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If you would like to listen to an audio version of this article, check out the two links directly below:
27 Reasons Not to Buy Sonlight - Part 1
27 Reasons Not to Buy Sonlight - Part 2
Sonlight® is not for everyone. We have never pretended it could be.
If a Sonlight® Core program is inappropriate for you, we believe you will be far happier to discover that now, while you are still learning about Sonlight, rather than later, after you have become frustrated and wasted time trying to use a program that’s not “you.”
The following 27 reasons why you may not want to purchase Sonlight® are based on feedback we have received from former customers for whom Sonlight was not a good fit.
So … why might you not want to buy a Sonlight® Core package?
1. You want a program that requires little reading.
If you decide to use Sonlight Curriculum, you and your children will be required to read. A lot. Sonlight is thoroughly grounded in literature and reading. If you don’t like to read, or you find it difficult to read out loud, or your children hate to read—you may prefer another program.
On an encouraging note: many parents have purchased Sonlight in the hope that the program’s great books will “hook” the interests of their reluctant readers. We are delighted to report that, in the vast majority of cases, the strategy has worked! Students are hooked, and they can’t put the books down.
2. You can’t afford to invest the time with your children.
We expect your children to do a fair amount of work on their own, but in Sonlight’s areas of unique strength—History and Literature—we expect you to be involved. We choose our books with the idea that they will spark discussions between you and your children—deep discussions of values and perspectives, the kinds of discussions most parents would die for if they only knew how to engage their kids.
We’ve done as much of the preparatory work for you as possible so you can invest almost every minute of your time in direct interaction with your children. But, if you intend to do a complete curriculum in one year, Sonlight® requires a time commitment somewhere in the range of what we suggest at the start of each Core year’s curriculum description.
You can reduce the amount of time you need to invest each day by skipping assignments and, if you have more than one child relatively close to one another, by combining students into one program. Many parents also stretch their programs over a year and a half or even two years. Your children will receive a remarkable education “even” at that pace. Sonlight’s programs are plenty rich enough.
But you still need to invest the time. If you leave your kids to their own devices, both you and they are likely to find yourselves disappointed, frustrated, and possibly even angry at the results. Especially at the elementary and middle school levels, the materials are not intended for self-teaching.
3. You want lots of hands-on activities inside your curriculum.
While Sonlight® includes plenty of effective learning activities in the early elementary Math programs, and while our Science programs are loaded with experiments, you won’t find us encouraging you to make raccoon-skin caps, create playground-sized maps of the world, or cook Pilgrim-era Thanksgiving meals.
We believe the educational value of most such activities isn’t worth the hours of preparatory work required of parents.
We found that, as we read Sonlight books to our kids, the stories filled their minds with such strong mental images and challenging ideas that our kids were able to decide for themselves what activities they wanted to engage in ... and the kids prepared for such activities on their own very easily. Have you ever watched an 8-year-old spontaneously transform a cardboard box into something unique? Or a huge sheet of blank paper and some paint into a masterpiece? In our experience, when great books inspire children, those children can follow the whims of their creativity all on their own ... without the step by step direction of Mom and Dad.
Families who have used Sonlight® over the years bolster our opinions about the need for parent-directed activities. Most children seem to master the material Sonlight® covers without regularly-scheduled, hands-on activities.
But you know your kids’ needs best. Maybe they really do need hands-on activities to master the material you’re reading about. Or maybe you simply enjoy creative projects and feel energized when you do them. Based on your available time and unique make-up, we believe an activities-based approach can be a legitimate option.
In either case, please come visit www.sonlight-forums.com, where you’ll find fellow Sonlighters who will suggest activities to meet your requirements. You’ll find moms just like you who engage their kids with lots of hands-on activities and use Sonlight Curriculum with joy and success!
But if you want hands-on activities defined for you within the curriculum itself, purchase something else, because Sonlight won’t meet your needs on its own.
4. You might consider Sonlight® books emotionally troubling.
As Sarita carefully selects the books in Sonlight Curriculum, one of her criteria has to do with the books’ ability to move her and make a lasting impact. As a result, you are likely to find more than a few titles that bring tears to your eyes.
