Thanks to Sonlight's training, my daughter Rachel is in the habit of integrating everything she learns into the 'big picture' of time and place. Before she can read anything, she looks at her timeline to understand where the story takes place in the context of history. She'll also find the story's location on the map. She loves to peruse The Timeline Book [RR120] from beginning to end. I feel she has a great grasp on the big picture. In her fourth year of Sonlight, Rachel (7) uses Google to locate where Little Pear (from Core B) took place.

The Instructor's Guide helps me to be prepared each day, with lessons that I'm confident of and interested in teaching. The Markable Maps and the History Timeline Figures have given me a big-picture view of world history and geography that I lacked after all my schooling, including college! The characters in the Read-Alouds feel like family and become part of our daily discussion, teaching and training. Hanna (4, P4/5 Multi-Subject), Claire (7, Core B) and Dad observe tadpoles scooped from a neighbor's pond on a rainy day.

"Using Sonlight really helps keep our homeschool days relaxed," says Jana M of Searcy, AR. "The Instructor's Guides are easy to use and allow us to move at our own pace. I especially love the detail in the IGs, allowing me to enrich my son's learning with more detail and biblical references. Visual aids like the Markable Map also make such a difference, since Kage is a visual learner." Here, Kage (6, First Grade ASP) labels the continents on his Markable Map.