Bookshark History 6 Review

For the past year my eldest has been using Bookshark History 6 World History Year 1 of 2. Bookshark is a semi-new company to the homeschooling market. They offer a literature approach to history intermingling lovely books alongside history spines.

If you’re up for it they offer full programmes in which science, math, language arts, and even history are included. We, however, only went with the History 6 Guide. We purchased our literature books from another source which offered free shipping to international customers.

I know that Bookshark is often considered the secular version of Sonlight, so I’m going to clear the air in my review right now and state exactly what Sonlight and Bookshark both state, “They are completely separate companies.” Now, the finer detail is that they may be owned by the same parent company/individuals, but as homeschooling companies go Bookshark is one and Sonlight is another.

I’m also going to go further to clear the air and state that it is true the religion has been removed from Bookshark. There is no Bible scheduled in to the daily plans like there is with Sonlight. Also, some of the more Christian themed books have also been replaced in the Bookshark cores. Again, remember they are entirely different companies and thus it is their choice to do as they please.

As for our family, we chose to switch to Bookshark for a trial year to see how we liked it. It had a few winning points for us which I’ll cover down the road here. Yes, it did mean we had to make minor sacrifices such as the loss of the scheduled Bible readings and so forth, but it’s pretty easy to device, or find for free, your own Bible reading schedule.

How I use Bookshark

Bookshark is pretty open and go if you want to use it exactly as written. We did for most of the year altering very minorly here or there as we added in a book or changed small things. For instance, this particular history guide uses Story Of The World (SOTW) Volumes 1 and 2 as spines. Some times the chapters were spread over a couple of days. We generally read the whole chapter in one day and followed it up with the SOTW tests available from Peacehill Press. They are not scheduled in the Bookshark Curriculum.

My child using this is our boy with vision issues and so many of these books were listened to in an audio format. He’d just listen to a chapter or two depending on what was scheduled in the guide. Then we’d discuss what he’d read, mark the map, and check for timeline figures.  Pretty simple to be honest.

What I love about Bookshark

I love that it’s a flat out four day schedule. Life happens, but more importantly I like not having every day chock full of new learning so that there’s time to catch up on projects, go to events, or choose to get ahead if one wants.

I love the reduced book list. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Sonlight Book choices. We often drop 1 or 2 from each core due to time restraints, occasionally for content issues, but over all we love them. However, my vision impaired child doesn’t have the strength, stamina, or ability to read 42 books in a year. He simply cannot keep the pace and constantly felt frazzled or found himself waiting on me to read things to him. A reduced book list has handed him back the freedom and love of learning. I also find it far easier to add books in then to remove books… I know, but that’s me.

I love, as silly as it sounds, the colourful covers of the instructor guides (IGs). They just look so awesome when they are all bound up. I can say, “Go grab the Blue/Green/Red Bookshark guide for me!” and my child can easily locate it without worrying if he’s seeing things backwards. There’s even a picture on the front to confirm he’s grabbed the right one

I love that the Language Arts is not included in these guides. A couple of years back when we were using the Sonlight curriculum they mingled the LA into their IGs. It seemed really awesome at the time, but it meant a price increase and a lot of things in my manual that I wasn’t going to make use of. I love that this guide is slim and to the point because it only has exactly what I need/want inside.

Digital Guides. Now I’m not going to lie Booksharks digital guides are crude at best. They do not come in PDF format and are nothing more then text on the screen with an image of your daily schedule, but it’s there. If I’m trying to plan things ahead I can pull up that digital guide and I can look it over to see where we are and where we are going. I can verify my book lists and so forth.  {For more detail see dislikes}

I love the book choices. Honestly, we didn’t have any book choices we didn’t enjoy. I think with a reduced book list the chooser has to be even more select in what they pick. This was exactly the case, at least for us, with Bookshark 6. We did add things in, but that didn’t mean we didn’t like what we read.

The customer service. I’ve only had to contact them a couple of times, and both times I was blown away with the response that I got… in a totally good way. I love that, it made me smile then and it makes me smile again just thinking about it!

What I dislike about Bookshark

While I respect that Bookshark doesn’t include Bible, I really do love that Bible reading schedule from my Sonlight Guides. I miss it, but again I own a lot of Sonlight guides and so it’s pretty easy to pick one and use it.. to print one out for free from the web, or or or..

The Digital Guides. Now I know that’s confusing because I also said I love them. Here’s the deal, they are crude. They are not meant to be downloaded and saved, thus the crudeness. Further once you open a digital IG it will expire 18 months from that date. The only way to “get it back” is to repurchase the paper guide. I can understand the why behind this idea, but as I don’t tend to sell off my paper guides it sorta annoys me a lot that I’ll lose access to my digital version.

At no fault to Bookshark or Sonlight, I really end up with ruffled feathers when I hear that Bookshark is the secular version of Sonlight. It’s a true fact and an untrue fact all at the same time.

The shipping. It’s not cheap to have these items shipping to you internationally. If the digital guides were forever and they could be printed out I could have the paper guide sent to my US address and just deal with the digital version, but that doesn’t happen. I’m very aware they have no control over the cost of the shipping, but living overseas it’s a huge factor in what curriculum I can afford.

Bottom Line: Our year with Bookshark was so lovely that we ended up going ahead and purchasing Bookshark 7! We’ll be intermingling the literature portions with our beloved Winter Promise studies. I’d call that a pretty big win around here!

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To see more of how Kendra uses Bookshark 6, especially with a vision challenged child, check out blog.aussiepumpkinpatch.com