If you enjoy books that are “poignant,” “heartwarming,” “powerful,” “deep,” or “thought-provoking,” then you and your children are likely to love Sonlight. The intense emotions—what some call a “wonderful heartache”—will make these books not only memorable but strengthen your children’s broader learning experience.
We’ve learned, however, that some people find such books unpleasant. They view any books that make them cry as “heavy,” “sad,” “dark,” even “gut-wrenching,” They find the experience of reading such works downright painful.
If you or your children fit in this latter group, then we encourage you not to buy Sonlight®. Plenty of curricula avoid emotional issues and/or avoid touching emotional nerves. Sonlight is definitely not one of them!
5. You want a program that demands minimal study time, so your kids can focus on extracurricular interests.
Or...
6. You feel you have to do EVERYTHING an instructor’s guide suggests.
We want you as a parent to have a wealth of quality teaching options to choose from in the course of your school year. We want to help you in every way we can to maximize your children’s potential to learn and grow. That’s why Sonlight’s Instructor Guides make lots of suggestions about reading assignments, reports students might write, subjects they might study, languages they might learn, skills they might want to develop, and so forth.
But just because we suggest an activity doesn’t mean you must, or even should, do it.
Compare Sonlight’s Instructor’s Guide to an elaborate Thanksgiving feast set on the table. Not only would it be rude, but it would be downright foolish for you to attempt to eat the whole thing. And it may not be smart, even, to sample some of everything. You can however, choose what you like best from a table loaded with lots of delicious dishes prepared and ready for the taking.
With a somewhat similar thought in mind, most parents pick and choose among the assignments Sonlight Curriculum suggests. Almost everyone does all the readings, but many will ignore the comprehension questions.
… Or they will skip science in the early years.
… Or (an extremely common practice) they will slow their pace and use a Sonlight® program over the course of a year and a half or two years.
… Or (this is what we—John and Sarita—did as we were teaching our children!) they will read some of the Read-Alouds at night, before bedtime, or during the summer when the kids are bored.
So we encourage you to enjoy the “feast.” But take it easy! “Eat” what makes sense and leave the rest. If you tend to think “I saw it in the Instructor’s Guide; therefore I must do it,” then we need to warn you: it is quite likely our options may frustrate you, and another curriculum may be a better fit. If you will filter the ideas we provide into what fits your family, we think you will find the suggestions useful.
7. You want to teach history in a chronological four-year cycle. Or you want to teach all your children exactly the same material, despite their age span.
Advocates of the four-year cycle approach cite two primary reasons for their enthusiasm about the idea.
They say it “makes sense.” History should be taught in chronological order, and it takes about four years to adequately cover history from creation to the modern era.
They say that a four-year cycle permits them to teach all of their children—no matter the age range—one subject at the same time: Ancient History one year, Middle Ages another, and so forth.
Our view: Yes, students need to understand the flow of history. Yes, they need to grasp the “time line.” But they also need to understand where things happened, among whom they occurred, and why. And in order to explain these points, sometimes you need a separate narrative that may be “out of order” chronologically.
Is that bad? No!
Think about the last movie or book you enjoyed that featured a flashback scene to fill you in on preceding events. Rather than creating confusion, this “jump” to another time probably helped you understand something important about the characters and the scenes to come.
Similarly, we find we enhance students’ understanding when we remind them of parallels and contrasts with peoples, cultures, and events of other times and other places.
In our opinion, chronology is important, but not paramount! It does not trump geography and culture.
With respect to the second idea … of teaching all of your children at the same time using the same materials: We agree with the concept and practice, as long as the kids are within a few years of one another. Indeed, that is exactly what we encourage you to do when you use Sonlight: combine teaching your kids in as few Core programs as reasonable at any one time.
However, this idea begins to break down if you employ this approach regardless of your children’s span of ages. Laying aside concern about basic comprehension, maturity levels pose a problem. If the age gap between your oldest and your youngest is too great, you will either cheat the older or overwhelm the younger. In our way of thinking, an in-depth study of 20th century history–that emphasizes WWII and the murderous regimes of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Nazi Germany (not to mention the horrors of the atomic bomb)—is just too much for your 1st and 2nd graders but a critical aspect of history in which your older students must engage. Realistically, we believe the study of history, at some level, must be tailored more closely to the development of your students than a “catch all” approach can achieve.
