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Discover Sonlight
Sonlight is not your average homeschool education. Sonlight parents and students love their homeschool experience.
They joyfully celebrate #sonlightboxday when the materials arrive at the start of the school year, and joyfully choose their favorite books at the end of the school year.
At Sonlight, we provide tools that have helped thousands of parents just like you raise children who love to learn, love God and have the academic preparation to do whatever Christ calls them to do.
Sonlight is a complete, literature-based, homeschool Christian curriculum offering every subject from preschool through high school. We do not attempt to replicate public education at home though. More than thirty years ago, we pioneered an entirely different approach to learning—literature-based learning. Sonlight’s comprehensive, literature-based curriculum uses real books to deliver an engaging and complete education, far richer than textbooks and rote memorization. Sonlighters enjoy a liberal arts education that produces critical thinkers who are ambassadors for Christ with a heart for the world.
A Sonlight education is built around great stories and the best materials available today. Your complete curriculum comes with thorough lesson plans and notes, so that you can enjoy successful homeschooling.
Sonlight's literature-based curriculum brings learning to life!
We believe that YOU are the one best-suited to teach your children. As a Sonlight homeschool family, you’ll grow close, talking and wondering, laughing and learning together. As you and your children walk together on this journey, we’ll give you the tools to prepare them for their future. Watch the video featuring real Sonlight customers to see if our Love to Learn, Love to Teach™ curriculum fits your family.
Sonlight Curriculum builds on five big ideas:
Through the years, our product has grown and matured, but at its core it remains the same: a collection of the best-of-the-best educational materials, conveniently assembled together to help you teach your children.
For more than 30 years, we’ve been helping children love to learn and helping parents and children connect—to each other and to God. Discover Sonlight’s foundation and how we connect families through our curriculum with the five big ideas below.
You enjoy so many rewards when you choose Sonlight and prepare for your children's future.
- Literature-based
Literature-based learning is an educational philosophy based on children's natural curiosity and love for stories. Your brain processes a story in the same way it processes a real-life experience. This makes learning via literature almost effortless. Sonlight is the industry's leading literature-based homeschool curriculum. Your homeschool year will thrive with this proven, highly effective approach.
Sonlight’s literature-rich curriculum makes history come alive.” - The P Family, Bethel, AK
- Christ-centered
Sonlight’s Christ-centered curriculum connects your learning to the bigger Biblical picture, opening the door for faith discussions that build deep, lifelong roots. Sonlight will help you raise children who honor Christ in word and deed, as you discover God's love for all people.
Every lesson from every story is helping mold my children into the persons God designed them to be.” - The E Family, Newark, DE
- Family-oriented
You know your children best, you love them most, and you are equipped to tailor their education to their unique needs. Sonlight helps you get the most from your time together as a family. We give you engaging activities, great books to read and discuss, and opportunities to develop open communication. Sonlight helps your children learn to trust you as a source of wisdom and direction. This method builds stronger family relationships as you read, discuss, and discover together... Browse the catalog and you'll see pictures and stories from many families who tell us they've formed closer family bonds through homeschooling with Sonlight.
Sonlight brings our family together.” - The M Family, North Fairfield, OH
- Global outlook
Sonlight spends more time than the average curriculum on the world outside the United States. We believe that in our increasingly connected world, children must understand that God does not value one people group over another. We want them to understand the contributions of different cultures and learn to look at situations from others' perspectives. We want children to learn about tough—even controversial—issues while they're in the safe and loving environment of their home. We want them to stand firm in their faith and engage in graceful dialogue with people of other faiths, backgrounds, and cultures.
A huge goal within our global focus is that our children gain a heart for God's work throughout the world. Hence, you'll find many true, inspiring missionary stories in our curriculum. Your children will have opportunities to learn about and pray for people groups in every corner of the globe.
Globally minded children with hearts for the world around them are able to approach complex issues with a balanced, compassionate perspective. Sonlight prepares your children to share the love of Christ with everyone around them, and equips you to raise ambassadors for Christ.
I’ve stuck with Sonlight because of the compassionate world outlook it has helped develop in my kids. Sonlight doesn’t just teach, it inspires.” The L Family, Hattiesburg, MS
- Academic Excellence
Learning with Sonlight is fun, but you don't have to sacrifice great academics to enjoy homeschooling! We equip parents to give their children a robust education that prepares them to excel in whatever God calls them to, be it college, the military, the mission field, the workforce and/or family life. Students who have grown up with Sonlight tend to wow adults with their understanding of history, literature, the Bible, science and more.
Over the years, Sonlight students who apply for our college scholarship program have scored consistently higher than the national average on college entrance exams. We know test scores don't paint the whole picture. But are these Sonlight students well-prepared for college and life? You bet.
