Hi, I was looking at the Sonlight curriculum and was wondering if anyone was familiar with it or with the newcomer kit.
I have not bought their whole kits yet, I have pieced them together on my own. I do know that the ig is awesome for the right person. I could not seem to stay on their schedule it kept throwing me off and I kept getting the "we are behind" feeling. Now I love their science programs, I have not used their la program and I have heard mixed reviews on this one, now their selection of books for history and read-a-loud are usually really great books, the book of time for your time line is awesome!, also they offer everything you need there is no copying, having to find all your books etc. They use Horizons math for the younger years, which is a great program. It moves fast and is above grade level in ways. We used Horizons K this year and had to stop part of the way through book 2 since it started to just be too much for my little one. The program is great for a lot of families. I love the idea of the program, but it just did not work for us. Now I do pull from their books suggestions and use them for us. The good thing about sonlight is their return policy. If you don't like it you return it within 6 months. Many say that they have one of the best return policies.
I wasn't happy with the price of the cur. we are on a really tight budget and it just doesn't work. some families I know spend 8 or 9 hrs on schoolwork with sonlight and I just cannot imagine that!
We do Sonlight and love it. It is a buffet type program. Most people who do it, do not do everything that is offered. You need to be able to look at it and say, "Ok, this week we will do this and this and drop that and that." Cover what you can and do not stress over the rest. Do what you feel is necessary and good for YOUR kids. I also do not use their curriculum just the way it it laid out for scheduling. It is laid out in 4 day weeks or 5 day weeks... and each page is a week. I initially stressed over getting a Sonlight week to fit in one of my weeks and if we had a field trip or other things I would push the kids to still fit a Sonlight week into one of our weeks. It didn't work. SO, now I use a Sonlight week as a check list. I just slowly work through the curriculum not really caring whether we finish a Sonlight week in a week or in two weeks. The books are awesome, we do get it done... and sometimes faster and sometimes slower then it is prescribed. We still finish it in a calendar year and sometimes that means "lite" school during the summer months. With any curriculum you need to be able to make it yours. I do this with Sonlight. Their spelling lists didn't work for me and I decided that I liked the rest of their LA too much to completely drop it and so I got All About Spelling to add on to what we have, we love it. We did not love Horizons Math... actually I couldn't stand it. So, we do Math U See instead and that works much better for us. Sometimes we do their science, but mainly we unschool science. I can try to answer some of your specific questions, but curriculum choices to me are personal, we have to personally tailor school to our kids and though Sonlight works great for us it doesn't work great for everyone.
I am currently using Sonlight Core 1. We did not buy the Newcomers kit because dd needed Math 2 and LA 2. I love they way it is laid out, it works perfect for us. We are currently on week 20. I know exactly where I am and what we need to do. I am also using Sonlight Science 1 and we really like that too. In Science we move day 4 to the weekend so Daddy can do the experiments with dd. We use Horizons for Math and Phonics (instead of ETC). I love Horizons Math. It works great for dd. She loves having the worksheet and the variety of problem types. ETC is a very good Phonics program but we started with Horizons and decided not to switch. We also use A Reason for Handwritting instead of HWT. I like the 3 lined approach better and it works well for dd. Most days we get the work finished in 2-3 hrs depending on how motivated dd is. On Thursdays durring our co-op season we do both day 4 and day 5 (I omitt most of the optional work those weeks) in one day and it takes maybe 4 or 5 hours (depending on if we do more Math or not). If you have any questions about it just ask away!
I used for first grade and it did not work for us. The books were above my child's comprehension. It took us much longer to finish the read alouds and if you use everything included it can be very overwhelming. You have to be the type of person that doesn't mind not doing what is stated in the IG or skipping entire sections to keep up. For the huge price I felt i needed to do everything to "get my money's worth". But it was very stressful for both of us. That being said I think their book selections are excellent and we now just copy their book lists and get them from the library. We loved the horizon math though ..
We use Sonlight. We have not ever bought the Newcomer kit because we opt to use other items for LA instruction, etc. My oldest has completed Core 3 and Core 4. The 2 younger are currently using Core 1+2....albeit it slowly because we've added some Drive Thru History DVDs, etc. We have all learned alot from our SL purchases. The younger 2 will use the Core 3 and Core 4 that we own over the next few years. My oldest is currently using something else for middle school world history but we may re-visit SL for her in high school.