Furthermore, you must consider the problem of academic requirements. For example, most states require high school students to complete a course in civil government. If you pursue such focused studies with your high schooler, what parallel program will you pursue with your fifth grader at the same time?
Thus, if your children are spaced more than about three years apart, we don’t believe you can properly teach all of them the same subjects at the same time. Sometimes it’s necessary to use separate programs in order to give your children the best education.
In sum: We understand the appeal of chronology and group teaching and believe those methods can be utilized effectively—within limits. We have a reason for presenting history the way we do, but if you feel you must teach all your children together, despite their ages, or you think references to other times and places within history would confuse your children, then we encourage you to try another curriculum that follows a four-year chronological cycle.
8. You want a program that focuses on the “Great Books” that are part of the “Great Conversation.”
Sonlight Curriculum is committed to introducing students to a large number of the most influential “Great Books” and authors of the Western intellectual tradition. We also desire to help our students enter into the “Great Conversation” of Western culture.
However, we want to introduce students to literature at a point when they are ready to interact with the material on a deep level and pursue those books and ideas with interest and passion. Therefore, we typically wait until slightly later than the typical “classical education” timeline to introduce certain works. We find it more appropriate to deal with some issues in college or the adult years rather than during high school. When they reach a certain age, students who love to learn will study—on their own—the “Great Books” they desire to read. We parent-teachers don’t need to (and, in fact, ought not to) push our students into reading such works before they are ready. Such an approach will not only overwhelm them, but leave them with a bad taste in their mouths: “Once I’m done with school, I will be so glad! I won’t have to read any more of these boring books!”
As one mom wrote, “The Great Books will be drudgery to anyone not yet taken captive by the Great Questions, the Big Ideas. If you are not yet given to pondering the meaning of life, it is doubtful you are ready to read the ponderings of others [on these subjects]!”
Instead of cramming in as many classics as one can possibly schedule in a year, we offer a variety of engaging works designed to give students a taste of great literature and leave them hungry for more. We intersperse more challenging books with light-hearted ones to give children a balance to their selection and avoid burn-out. Our goal is to raise children who love to read and love to learn. We prefer to pursue this aim than check off every box when it comes to the “Great Books.” If you want a curriculum that—without exception—requires students to read every title deemed “Great,” you won’t find your fit with Sonlight.
9. You want quizzes, tests, and grading services.
Because most homeschool parents are in daily, personal, one-on-one contact with their students (unlike the relationships between most classroom teachers and their students), we expect that–in general–homeschool parents can effectively evaluate the progress of their students through means other than quizzes, tests and gradable worksheets.
When you’re reading a book, for example, you’ll discuss it with your children. We provide comprehension questions to aid your discussion and spark ideas. As you converse, your children’s understanding of the material should become quite clear. If your children are able to answer your questions, you will know exactly how much they understand—or how much they fail to understand.
We do offer a simple selection of testing aids to help you gauge you children’s progress, though you’ll find them much less formal (and less frequent) than a classroom school. We are convinced our methods for evaluating their development will give you all the feedback you need–without an over-abundance of daily quizzes and grading sheets—plus give your children all the stimulation and test-taking practice they require. You won’t find a formal testing focus with Sonlight.
10. You want your children to study exactly as they would in a classroom.
We seek to offer a thorough education—more thorough, in fact, than one can find in almost any classroom school. Our primary aim is to create within our students a genuine, inquisitive spirit and love for learning, rather than to teach them everything their peers may learn in another curriculum or different school environment.
We choose this method with the expectation that our students will continue to learn—because they want to learn—even after they complete their formal “school” educations. As life-long learners, they will pick up later whatever information they happen to miss during their school years.
Far better, we believe, to lack a few facts and love to learn than to have all the “right” information and hate the learning process!
