My son and I have been looking through the sonlight catalog for weeks now. Well he has informed me that we need to switch to it. He is VERY interested in the way it is set up based on all the books. Now this is coming from my child who used to not like to read. Now that he has gotten his new reading glasses he is in his books more often. So, we are going to sell most of my eclectic collection of items and go with sonlight. Well for the most part. We will be keeping our current grammar program, but for the rest we are switching! I am so excited!!! Just thought I would share my excitement with all of you!
My oldest loves Sonlight. We don't follow the IG religiously because we're stretching it out and adding our own VA history stuff and extra books that she wants but overall, she has loved every SL book that she's read so far. We only use it for History and Reading...not LA, Bible, or Science.
I love literature based curriculum. We used Sonlight for core 1 and 2. I then heard about Winter Promise and it adds crafts and projects to the weekly schedule. I'm loving it! When my ds gets older we may switch back to Sonlight but since Noah is so young he likes the projects with WP more than he liked Sonlight.
We're also using WP after trying and not liking Sonlight, but mine's not an avid reader... yet. So. Whatcha sellin? :lol:
What core are you going to do? We've gone through Core 6. My 7th grader took this year off from Sonlight and I don't know if he will return or not this coming year. I am thinking about Core 200, but just not sure. Thi syear, my youngest used a core the older two had already done.
Well we have decided on core 6. He really wants to work through the SOTW series and this is where they start it. Our first thought was to do 100 since we were going to do A history of US this next year, but we decided to wait. What did you think of core 6? Also what did you think of core 5? We were also looking into that one, but he decided he really wanted to dig into the sotw books instead.
Overall, it was a good core. I thought SOTW was really too young for the core, but it made for easy reading when it was assigned. My ds was getting tired of the Sonlihgt format - he was enjoying less and less of the assigned reading. While they were good books, we decided to take a break this year. Core 5 was fabulous. Much different than the other cores and well-worth the time. Alot of information in there on different religions. We had tons of discussions and really dug in deep. I will say that it is a core an older student gets much more out of. I did it with a young 5th grader and a 7th grader and the 7th grader got way more out of it. I think it could easily be used up through 9th grade. Just in case you want to revisit the idea of Core 5 after you do 6 & 7. If your ds chose the core then he should really enjoy it!
As a side note - I think glasses were the best thing you could have done. When my ds was 5, we were learning to read, and on the right page he seemed to get stuck on words that he already had easily read. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. DH said to take him to eye doctor and we did. Turns out he has a problem with the eye muscles of his right eye - and since we caught it early, we were able to almost fully treat it and he now has 20/30 vision in right eye - and LOVES reading. Compare this to his cousin who has the SAME condition - as with most kids in ps, it was not diagnosed until 3rd grade, which is a problem becuase most of the eye muscles are "set" by then. She is legally blind in that eye as a result, has to wear glasses all the time, and has to wear an eyepatch on the "good eye" throughout the day to strengthen the "bad eye" - poor thing! I ALWAYS recommend to those who think their 5 or 6 yr old has a reading problem to get their eyes checked FIRST - it may actually be an eye problem. Kudos to you for getting glasses - there is a good chance you will see his reading take off - it did for my ds! Oh - and we used the Sonlight Eastern Civ program this year and had a great time with it! I did end up looking on some art websites for craft ideas to integrate as well, but the literature was great.
Honestly, I wish that all kids were tested at 3. My middle daughter had problems when she started reading at a 1st grade level (in K) because the print got smaller. Took her to the eye doc and got glasses. However, evidentally, my doc at the time wasn't a patcher and her eyes couldn't take her whole needed prescription so she got new lenses every 6 months. Fast forward 2 years to our move to VA and a new eye doc that can't believe that we were never told the benefits of patching...and now its almost too late. She left it up to us as to whether we wanted to try it. DD said she did (keep in mind, without it, she would never be legal to drive if something happened to the good eye). Well, it hasn't been easy because we needed to patch a min of 6 hours per day...but 9 month later, she's now seeing 20/20 corrected for the first time EVER in her life. Her bad eye is still worse than the good eye but so much closer than it was before. If far-sightedness runs in your family, have your kids checked by age 3. If they are developing a lazy eye (due to underdevelopment), patching just a few hours per day at 3, is SO MUCH easier than patching at 8 for 6-8 hours every day. Stepping off the soapbox now:lol:
