Homeschoolers tend to do better than their traditionally-schooled peers on standardized tests. But once when I spoke at a homeschool group, I noticed a subtle, troubling attitude toward academics. I heard comments like: "Oh, we probably won't get to math this year," or "We're just focusing on character training this year. We're really easing off other studies."
I got the sense that, to these moms, anyway, academics just weren't that important.
I know that education is not about test scores. I love that homeschooling lets you tailor your plans to your family. And maybe you do need to take a short break from intense academics to focus on character issues.
And with few exceptions, equipping children for their callings includes the pursuit of excellence in everything, including academics.
Such excellence will mean different things for different children (and may or may not result in great test scores). But the point is that when we challenge our children academically, we are helping them reach their individual, God-given potential.
1. Academic Challenges Build Grit
When we challenge our students academically, they learn how to work hard and overcome challenges. Whatever our children are called to, they will need to know that they can face challenges, work hard and overcome. How will they learn this lesson if we never prod them?
2. Many Careers Require Excellent Academic Performance
Many, many careers require a solid academic education. If God calls our children to college, seminary, the military, vocational trade school, the mission field, or elsewhere, they need to have the academic skills to succeed there.
Challenging our children academically can help uncover their calling.Let's say your child is called to the medical field. Giving him opportunities to excel in math and science can help him discover and then fulfill that calling.
4. An Academic Education Prepares Our Children for Ministry
A solid academic education prepares our students to be salt and light in the world. If our kids are to have an impact in this world, they need to be able to read, think, talk, and pray about the world. They need to be able to relate to people who believe differently than they do, are unfamiliar with the God of the universe, or hail from a culture that is unlike the one they come from.
Homeschooling is often a balancing act. We don't want to focus solely on academics and push our children too hard. But we don't want them to get off too easily either! We want to help them reach their potential—whether that includes getting into technical school, acing the SAT, or pursuing a field they've never even considered.
We don't need to do what many public schools seem to feel they must do and simply focus on getting kids through the system. We want our students to pursue excellence; we want to equip them for God's service.
I imagine you are already doing that. Sonlight is here to help as you persevere in that worthy task! Any ideas of how we can come alongside you even more effectively?
Did you know that some homeschool programs will teach your children for you? You can put your child in front of a computer and then go about your day. Your kids can be homeschooled without your being involved. This is a hands-off homeschool approach.
I'm not anti-technology. I've seen programs work beautifully! So it's not the computer programs themselves that I have issues with. My concern comes when we use these programs to replace what I believe is a parent's role.
Hands-on Homeschooling
I see the allure of hands-off homeschooling. It's so easy and convenient. But while that might be the best option for a few families, it is definitely not the Sonlight approach.
Annie Dillard reminds us of the obvious:
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
So how do you want your family to spend its days?
Parent-intensive Homeschooling
Sonlight is about families learning together. You and your kids will read, talk, and discover together. Your typical Sonlight day includes snuggles with your little ones and real conversation with your older students.
It's not a hands-off homeschool approach. Instead, Sonlight helps you fulfill your God-given duty to guide your children in life. We give you the tools, schedules, and resources you need to be confident as you homeschool and invest in your children's lives.
The result of your central involvement is that your children grow up learning that you are a great source of loving wisdom when they want to talk or need advice.
What a privilege for parents who have cultivated that sort of family atmosphere!
Imagine the Adults You Aim to Raise
When your children become adults, do you want them to engage with you in face-to-face, attentive conversation? Or do you want them to be constantly preoccupied by technology? Will your adult children be able to ignore their gadgets in order to relate with their families – at the dinner table, in social settings, or when guests are visiting?
Your kids will naturally learn to use technology. The question is whether they'll also learn the art of really listening, of conversing, of maintaining thoughtful discussion. Hands-off homeschooling can't teach these skills the same way that family-centered, parent-intensive homeschooling can. If you like the idea being heavily involved in your child's education, the Sonlight approach is for you.
Family-centered homeschooling also builds precious family memories, shared experiences, and bonding times you will treasure for decades to come.
It's easy to worry about learning loss. You've worked so hard to teach a child his math facts ... and now you're afraid he'll forget them.
I want to encourage you that no learning is ever wasted. When children make progress, their brains form new connections and they learn the satisfaction of a job well done. Even if they have to relearn something, they'll probably learn it more quickly and deeply the second time.
But of course, we'd prefer that children retain their hard-won skills.
Summer Slide & Covid Slide
We all know about summer slide. Reading skills are particularly vulnerable to losses over the summer. And with the dramatic changes in education during the 2020-2021 pandemic, we're seeing losses due to school closures and virtual instruction.
The good news: On average, it takes only six books in a summer to prevent summer reading loss.
We can translate summer to any 8-week period and realize that reading is the simplest and fastest way to recover from or avoid learning losses.
Recreational Reading & Reading Aloud
The great thing about extra reading is that there really are no strings attached. If they haven't yet, your children might discover that reading is fun. Once they want to read, they can really take off with books!
I encourage you to let your children read what they'd like this summer and any time of the year (within reason). If a reluctant reader becomes fascinated with Calvin and Hobbes, great. If your daughter wants to read thirty books about horses, let her.