11. You want a curriculum that teaches all subjects as absolute truth without question or doubt.
Though we base our curriculum on a solid, mission-minded, evangelical Christian interpretation of Scripture, we recognize most history is far too open to conflicting interpretations to be presented in absolute terms.
We cannot possibly know “for sure” all the factors in every event in history. We refuse to speak as if we can. We do seek to give a fair representation of “both sides” of any issues which we ourselves are in some doubt. We take this approach in all subjects. We do this because we want to be fair when other perspectives merit discussion; we want students not just to know what they believe, but why; and we want to encourage them to think critically and act with gracious humility toward others with different views. We want to make sure students differentiate Scripture from men’s ideas about events in our world and treat each accordingly. If such an approach bothers you, you may feel more comfortable with another program.
12. You don’t want your curriculum to address false, foolish, or questionable ideas.
Parents who object to Sonlight Curriculum on these grounds usually either 1) believe it wrong to mention or teach about other people’s (false) beliefs and practices; 2) can’t invest the time to help their children process these ideas; or 3) lack the confidence to discern themselves what is true and false or provide their children with an appropriate reply. Whatever their motivation, they feel uncomfortable with Sonlight’s commitment to present all sides of a case.
We believe that, in the supportive environment of their parents’ home, with their parents’ help, children should be made aware of false beliefs, foolish ideas, and questionable arguments. Parents have a unique responsibility not only to point out these ideas to their children, but to carefully explain why the ideas are false, foolish or questionable. Moreover, parents must teach their children how to respond to these ideas, beliefs, and arguments.
Sonlight Curriculum Instructor’s Guides are designed to bolster your confidence and help you safely walk your children through the world of ideas with a steadfast faith. Still, if it is your desire to avoid controversial material, or if you lack the time or confidence to help your children understand these issues with our help, then Sonlight will be a poor choice for you.
13. You want to focus on American history and culture almost all 13 years of school.
The standard curriculum devotes 10 of 13 years—almost 80% of its time—to the study of American history and culture (the history of a nation and culture that has existed for less than 10% of recorded history).
Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd. recognizes that Western culture—and American society in particular, within the last 150 years—has enriched the world in many ways. We want to highlight its unique contributions.
However, we do not wish to ignore the other 95% of the world’s population or civilizations with thousands of years of recorded history. Because we believe God cares about all people, regardless of their racial or cultural backgrounds, Sonlight seeks to emphasize the unique contributions, strengths, weaknesses, and needs—both physical and spiritual—of the other major peoples and cultures on Earth.
We begin our early elementary studies outside the United States so that when we look at American history and culture, students will understand more fully how and why American culture is different.
In all, Sonlight devotes four solid years to U.S. history and culture. Due to their rich content and engrossing presentation, those four years of education are equivalent to at least eight in almost any other program.
Beyond the United States, Sonlight devotes eight years to the rest of the world, including not only Western history and culture, but those of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and indigenous peoples all around the world.
Therefore, students get a broad view of the thousands of years of history and culture worldwide, in addition to the U.S. story. If you prefer to have an American history focus every year, Sonlight may not be the curriculum for you.
14. You want to guard your children from anything “offensive”—at all costs.
Sonlight has no interest in promoting unbiblical practices or ungodly behavior. However, we do believe a book should be judged on the value it offers, rather than the negative attributes it omits.
As you delve into some of the greatest literature ever written, you will probably come across some words, ideas, or characters that will offend you.
We hope that when our customers encounter truly "bad" characters in literature, they can help their children examine good and evil and gain wisdom. We envision the literary experience as a joint parent-child effort that sparks quality discussion of values and truth; it’s a process of evaluating both the good and bad of the world in order to gain the treasure contained in an excellent work.
Imagine eating a nutritious fish, grilled to perfection and filled with all the flavors you love.The nutritional value and flavor of the meat make it worth your while to "work around the bones."
Please consider: 1) If you want your older students never to read books with occasional profanities; 2) if you require that your children read literature with only wholesome characters; or 3) if it doesn’t matter to you whether a work is a “literary masterpiece” or a cultural essential, if it has no overt Christian themes, you’d rather not have it in your home—you may have difficulty with some of the classic literature we offer.
