Sonlight believes that the best homeschool curriculum should give children a quality education. But it should go beyond just teaching information. It should instill a love for learning, so children will keep learning, in "school" or out, as long as they live. It should also make learning fun — a welcome adventure — for both parents and kids. As you read through our catalog and website, you will discover many more ideas and values that drive us to produce what we believe is the best quality homeschool curriculum on the market.
Core Overview
History
History is the centerpiece of Sonlight Curriculum. Our history programs give students an overview of key events and people of the past, as well as biographies of people who have made significant contributions to the development of human cultures and the advancement of God's Kingdom. We pay special attention to those whose character qualities and achievements we would like our children to emulate. Biographies make history "come alive," and perhaps more importantly, provide students with heroes whose standards and examples they will desire to follow. We also want students to be fully aware of the villains: those whose paths they will want to avoid.
Starting at Level 3, Sonlight includes Readers and Read-Alouds that coincide with and enhance the books and subject matter in each level's History program. Our customers tell us that this integration creates a memorable, intellectually and emotionally engaging means of learning history "the way it really was." We also integrate the study of geography by featuring interesting activities with maps and time lines starting at Level K. Written assignments in the Language Arts programs will occasionally emphasize themes from the History program as well.
Bible
Besides the Biblically-based comments that you will find throughout every Sonlight program, we include daily Bible readings and weekly Scripture memory assignments in every Core Instructor's Guide. If your family follows our plan, you will cover almost the entire Bible once every five or six years.
Our Level K program features "the whole" Bible in the form of Egermeier's Children's Bible. Students then begin with Genesis in Level 1 and cover most of the Old Testament through subsequent levels. On their journey with Sonlight, students will also cover almost the entire New Testament as well as memorize "bits and pieces" of the Psalms and Proverbs. At every level, students cover one of the Gospels. We believe kids need to "meet Jesus" and "hear from Him" consistently, and there's no better way to accomplish that than time spent in the Gospels.
In addition to Bible reading, we also assign a variety of other books that range in focus from apologetics to Bible study methods to spiritual classics. Our goal is to encourage and challenge students to grow in their faith, while at the same time equipping them to follow Christ wherever He leads and in whatever He calls them to do.
Readers
Sonlight's strategy when it comes to Readers is to think of children learning to read as athletes in training. Instead of pushing themselves to their absolute performance limits during practice, athletes gear down just a fraction and do many repetitions of slightly less taxing exercises. Similarly, we seek to give students lots of practice reading relatively low-stress, quality literature of all types — literature that will engage both their minds and hearts.
Through this method, weak and reluctant readers are likely to become strong and eager readers, because they will feel that reading is a joy and not a chore. They will look forward to their reading times, and through practice, they will grow in their abilities. Students who are already capable and eager readers excel all the more because they comfortably enlarge their base of knowledge.
Read-Alouds
Read-Alouds are quality literary works that you read out loud to your children. One reason books are classified as Read-Alouds rather than as Readers is because they require greater reading skills than students typically have at a particular level. But there are other reasons too. Some Read-Alouds require deeper understanding of life or are emotionally charged, so we figure you ought to be "right there" to help explain things to your children. And then there are Read-Alouds that are simply too good to let your children enjoy by themselves. We know you'd feel cheated if you weren't in on the fun!
In addition to these benefits, Read-Alouds also:
- Expand your children's vocabulary.
- Build listening skills — including the ability to visualize the meaning of spoken words.
- Help your children develop an "ear" for good oral reading. (Having heard quality oral reading done by you, your children will imitate you.)
- Help develop a life-long love of reading.
Memorization/Public Speaking
Public speaking is an integral part of every Core program. In Core K, students memorize Scripture verses to go with every letter of the alphabet. Beginning with Core 1, three public speaking assignments are added to this memorization program at each level. Typically, they range from two Psalms and a poem (in Core 1) to a passage of Scripture, a poem, and a famous speech or document from American history (in Core 4). Assignments in subsequent Cores are similar in form, though they increase in complexity and length at each new level.
Language Arts Overview
Sonlight's Language Arts programs include everything from phonics-based reading instruction in the initial levels to spelling, handwriting, grammar, and creative writing in subsequent levels. Our creative approach to Language Arts offers other benefits you won't find elsewhere:
Language Arts dictation/copy assignments come from the Readers in the same level Core program.
We have reduced your cost to a minimum by incorporating all the Language Arts exercises you need into the Instructor's Guide Activity Sheets (Levels K-7). You are certainly welcome to purchase the optional workbooks we offer (we even schedule them for you!); but you will most likely find the Instructor's Guides sufficient on their own.
We also offer Let's Go Learn, an online reading assessment tool that offers a reasonably-priced, objective evaluation of your children's reading skills.
Reading
Our reading program starts with phonics instruction using limited vocabulary, phonically-correct books, plus a myriad of "natural-language" learning activities based on reading assignments. Students then progress to wonderfully fun Easy Reader books. These books provide students with joyful and delightful reading practice. We show careful concern for students' abilities in the initial levels (K-3) by "going slow." We would rather have children plead with their parents to "Read more!" than to hear them complain, "This is too hard! This is too much!" In later levels, the pace picks up. Students complete a wider range of exercises that, among other things, help them focus on new and unfamiliar vocabulary and phonics rules, based on the literature they read.