Or supply your kids with particularly good picks. You can trust books from these collections to be uplifting and engrossing:
Free reading can be done solo, or you can read aloud to your children. They still get the same academic benefits when they listen to you read. As a bonus, they get the critical thinking that happens when you discuss together what you read. This quote by Stephen D. Krashen sums it up well:
"...no single literacy activity has a more positive effect on students' comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, spelling, writing ability, and overall academic achievement than free voluntary reading."
Frequent reading correlates with higher scores in vocabulary and spelling. That doesn't surprise me at all. But the study also shows that reading correlates with higher math scores. I love that! So reading great books can even prevent math slide!
[For a fun way to keep kids thinking about math, check out the MathTacular videos. I am biased (my two sons helped create the series) ... but I think they're a blast!]
This study suggests that books are even more important for children's academic success than their parents' financial status or level of education.
So whether or not you have impressive wealth or academic degrees, the simple act of reading to your children gives them a big leg up that can prevent or overcome learning losses such as summer slide or Covid slide.
One researcher suggests that the reason reading boosts scores in seemingly unrelated subjects like math is because the regular act of reading helps children practice taking in and processing new information. I think that makes a lot of sense.
Reading for Pleasure vs. Reading for School
This study specifically looks at reading for pleasure. So does it count when kids read books they "have to read" for school, for example their books in Sonlight curriculum? I think it does. For starters, many students come to thoroughly enjoy their Sonlight reading. They say it doesn't even feel like school.
But really, whether your children love it or sometimes complain, Sonlight students read far more than the vast majority of their traditionally-schooled peers or other homeschoolers.
And I'd say all that reading is worth it. You get to start with those precious times of snuggling with your preschooler on the couch. By the end, you're enjoying deep conversations with your teen about engrossing books that provide new perspectives on the world.
Homeschooling with Sonlight provides you the perfect way to encourage your children from ages 3 to 18 to frequently read quality books. If reading is so important, you might as well help your children love it. You serve them well when you provide worthwhile books that captivate and teach at the same time. But even if you are merely supplementing with afterschool read-alouds, you still get the benefit!
Become a Book Whisperer for Your Children
I found fresh encouragement about reading in The Book Whisperer, the story of a gifted teacher who encourages her classroom students to read far more than most of their peers.
The author, Donalyn Miller, gave many reasons why she is convinced reading is important. She says,
"I know from personal experience that readers lead richer lives ... than those who don't read."
"Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters—the saints and sinners, real or imagined—reading shows you how to be a better human being."
I couldn't agree more.
So during these final days of winter, when the pandemic is starting to lose its grip on our routines, relish the world of books. As you read aloud to your children and as they read independently, be encouraged that you are catapulting your children's education forward in a painless manner.
Reading is truly the simplest way to prevent learning losses and repair any summer slide or Covid slide!
A fellow Sonlighter recently asked about her children's habit of reading ahead of the Sonlight schedule.
“How can I test my children’s comprehension when they are reading ahead of the IG? Do I need to cover each discussion question to be successful?”
The discussion questions in your Instructor’s Guide are there to help you gauge if your children are understanding and retaining what they are reading.
You do not have to ask every question in the guide to help your kids successfully absorb the material. If your children are reading ahead, they are likely ingesting the content and hungry for more. That’s a good sign.
If you feel that going back over weeks of questions could be more stilted and formal than helpful, here are a few sneaky ideas to reach your goal of testing comprehension without its feeling like a test.
Your book discussions can flow more naturally when you try these strategies.
Let Your Child Take the Lead
If you have students who are reading ahead in Readers or History, you can have them check in with you and lead the conversation to tell you about what they are reading. By allowing them to steer the conversation to what was most interesting to them, you may get an even better idea of what they gleaned from the reading.
If you have the discussion questions in front of you for this little meeting, you can use them to help jog your child’s memory on the topic and as a reference to ensure they are retaining and understanding the most vital points. Chatting about the latest read over popcorn is highly recommended to boost the fun level of the book discussion.
Use the Questions as a Bookmark
All of the discussion questions for the Read-Alouds are in one section of the IG, divided by book. Some parents like to pull out the page of questions for just the story they are on and use it as a bookmark. Always handy!
Ask Open-ended Questions
Beyond the questions provided in your Guide, you can quickly get an idea if your child is absorbing material from the readers by asking a few open-ended questions that could work for any book they are reading, whether you’ve read it or not.
You can ask these at dinner or while washing dishes and make it feel like a mini book club discussion. You are drawing out opinions and ideas more than trying to get your kids to give a “right” answer. Here are some examples you could choose from:
Which character did you identify with most?
What do you want to remember most about this story?
What is something that is similar (or different) about the world in the story you are reading and our society today?
How did the time period affect the plot of this story?
What message do you think the author was trying to get across?
What character was the most (fill in the blank with the adjective of your choice … determined, noble, charming, loyal, deceptive, etc.)?
Would this story make a good movie?
What was a difficult choice someone had to make in this story?
