Sonlight Core E/4 {2012 Edition}

Two years ago we made a big curriculum change for our family. Last year we enjoyed using Winter Promise which is known, by many, as a boxed curriculum. I use the term loosely, so please don’t flog me with how it may not quite fit that term. Besides, that’s not really the point of what I’m about to share with you!

The point is, that this year we made a switch to Sonlight. This was a pretty simple switch for us as Sonlight and Winter Promise can be fairly similar. In fact, I find myself explaining a bit too often their similarities and differences, which I’ll be glad to do here in a few minutes. In the mean time let me explain all the nitty gritty about the curriculum.

We chose to switch to Sonlight this year for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one being that the book selections for this part of US History were just what I wanted. This wasn’t a light choice but an easy switch. The plan is to stick with Sonlight from here on out for our children. Of course, nothing is written in stone so we’ll take it one year at a time.

In the mean time, you might want to grab yourself a cup of coffee, iced tea, bottle of water, or whatever your drink of choice is. This could be a slightly long-winded review…

How I use Sonlight:

• Normally, I’m a “just as it’s written” kinda girl. That’s one big reason I’ve enjoyed using a pre-planned curriculum the past year and a half, but… (And, there’s always a but, right?) Moving to Sonlight meant that this year we wouldn’t have preplanned hands on activities.
• Can I be honest with you for a moment? This excited me. I enjoy quilting, scrapbooking, sewing, and trying out different crafts. As an adult I know when a mess is made I have to clean it up. My kids on the other hand? We make some crazy fun stuff, but the clean-up can be another story. So, at first I planned to use our curriculum as written with no extras.
• My sweet boys didn’t agree, they wanted to do the rest of the awesome Homeschool In The Wood {HSITW} cds. That meant three more time periods that we’d need to do this year to match our studies. So much for cutting the crafts! It’s okay though, because when my kids get excited about something, so do I.

• So, I use this Sonlight almost as laid out! I use the Bible schedule exactly as it’s written. Although, this year Sonlight added student Bible reading and parent Bible reading. Some of it is meant to be read only by the student {New Testament} and some by the adult to the child {Old Testament}.
• I love this, because it brings back sweet memories of gathering around the kitchen table when I was homeschooled. We’d read a Proverb a day and took turns picking a book of the Bible that we’d all read. This was just a little inspiration to get me moving in that direction. This year, however, I’m just reading aloud to the children. Next year we might work in the student reading on their own accompanied by discussion.
• In addition to this, I’ve added in the HSITW CDs. These were fairly easy to schedule in simply matching up the lessons on the CDs with the lessons in The Landmark History book – which is the spine for Core E {formerly known as Core 4}.
• Now, something to keep in mind here, I’m using Sonlight Core E 2012 edition. These are a bit different then the former editions. I’ll get to the differences fairly soon but before I do let me finish explaining how I use this curriculum.

• The 2012 Sonlight Cores Language Arts (LA) is built right to the core plan. You no long purchase language arts separately. I’m choosing not to use the Sonlight LA, for no other reason than I all ready had things planned for the year. I felt it best to stick with those choices for now. This means I schedule our own LA as well.
• The reading schedule is followed as written but because both of my children are doing this core together {our last year all together which is very bittersweet} I read all the books aloud to them. We also select other books for them to read on their own. This is a personal choice. Many families choose to have the children read the books themselves even when multiple children are using this core. I’ve also chosen to add in a few non-fiction books as they apply to our studies.
• Sonlight also has lots of notes, timeline info, maps and comprehension questions as part of the core as well. We use these as scheduled and written. My boys love checking out the places we read about on maps, so much so that if I don’t show them anything on the map they check it for themselves.

What I love:

• So there’s precious little for me not to love about this. I recently commented to some other Sonlight mammas that I love that all the books I want to read to my children are already scheduled out for me. That is seriously one of my biggest loves about this curriculum.

• I love the new map and how easy it is to read and locate what we’re looking for. I love colour, so that’s probably half of why I love it just so very much. Even my quick ability to store it in my notebook, which I’ll explain a little bit more in a few minutes.
• I love the comprehension questions. Now, I know these would be extremely beneficial to someone who doesn’t read all the books aloud to their children as I do, but sometimes there’s more to the questions than did you pay attention? Sometimes there are no right or wrong answers, it’s more of a what’s your opinion on this topic and why? I like that, because it allows all of us to pitch in our opinions without fear of upsetting anyone. It also makes for some great conversations!
• I love the scheduling page. If you know me, you know my Type A personality loves things in neat lines, well planned out and beautifully lined up. That’s exactly what this schedule is. It has everything lined up for me and small icons to remind me to: check the Notes, have the children add a timeline figure to their timeline, or to check our map for the location we read about.

• I love the notes. Seriously, I do. It’s fun to read through the Bible notes and see things I might have missed sharing with the kids. I love the notes on various things mentioned in the books we read that might help shed light on a small snippet of information we read.
• I love that the Sonlight company is very easy to communicate with, even from way over in Australia. That’s a biggie for me, because sometimes it’s hard for me to touch base with some companies considering time differences.
• This curriculum has incredibly fast shipping times. That’s so amazing for someone living overseas, & better yet despite living in what my post office classifies as country the package was delivered to my front door!