My daughter has homeschooled using Sonlight since 1st grade. We just got her SAT scores. 1250! with her percentile landing in the 95 percentile in the Language section. I am so grateful for the years she spent reading real literature. I have no doubt that it enabled her to score in the 98 percentile for decoding vocabulary in context. We are grateful for all the careful curation of the Sonlight curriculum! God bless you as you seek to equip His people with a well balanced, multi-perspective curriculum!" - The A Family Sonlighters (public school teacher turned super reluctant homeschool mom)
These five values combine to form one truly dynamic and academic curriculum. With Sonlight, you will give your kids an extraordinary education. You will challenge them without overwhelming them. With Sonlight's help, you will discuss real-life issues — like politics, moral relativism, evolution, and creation — with your kids and help them gain sure footing about what they believe. You will help them understand the big picture of history and the world around them. You will give them firm foundations in all the main academic subjects. And most importantly, with Sonlight's help, you will give them a lifelong love of learning.
After high school, your students will be ready to excel in college or the workforce. Sonlight graduates are now engineers, missionaries, musicians, doctors, pastors, elected officials, farmers, entrepreneurs, homeschool parents, and more!
What's included?
Sonlight provides everything you need for your homeschool, including:
- Complete, ready-to-use lesson plans and daily schedules
- All of your books and materials
- Maps and timelines
- Materials, experiments, and hands-on activities
- Activity sheets and answer keys
- Discussion questions, notes, and teaching tips
- Scripture readings
- Teaching scripts and evaluative rubrics
- and more!
History / Bible / Literature Programs form the center
History / Bible / Literature Programs are the centerpiece of your Sonlight experience. Each program weaves together a year's worth of History and Geography, Bible and Literature.
Each program is crafted around gripping books because books – quality books – can distill the wisdom of an entire life into the span of a few pages. A great story-based history book or series (such as The Story of the World) serves as the "spine" for each program. You gradually read this book throughout the whole year; it's your chronological guide, moving you logically through history. As you progress, you also read lots of biographies, historical fiction, and novels that dig into the historical/cultural topics you're studying.
Since quality literature reaches kids of various ages, you can use one Sonlight program with multiple children. We don't assign a specific grade level to each program for this very reason. Your 3rd and 5th graders could both get great educations from Sonlight E this year!
Sonlight provides you with everything you need to homeschool with excellence.
Start with a History / Bible / Literature program and add additional subjects (language arts, math, science, electives and more). Or, opt for an All-Subjects Package and get everything you need in one convenient package. You can also pick any individual items or subjects you need.
You can teach multiple children with one History / Bible / Literature or All-Subjects Package. Simply add on skill specific subjects for each child. Learn more about teaching multiple students here.
With Sonlight, your students will take three sweeps through history as you homeschool from preschool through high school.
For the first time in our homeschool journey, I feel like my children are getting a truly quality education.” - The F Family, Grand Island, NE
Take three sweeps through history
With Sonlight, you journey on a solid progression of learning from preschool to high school graduation. Check out the Scope and Sequence of our History / Bible / Literature, Language Arts and Science programs.
You'll take three sweeps through history during your Sonlight journey. Each year is specifically created for children in the target age ranges for that program. All the material—from the content we chose to cover (and the more gritty aspects of History we chose to skip over until later grades), to the Readers and Read-Alouds, to the suggested hands-on activities--it's all at just the level for your children.
The first years (Preschool through level A) are an introduction to learning and the world. In Sonlight B-E, take your first fascinating sweep through World and American History. In Sonlight F, take a year to explore the Eastern Hemisphere and help your children (ages 10-13) learn to research.
Then dive in and take another sweep at a deeper level through World and American History in Sonlight G-100. Finally, you do a modified sweep through select aspects of history with Sonlight 200-500 (including 2,000 years of Church History, 20th Century World History, Civics/American Government, and World History and Worldview Studies).
What will I do each day?
Each day, simply open your Instructor's Guide and see what's on the schedule. No more lesson planning—just enjoy your homeschool! You will:
- Read that day's Scripture together and work on the memory verse for the week.
- Read the assigned History and Read-Aloud pages to your children (until your students reach high school) and talk about what you read using the suggested Discussion Questions.
- Let your children read their assigned Readers, either to themselves or to you. Discuss what they read with the notes and questions provided.
- Do any suggested map activities.
- In the younger years, enjoy some optional hands-on activities.
- In language arts, explore grammar, spelling, and writing, scheduled each day. These assignments often use passages from the Readers your children are already enjoying.
- For science, simply follow the lesson schedule in your Science Instructor's Guide. Read with your children and do simple hands-on experiments together. In the lower levels, your children complete Activity Sheets to reinforce learning.
- Do a Math lesson.
- Practice Handwriting as needed.
- Then there's plenty of time for enrichment and electives: foreign language, sports, music, art, additional reading … whatever you like!
Many homeschool families finish school by early afternoon and have the rest of the day for free play, art, sports, and other activities.
Love to Learn, Love to TeachTM Guaranteed.
In the end, Sonlight's secret comes down to this: we believe children respond more positively to great literature than to textbooks. And we believe that parents can be their children's best teachers.
We give you all of the tools you need to succeed. Guaranteed.
With Sonlight, kids love to learn and parents love to teach. That is a beautiful thing indeed. Read more about our money-back, Love to Learn Guarantee.™