Guts and Glory: The American Civil War

My daughter has an understanding of history and geography that goes beyond that of most adults. She loves to read and has a vocabulary much larger than one would expect for her age. A large part of this is because of the great Sonlight books. We love using Sonlight because I am confident that all the planning is done for me. I don't have to scramble to make sure I am covering each time period adequately. Krystal (12) has used Sonlight since first grade. Here, she enjoys a Science G experiment where she identifies powders by testing their reaction to different substances.

Sonlight has ignited my children's passion for learning. In this photo, Ciera was very excited to get her middle school Summer Readers. In their first year with Sonlight, Ciera (12) and siblings Christian (11) Jayson (7) and Anya (5) are studying Cores A and G.  

We have seen the truth of Sonlight's claim that children learn history better when they learn it in the form of a story. Because of Sonlight's Readers and Read-Alouds, our kids have a better grasp and wider knowledge base of historical events at the end of middle school than their parents did at the end of college (due to our [non-Sonlight] textbook-style memorization of facts – facts that were soon forgotten or muddled because they weren't part of a story). Vashti (14) mentioned that some of her friends hate studying history. She said, 'If only they could learn history the Sonlight way, they'd love it like I do!' In her eigthth year of Sonlight, Vashti devours a biography from Core H that brings the Iron Curtain era to life.