What I don’t love:

• Okay, so one of the biggest downers for me was that I had to wait a considerable length of time for my 2012 Core. I chose to update because the changes, for me, were worth it. However, the changes were made with US school years in mind. That caused a little chaos and frustration for me as I had to wait for its release, its delayed release and eventually its arrival.
• Shipping is extremely expensive for me. Now, as you probably noticed in my loves it does arrive very quickly which is nice, but goodness the shipping price is wild. I was a little shocked when I tried to order the timeline pieces I’d forgotten and the charge for shipping was more than the timeline pieces.

• The Language Arts being in the core. Now, I’m honestly torn on this so this could have gone either way. In all fairness it probably deserves an “undetermined” type category. I’m putting it here though because it doubled the size of my core, the new worksheets in the core aren’t as nice as the worksheets in the LA Cores that were on their own. These are two columns instead of one which makes the font and images a bit small. This is especially true for a student who can’t read smaller print.
• The SIZE of this core. Seriously people, it’s huge. The older and other cores I own/ed were of decent size where I could bind them with spiral binding. It was nice and easy to have it all bound up with a spiral binding and in one location. This wasn’t happening with this new core. My spiral binding just wasn’t going to be big enough unless I pulled some things out. However, even with that we’re talking huge!

Bottom Line

We absolutely love this curriculum. I love that it’s so easy to do a little more or a little less depending on how our week is going. I love that my kids are loving the wonderful book selections that we are using. I love that it’s preplanned for me. And I love that my children are learning so much!

A Few Extras For you:

Some Differences in The New Cores

• Now if you want all the nitty gritty you can easily hop over to the Sonlight website and check out their digital catalog. You could even go check out all the lovely free samples they have up for you to view, or email them and request the three week samples. However, I’ll give you a few quick rundowns:
• Language Arts is now officially part of all cores. You don’t need/get to purchase it separately. It doesn’t matter if you won’t use it, it’s included anyway.
• Bible is a little more beefed up. If you’ve used an older IG you’ll probably say, “Oh this is familiar.” Because it looks very similar to the 2002 Edition I have around here somewhere. There’s Bible reading, like always, but there’s the double readings I mentioned previously as well as devotionals.
• The biggest change is that all the notes, timeline info and questions are all right behind each week’s schedule. No more flipping to the back of the core wondering where on earth the info for this week is! I love this so much. Seriously. It’s so simple and easy to use – so much more from the core this way.
• Maps. Instead of several black and white maps, there’s now one colored map that is like having two pieces of US-sized paper side by side. The map is printed on heavier weight paper and laminated. It’s made pre-folded and pre-hole punched so it can fit right in your binder. Some mammas profess to using it as a bookmark in their IG or Landmark Book. It has four different maps on it all in color and it’s oh so easy to quickly locate exactly what you’re looking for.
• Various books have been dropped, added, or moved around the core.
• The cores are now huge in size! I mentioned this earlier and it’s just so true! The cores are now double in size because of having language arts right inside of them. There’s also extras in there that would normally be with your LA core so that adds to the bulk.  Please note: It is not possible to remove just the Language arts from this core.

Sonlight Or Winter Promise

I mentioned earlier that I often find myself explaining the difference between these two curricula. I’m going to presume that if you’ve made it this far through you might be curious about the differences so here’s a quick rundown:

Winterpromise:

• Winter Promise {WP} is a literature based history curriculum. It uses many non-fiction books {remember those non-fiction books I add?} and a few historical fiction books. WP is fully planned for you and includes a few extras like websites, notebooking projects and crafts.
• WP does not include LA as a standard inclusion to their Cores. While Bible is scheduled in the WP cores it’s very light and in some cores only scheduled for one day a week. WP also schedules geography but in the core we used we found it had very little to do with what we were studying. They do include timeline scheduling too. Their timeline notebook is unique and amazing!
• WP Cores are reasonably slim even if you do add the extras to your binder/binding. The notes are small & fit on the bottom of the schedule page. There are no questions in regards to the reading schedule, but there are some narration prompts included in your core with suggestions on how to use them.
• If your child is inclined to enjoy crafts and activities with their schooling this might be a great fit for you. Even if you, the parent don’t enjoy doing the crafts. The instructions are often written right to the child so they can work on their own, in fact WP includes a schedule specifically for the student! If your student prefers non-fiction over fiction this might also be the right choice for you!

Sonlight

• Sonlight {SL} is a literature based curriculum that uses many historical fiction books and just a few non fiction books. Sonlight is fully planned out for you, but does not include pre-scheduled activities, crafts, or notebooking.
• SL includes LA right inside their cores. Depending on how you feel about their LA this can be a plus, although you do pay more for the cores now because of it. SL also includes Bible in their cores, which is now more in depth. Sonlight has much more in depth notes, both about the books, historical time periods and vocabulary words that are all built right into the programme.
• Sonlight schedules timeline pieces and suggests you use the Book Of Time to keep track of all your little pieces. {We’ve chosen to continue using our amazing WP timeline.} They do include a CD which has links for various hands on things you can try out if you wish but this is not scheduled for you. Sonlight also doesn’t include/provide a student planning page but many mammas just hand their child the Core and turn them lose.
• If your child is an avid reader, but doesn’t enjoy hands on as much, this might be the choice for you. If your student prefers non-fiction over fiction this might also be a great choice for you, it’s very simple to tuck in a few notebooking pages or other crafts for the occasional lesson too. As you know, it’s also pretty easy to schedule in the lovely HSITW CDs as well.

~ To see how Kendra scheduled in those HSITW cds, how she sets up her binder, or just to see what kind of fun she and her family are having In The Land Down Under check them out at the Aussie Pumpkin Patch.