If, normally, you find yourself able to read around an occasional use of offensive language in an otherwise outstanding work, you should do just fine with Sonlight— at least through the Core 200 program. (Core 300 and 400 include a few raw works that we have noted in the listings.)
On the other hand, if occasional bad language or a wicked character (or other pesky "bones") will overwhelm your sense of propriety, you should look elsewhere. [For a more detailed discussion of this issue, please see the article "Why Sonlight Uses Certain Books Some Homeschoolers Won’t Touch".]
15. You want to shield your children from the world and the world’s system, focus solely on Bible themes, and avoid broader social issues.
Sonlight Curriculum seeks to prepare students to become ambassadors for Christ in and to the world, not hermits for Christ removed from the world (John 17:14-19). We want to train students to hold onto truth as they interact with culture, and act as bold and informed witnesses in every area of life. While we don’t encourage you to "throw your children to the wolves," we believe direct, biblical engagement with the world is a key aspect of maturity in a believer. Children learn these lessons in small steps at a time, not in one huge leap when they leave home as adults.
In keeping with such scriptures as Matthew 6:10 and 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Sonlight seeks to prepare students to take the offensive against the strategies, tactics, and activities of the wicked one—not only at home, but in the broad social, moral, political, economic and legal issues of the day. Instead of only dealing with "safe" subjects of Bible and family, we challenge students to learn about and approach all aspects of society with a biblical worldview as courageous, wise and discerning leaders who challenge the world. If you are nervous about your children engaging the world at this level, Sonlight may not be a good fit for you.
16. You want a program that focuses on something other than academics and scholarship.
Sonlight is highly academic because we believe an academic, liberal arts education is valuable preparation for almost any occupation. Leaders throughout history, from Lincoln to Leonardo Da Vinci, benefited from an education that mixed various disciplines to give a big picture view of the world. Training in the liberal arts helps students "think outside the box" and discover solutions to problems they would not otherwise likely come up with if they had narrower, skills-focused training.
Though we believe our programs have strong practical applications, it doesn't much matter what we believe. If you are unable to justify in your mind—much less defend to your son or daughter—an academic, liberal arts education, we urge you to find a program that aims at a goal closer to your own than Sonlight does.
17. You want a curriculum to praise the Christian character and roots of the United States.
Sonlight Curriculum commits to train children with a missionary heart for all of God's world and to embrace all peoples with realistic discernment—European Americans no more and no less than others.We are as fascinated as the next person with those aspects of American history that are uniquely Christian. We are also happy to point them out. But we seek to go far beyond this.
For example, we seek to show how things look(ed) from the perspective of the peoples who were displaced by the European colonists. And we discuss issues of racism not only as it may have impacted the American Civil War but in other contexts as well. Over the years, we've found this desire for a balanced perspective sets us apart from a large segment of the homeschool curriculum community.
If this kind of commitment to a broad view of American history disturbs you, perhaps another company's products will better meet your needs.
18. You seek a program with a cultural background closer to your own than we are able to offer.
If you are looking for a broad-based, internationally-focused curriculum that is deeply committed to looking at issues from "all sides," and if you can overlook some of our (usually unwitting) white American provincialisms, we expect we can provide the kind of educational program you are looking for. Our programs have been used successfully by customers of many ethnic groups, with a variety of world views, living in over 150 different countries around the world.
We think it is only fair to make absolutely clear: we who developed Sonlight are evangelical Christian middle-class white Americans. We were born and raised in the United States. We are the children of first- and second-generation European immigrants. Ultimately, we seek to be as sensitive as possible to the perspectives and values of others and we would love to serve you. But if you are looking for a program that will focus more completely upon your particular cultural group, that will speak more readily as an "insider" of that group, then you will probably want to find another supplier.
19. You want a non-religious program.
Ninety percent or more of our books are non-religious. But the Sonlight Instructor's Guides are not religiously neutral! They are written from an unabashedly biblical, evangelical Christian base.
