The wonderful world of Sonlight Curriculum

This will be the first of MANY posts about Sonlight and how much we love using this curriculum. I had someone ask me the other day if I worked for them...no, we just honestly love their curriculum that much. So much that I could honestly talk about it all day, every day! When we first began homeschooling, although it was something I had thought about for quite awhile, the actual moment we pulled our oldest out of school was kind of a sudden decision and I thought "oh no, what do we do now?" Then, and even the whole first year after that was a struggle in finding a curriculum that was a good fit. We went through MANY different ones. Some we liked a little, some had him in tears, some had us both in tears! Sonlight was one that I kept looking at and looking at but couldn't decide. It was scary to think about taking that plunge to a whole different type of learning. Charlotte Mason based, literature based, living books, no textbooks, no grades, no tests....what on earth did all this mean? After MUCH research I began to see it was something that I thought might really work for us. Another factor holding me back was cost - it is definitely one of the higher priced curriculums out there. Once I looked more into exactly what all you were getting, I understood why. Even knowing what is included still doesn't prepare you for the awesomeness of box day - it's SO exciting opening those huge boxes of books! There is SO much there. Every single thing you need. To me the convenience of having everything come to you in one box is well beyond the price.

This year for first grade we are using Sonlight's core A - Intro to the World: Cultures -  which includes the awesome instructors guide, history, geography, bible, and read-alouds. You choose the level of readers and language arts you want to use, we are using grade 1 readers and language arts. For language arts at this level there are some optional resources scheduled into the instructors guide and we get them to use as well, they include handwriting without tears 1, and explode the code books 1, 2, and 3. These are great little phonics workbooks and he really enjoys them. For Math we use Horizons 1 which is also sold through sonlight which is great, because we can order it all together. Then for Science we have been using Sonlight Science A - Biology, Botany, and Physics. It has been a great first year of science for him, it includes a little of everything and the books are all so great. One thing I LOVE about their science are the experiment supply kits. I never imagined that seriously, EVERYTHING you need is included! I am talking down to masking tape, tin foil, a toothpick even! It is so nice to open up that little box and find everything you need each week. 

1st grade box day! 

For fifth grade this year we have been using Sonlight's core D - Intro to American History (year 1 of 2). It includes history, geography, bible, read-alouds, readers and language arts. We add in the optional sequential spelling and wordly wise. For math we use teaching textbooks (another big love of ours) which we are able to order through sonlight as well. This year for science he chose to do Sonlight science E - electricity, magnetism, and astronomy. He is actually finishing the last day of it tomorrow (early - he loves science and flew through it!) and I will be doing a more in depth review of it soon. He has really enjoyed it. A lot of it has about been over mom's head with the electricity experiments and things like that. Very neat stuff. 

Box day for the big boy at the beginning of 5th grade :) 

So as you can tell, we really love this curriculum. The kids ask to do extra reading, they love doing their work, especially everything about the core. I don't see us switching curriculums anytime in the near future, or ever unless something big happens. I have a good feeling this is more than likely what we will use from here on out. We love the way you get to learn. It is so fun and interesting. In school I always though I hated history. Mainly because we were taught from a boring textbook and were taught basically to answer a test. Reading these living books about history I have learned as much if not more than the kids have! It is also so Christ-centered. We love the bible portions and discussions. We love how they use the timeline and it helps the kids to see that these events in the bible were taking place at the same time things we read about in history were taking place as well, instead of looking at them as two separate things. My oldest that use to literally cry if you tried to make him read a book is weeks ahead of schedule with his readers because he just wants to read more and more. 
The sonlight website is full of tons of great information, and you can order a free catalog as well. I will be doing a lot more reviews about the different cores, more in depth about each of them. If you ever decide to order anything please think about using my rewards ID code! If you enter it when you make an account you get $5 off your first order over $50 and I get points as well! My rewards ID code is :  BC20342519