How Sonlight can Enhance your Homeschool Method

Sonlight has been an amazing literature based curriculum for our family. However, as you will read, we don’t follow Sonlight to the tee. We use it to work with our homeschooling lifestyle. We have found that it provides a wonderful framework for our morning time, encourages keeping a Book of Centuries, goes beautifully with notebooking & narration, and even adds enrichment to CC memory work. Sonlight can and will enhance your homeschool method of choice.

How we Found Sonlight

We found Sonlight during our first year of homeschooling when our daughter was in 1st grade. We started our homeschool journey with Five in a Row (FIAR). We LOVED FIAR, but I just didn’t feel like I had time to plan it. At the time I felt like I needed to go above and beyond the manuals and plan activities/projects to go with every book. Why? Oh, why did I do this to myself? I have since learned that just reading the books and using the FIAR manuals is plenty. Our family has gained a lot from Rowing books at various times throughout our homeschooling. But back to Sonlight…

Over the years, we have purchased Sonlight HBL pre-k through HBL H. These were formerly called Cores but are now History/Bible/Literature (HBL). Learning the acronyms and lingo of homeschooling just adds a layer of confusion, doesn’t it?

Total disclosure- we do not always follow the guides. And that’s OK!

With our daughter, I found we were reading too fast in one section but not quick enough in another… it just didn’t match the rhythm of our homeschool. However, they do seem to be more in line with how my son and I have been reading so I may try to follow the schedule with him next year. He is ok with reading 1-2 chapters a day from multiple books. I think he savors the books more and actually looks forward to them. For example, when referring to the HBL B book George Muller he will say things like, “Let’s see what George is doing today.” (Love the George Muller biography- it has been a favorite of both of my kids.) But with our daughter, we could never stay on track with the guide. We were always way ahead with our read-alouds but behind with the other reading, it just didn’t flow for us. Regardless, every year we have purchased that big, beautiful box of Sonlight books for each child’s level and simply read through the pile. Love it!

Also, at the beginning of our homeschool adventure, my husband was responsible for homeschooling our daughter 1 day a week (I worked part-time as a nurse doing 4 days on 10 days off). I cannot tell you the number of times I would return home to find that they had spent the entire day reading a book. He would get sucked into the story right along with our daughter so they would just keep on reading. What amazing memories they have from these times!

So, while there certainly have been seasons where following the guide was very helpful (especially that first year of homeschooling), there have also been seasons when we just read through the books. That’s one of the beauties of homeschooling- you can adjust it to fit your life.

Why we love Sonlight

The Book Choices

I 100% credit Sonlight book choices for my children’s love of books and reading. Every single book has held their attention. My daughter has read and re-read many of her Sonlight books. If that isn’t a positive endorsement, I don’t know what is.

I tell everyone that even if you don’t want to use the Sonlight guides GET THEIR BOOKS. Sonlight has now made this easier than ever by offering book collections that you can simply pop into your cart. The other option is just print the book list and then use your library, used bookstores, and Amazon to get the books.

The Schedule

I actually do love the schedule. The layout works for my brain, but as I mentioned above it has not always worked for our lifestyle. While we have not always used it, the times that we have, it has been a comfort. I have found that Sonlight works beautifully with many different styles of homeschooling. The schedule divides your day into what Sonlight calls “Couch Time” and “Table Time.” Of course, you may choose to divide it up differently but doing it this way is very similar to creating a Morning Time routine.

Sonlight can be a positive addition to any homeschooling style

Morning Time

Sonlight is a great way to easily create a Morning Time basket. Each HBL contains Bible reading, scripture memory work, a CD with the scripture set to music, poetry, a history book or books used as the “spine” for that historical period, plus the literature which often includes a broad range of books from missionary stories, to artist biographies, to just fun books!

For us, reading through our Sonlight books creates our Morning Time and then we do our other work such as math, phonics, and handwriting. You can choose to follow the Sonlight schedule for your Morning Time or just read through the books. Whatever you want to call it- Morning Time, Couch Time- it works!

Notebooking & Narrations

Sonlight lends itself beautifully to notebooking and narrations. Simply get into the habit of having your children narrate back to you during your reading time. If they are not writers yet, you can scribe for your student and then they can add a picture to the written narration or simply have them copy a sentence. The Sonlight guide provides prompts for mapwork and creating a Book of Centuries by keeping a timeline of various historical events. My kids loved adding in photos of pets and family members and this helped them to see how a timeline works.

Sonlight and Classical Conversations

When our daughter was in second grade we joined a Classical Conversations (CC) group. Sonlight and CC are an amazing combination. CC provides those memory pegs, while Sonlight enriches the facts. We don’t worry about lining up every book to each CC history sentence- CC moves way too fast for that to work. We just read through our Sonlight books throughout the year. You will be amazed at all the connections your kids will make- all on their own.

Our daughter is now in seventh grade and is part of CC Challenge A. Despite the workload involved she still reads her Sonlight books for fun.

For the Foundations years, CC provides memory work, community, public speaking, art/music and science with friends. At home we simply review the memory work (5-10 minutes per day tops) and read through our Sonlight books. Easy peasy!

For more details on how we combined them read my post on Sonlight and Classical Conversations.

Textbook style curriculum

Want to continue using your textbook or workbook style curriculum but would like to add some literature and read-alouds? No need to spend time creating book lists, just get the Sonlight level appropriate for your kids’ ages and start reading!