We are not strident in our Christian views, but we are not hesitant, either, to suggest where and how we think the Bible, as God's Word, may speak to the issues of today. We have written our Instructor's Guides from that perspective. By merely eliminating the Bible portion of our Core programs you will not eliminate all references to God, the Bible, or Christianity. Though families who do not consider themselves "religious" or "evangelical" use the program successfully, if you are bothered by a curriculum influenced by the Bible, Sonlight may not be the right fit for you.
20. You want your curriculum to promote the unique doctrines and practices of your particular Christian denomination.
Please understand: Sonlight makes no claims to represent or advocate the views and practices of any specific denomination. Our primary commitment is to the preaching of Jesus' "evangel"—His Good News—among all the peoples of the Earth.
If you desire or feel you need a curriculum that will promote a more narrowly defined theology, Sonlight, on its own, will not meet your requirements. Indeed, its broad vision, at points, may irritate you.
Please consider carefully whether you can work comfortably with materials that, upon occasion, speak to and serve people who believe differently than you do on matters that may be very close to your heart.
21. You want a "Bible-centered" curriculum.
While we believe that academics are and ought to be based on and intentionally related to Scripture, and while we seek to act on that belief, we do not believe that everything we read must be accompanied by a reference to or quotation from Scripture.
We believe there are times and places where a certain passage of Scripture will provide great insight or new understanding concerning a subject. In such circumstances, we will quote or reference the appropriate Scripture.
But if you are looking for a program that somehow manages to display at least one Scripture reference per paragraph, page, chapter, etc., Sonlight Curriculum will not satisfy your requirements.
22. You want a curriculum whose primary focus is on "character development."
We agree with those who say that good character is of paramount importance. Knowledge without good character truly is perverse. The question is: how should we go about teaching our children and training them to behave with righteous and godly character?
Sonlight is founded on the belief that people develop good character primarily by observing the behavior of those around them whom they respect; by asking questions of people they trust; and by purposefully thinking through the issues, values, and life circumstances that can cloud judgment and cause well-meaning and godly people to go astray.
We can also form character by meditating on the moral dilemmas and ethical (or unethical) behavior of believable characters in realistic stories.
In order to provide plenty of fodder for meditation, Sonlight Curriculum includes books whose protagonists confront what we believe are realistic ethical and moral dilemmas, the kinds of problems whose solutions are sometimes morally uncertain and difficult to discern.
Why would we choose such books?
Because we want to spark discussions between you and your kids, discussions in which you and your children can talk about what you believe, what you're thinking...and why. We design our curriculum to aid natural character development, in the spirit of the old adage that "character is caught, not taught."
We are convinced that the presence of true conflict and struggle in the books we carry makes their moral or character-oriented "lessons" not only believable, but memorable as well.
Some homeschoolers, however, disagree with this methodology. Partially out of concern for their time and partially out of fear that they may not get the "right" answers, some parents want the moral lessons to be unambiguous. They don't want to have to sort out what is the right thing to do. They want the stories themselves to teach their children.
Others, out of a need to feel they have "done" character training want the moral and character qualities their children should learn to be named and they want to be able to check them off on a schedule sheet.
If you are looking for a program that meets "check-it-off-the-list," "done for you" criteria when it comes to character training, you need to know that, as written, Sonlight won't meet your requirements. If you like the general outline of Sonlight Curriculum, you'll have to supplement it with a character development program that is closer to your liking.
23. You enjoy creating schedules and doing prep work.
Sonlight Curriculum aims to help those who want to spend as little time as possible creating schedules or doing prep work. We want to give you the chance to spend less time planning so you can spend more time interacting with your children. We know previewing books, making a school year's worth of lesson plans and discussion questions, creating age-appropriate assignments and ensuring you’ve covered all the important topics for the year is a massive job. That’s what our Instructor’s Guides are all about—preparing the way for you to just enjoy learning with your kids!
If you would rather do for yourself the work we have done; if doing such work leaves you feeling energized rather than worn down, then we encourage you to fulfill your heart's desire: develop your own curriculum and don't buy our Instructor's Guides.
Of course, if the books we offer can help you teach your children, we are delighted to make them available to you.
24. You feel Sonlight is too expensive.
Four hundred, five hundred, even a thousand dollars for a curriculum is a stretch for a lot of families. But once they get beyond the sticker shock, many of these same families explore their options and begin to realize what a good deal Sonlight really is.
