched the surface here. Do you have experience teaching accelerated learners? I'd love to hear what you've found helpful. What advice would you give other parents?

Thanks for your input! And stay tuned for more tips coming soon …

Blessings,
Sarita

*I am indebted to Deanna in CO and other parents from the Accelerated Learners forum for many of the specific suggestions in this section.