Happily, even if your children are somewhat advanced, they should experience great pleasure and no disappointment when asked to read because the books themselves really are good literature. In fact, for those children who are simply more accelerated than their peers, we provide advanced reading programs in Levels K through 3 to meet their needs. With Sonlight, you have the flexibility to move through the initial levels as rapidly or as slowly as your children's abilities and interests dictate.
Grammar
Sonlight offers on-the-job training to meet your children's grammar needs. We also rely on Readers from the Core for our grammar program which makes it more rigorous than other elementary grammar programs. Your children will learn grammar using the "natural learning"-oriented student activity sheets and skill-building lessons we've included in each of the Language Arts Instructor's Guides. And, new this year, we now provide a comprehensive grammar appendix with definitions, examples, and explanatory text for every imaginable aspect of grammar.
"Natural learning" means your children learn by discovery. Your children will make a discovery and we will reinforce it, but they won't find 50 similar "problems" neatly laid out for them to "solve." Instead, your children will see each principle at work in the context of a sentence or paragraph that they have read in one of their Readers. Your children will have to puzzle things through and figure them out. They will often have to use external resources to help. This method may seem slow at first, but when your children finally "get" a principle, they will never forget it! They will understand it thoroughly and be able to apply it in almost any context. They will also have learned how to use many different external resources (dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.) in the process. The same cannot be said for most workbook programs in which students "learn" patterns but are completely overwhelmed when confronted with problems that look a bit different from the patterns they "learned."
Dictation
We also feature the "natural learning" method in our dictation/copy exercises. Just as your children learned to speak by copying your manner of speech, so they will learn to write by copying fine writing. Such famous writers as Jack London and Benjamin Franklin used this very method to learn how to write.
We have found that, in addition to the benefits of imprinting the sentence structure and flow a professional writer might use, these exercises provide easy and interesting practice in correct spelling, grammar, and handwriting. With the dictation/copy assignments all laid out, there is no need for you to spend frantic minutes trying to find an appropriate passage for your child to reproduce. Sonlight has done the work for you.
Writing
Sonlight provides many exercises to help students improve basic writing skills such as forming complete sentences and paragraphs, observing carefully what is happening in the world around them, and writing research papers. Students will learn how to create compelling heroes, develop the setting, create a plot, and add conflict and resolution. Older students will also interact with their reading and do literary analysis to prepare for Advanced Placement (AP) exams, thereby learning to critique their own writing more effectively in the process.
Spelling
In addition to the spelling instruction included in Levels K-2, Sonlight recommends Spelling Power as a Required Resource in level 3-200. In one book, Beverly Adams-Gordon has put together a complete and effective spelling program to take students from early elementary school through college in only 15 focused minutes per day. Mrs. Adams-Gordon's work is based on years of study, practical field testing, and the feedback of thousands of clients. And we, too, can attest: Spelling Power works! Spelling Power provides all the tools you need plus complete instructions. Because Sonlight has done much of the work already, your child will be able to hit the ground running with this strong spelling program.
Handwriting
Beginning in Level K and continuing through subsequent levels, we encourage you to instruct your children in the skills of handwriting through one of three prize-winning programs: the innovative, developmentally-oriented Handwriting Without Tears; the Scripture-oriented, traditional A Reason for Handwriting; or the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting program. For more information about these programs, please see our complete handwriting overview.
Science Overview
Over time, Sonlight students focus on seven primary fields of study: nature/biology, technology, chemistry, physics, the earth, space, and health. Each level includes dozens of hands-on science experiments. To start children in the lower levels off on the right foot, we currently provide InquisiKids: Discover and Do videos for Levels K and 1, with more to come in future years. These exciting and entertaining DVDs show you how to do all of the experiments.
Students approach the same topics in different levels from many different angles. This diverse but repetitive approach means there is no pressure for your children to "get it right" the first time they hear a word or study a topic. For Sonlight students, the first time is merely the first time. There will be future opportunities to master unfamiliar material.
This approach to education — repetitive, but from new and interesting directions — means that you and your children can relax as you go about your studies. Your children have time to "play" with the concepts and expand on the experiments. They can absorb more deeply what they see, hear, and experience. By the time they finish the upper-level materials we offer, we are confident that they will be further advanced in their science education than 99 percent of their peers.
You are not going to find a science program that is more challenging or more pleasurable. And that's the real bottom line, isn't it: to create life-long lovers of learning?
Math Overview
When it comes to math, people hold extremely strong opinions about their favorite programs. Moreover, those really "into" math believe no program — not even one of the "comprehensive" ones — ought to be taught on its own. We agree that children will benefit from a broadly-enriched environment where they see math in different ways and will approach problems from different directions.
Because Sonlight always tries to give customers a choice of the best materials on the market, we have decided to offer several different math programs. We encourage you to consider one of our recommended foundational programs from Singapore, Saxon, Miquon, VideoText Algebra, or — new this year — Horizons, a versatile and easy-to-use comprehensive elementary math curriculum for Levels K through 6. We also urge you to build upon your foundational program with supplemental Singapore Math workbooks, the DIVE Into Math CDs, the Key to... series, and/or the Hands-On Learning Materials. For more information about these programs, please browse our math products.