When you consider that the majority of Sonlight's materials are reusable for any children in your family, and that you can enjoy your investment in quality literature not just for a school year , but for the life of your family's library, your value grows. And Sonlight provides time payments so you can pay for your curriculum a little at a time over a period of months. One mom wrote to tell us she realized that, spread out over a period of months, her Sonlight curriculum was actually cheaper than going to McDonalds once a week with her family—with much longer-lasting benefit!
But we realize finances are a very personal concern, and want you to have all the facts. In order to help you think through just exactly how much the various options will cost, please go to sonlight.com/toomuch. We take a detailed look not only at Sonlight, but at all the alternatives: "built from scratch"; discounters and second-hand sources; other homeschool curriculum providers; state-sponsored homeschool curricula; public classroom schools; and private classroom schools.
You literally can't "afford" to miss this indepth article.
25. You prefer an "unschooling" approach to home education.
Sonlight Curriculum is structured and, from the third year on, is highly structured. As we mentioned in Reason 6, that doesn't mean you are under obligation to the structure. Our Instructor's Guides are designed so you can readily modify the program.
If you are willing to modify the program to meet your needs, you should do just fine with Sonlight. Indeed, some spontaneous souls have told us they appreciated having the foundational structure our program offers: it gave them more confidence to launch out on their own beyond what our program suggested. They have woven their free-form program around the Sonlight base.
Still, if you are committed to a completely spontaneous and unstructured approach, or an educational philosophy that urges you to solely follow your child's heart interests, you may find you have to "buck [our] system" more than you'd prefer in order to maintain your sense of spontaneity.
You will want to proceed with caution when you consider the possibility of purchasing a pre-selected program.
26. You want to touch and feel your curricular materials before you buy.
This is a concern for some because we sell primarily through our catalog and the web, but we have some suggestions to help you move past this barrier—suggestions that have been so effective, we're not even sure whether we should continue to list this as a potential reason NOT to buy!
We had trouble deciding whether this was a legitimate obstacle because with Sonlight's Love to Learn/Love to Teach Guarantee, you get to not only touch and feel your Sonlight materials, but actually use the materials in the comfort of your home for 18 weeks with our promise of a full refund if you feel the need to return them. If you find yourself unhappy with your program in any way within one year of your purchase and after using up to a full 18 weeks worth of the materials, please return your curriculum (dog-eared pages, used workbooks and all).
You may also attend a homeschool convention near where you live, and a veteran Sonlight mom will likely be present to show you her materials and answer your questions about Sonlight curriculum. Please check the conventions section of our web site for information.
So, even if you can't attend a convention or a support group to "touch and feel" before you buy, we make it easy to try Sonlight out with your children in your context with a promise of your money back in full. If you think Sonlight might work for you, why not give one of our Core programs a try?
With 18 weeks worth of material to try with no risk, how can you possibly go wrong?
27. You want to do business with a company that changes less than ours does year to year.
We've learned a lot over the years we've been in business. One of the things we've learned is that change is necessary, even unavoidable. Indeed, many changes are beneficial.
Let me suggest a few reasons why we view things this way...
1) We (all of us at Sonlight) realize we'll never get to the point where we "know it all." As we live and learn, we'll inevitably discover some truth or some technique that profoundly changes the way we think and do things. Because we're committed to providing you with the best homeschooling products possible, we try always to incorporate into our curriculum the discoveries we make.
2) The world changes constantly. What might have been "best" back in 1990, when we began, may no longer be "best" today. The most practiced, most efficient ways of doing business today may be extinct tomorrow. And so we seek constantly to upgrade and update our products, systems and services...for your benefit.
3) We listen to the feedback our clients give us and implement many of the great ideas we receive...because we believe they will benefit you.
We believe our constant change is a sign of vitality and forward momentum toward a better tomorrow. We invite you: Please. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
But whatever program you choose, from whatever supplier: We wish you God's blessing in finding the best curriculum to meet your needs!
If you enjoyed this article, check out 27 Reasons Families Love Sonlight.