Asking, “Tell me more about that,” can help your conversation flow instead of feeling like a drill. I love getting unexpected insight from my kids by simply chewing on some of the Sonlight books together at our leisure. Our goal is not checking the box but creating life-long learners and modeling that for our kids.
Avoid the Issue by Providing More Books
Kids who are hungry to read is a great problem to have! In fact, you are likely to discover that Sonlight turns kids into readers. So satiate the appetite of a voracious reader to reduce too much reading ahead.
Provide additional books to read for fun outside of school assignments. Sonlight Summer Readers and other great books displayed on an easy-to-reach shelf can keep their brains on books and help you keep pace with your discussion questions more easily. Then you can slow your school reading and take time to savor the Sonlight books together. You may find the discussion questions in your IG feel just right when you are hitting closer to your scheduled pace.
It’s important to remember that you are not only transferring information to your kids through books, but bonding together by sharing them. No matter when or how you talk about these great books together, you can make great memories diving into stories side by side.
Find out more about how Sonlight can give your children a hunger to learn. You’ll love having delightful learning planned out for you. Try the first three weeks of any Instructor’s Guide for free.
I could write a love letter to my Sonlight Instructor’s Guide. It’s a treasure trove of thoughtful material, helpful schedules, great discussion questions, and insightful notes. I’ve used Sonlight for over nine years and my kids adore reading and learning. But I have a little confession to make: I don’t always follow everything in the Instructor’s Guide exactly as written.
Instead of feeling guilty that I am wasting my investment unless I check every box, I lean into the freedom that I can use the Instructor’s Guide as a resource and adapt any of it to fit my family’s flow and get us toward our goal of learning and thriving.
If you find you want to tweak some things about your learning experience, here are a few ideas (based on Sonlighter questions) that you can use as a jumping-off point for your own strategy.
Block Schedule
“How can I consolidate our reading rather than jumping from a few pages in one book to a few pages in another?”
One of the beauties of Sonlight (especially as you get into upper levels of D and above) is that you are reading from several different resources at a time and each book serves as a different strand in the whole tapestry. You can read more about Sonlight’s design and the intentional way all those ideas from various books weave together in this post.
However, if you tend to get on a roll and want to keep reading without jumping to as many different books at once, you may want to consider block scheduling subjects in your IG. You could do your History and Geography M/W/F and your Read-Alouds on T/TR. Whatever combination suits you, all the material is still right there for you.
In our family, we save our poetry readings for a once-a-week poetry tea time that has become a favorite tradition! You can do math daily, but map activities once a week, or work through the timeline figures every six weeks and review what you’ve studied. Just check off material as you complete it and don’t worry about which day it happened.
It’s usuallyeasiest if you can do most of one week’s worth of related material together, even if in longer chunks. That way your children’s brains are processing different angles of similar information. You can read more about how different Sonlighters break up their school year in this post.
Adjust Your Pace
“I’m ahead or behind in different parts of the schedule! What should I do?”
If you are “behind” in the schedule, forget any sense of defeat. You are right where you need to be for your child’s learning. This is not a race! Be patient with yourself and stay flexible to keep everyone moving forward and learning at whatever pace makes sense and retains that sense of delight.
Easy Ways to Track Where You Are
Here are a few options when you are at different places in your IG. Put a post-it flag or a clear colored tab where you are in each subject to keep your place as you go. Some parents also use fun magnetic bookmarks or post-its to mark the space that is the scheduled ending for the week and also their actual ending spot in a particular book.
If You Want to “Catch-Up” …
Think outside of the bounds of normal school time. You can catch up on certain subjects in unexpected places in your week when you think outside traditional school hours. Read-Alouds can make perfect bedtime stories or weekend memories. Readers can become rewards for voracious readers. You can move science projects to a quarterly blitz or do lots of experiments over the summer. Your learning can fill all of life and sometimes moving it outside the “normal” school hours makes it even more special.
If You’re Ahead …
If you are way ahead on Read-Alouds, you can read the sequel to a book you’ve enjoyed or watch a movie inspired by the book as a fun follow-up. My kids get passionate comparing book versus movie!
This may sound like Mean Mom territory, but I now hide our Read-Aloud books and pull them out just when it is time to read them so I can wield that “new book excitement” power and channel it directly to school time. This translates into my kids hanging on every word, wondering with me how a book is going to end. My children are then allowed to re-read a school title as many times as they like after we’ve read it together. Providing them plenty of other good material keeps them from zooming ahead to finish all their reading for the year on Week 3.
If you have voracious readers like I do, keep a Free-Read Shelf of additional books that are up for grabs at any time. That keeps your kids reading for fun while you catch up in other subject areas. Sonlight Summer Readers, library books, or books from past Sonlight Cores can work well here.
Make It Your Own
No matter how you use your Sonlight Instructor’s Guide, you can pick and choose from the veritable learning feast laid at your fingertips. The body of background information and thoughtful planning is there for the taking. There are plenty of ways to adapt your schedule and still gain significant value from your Instructor’s Guide. You are the expert on your family and you can unapologetically flex your plan to what fits your family best.
Find the freedom of educating your kids at their own pace with a Sonlight program. No matter when you start your school year, your plans are ready.
If you've homeschooled long, you've probably heard the comment: "Oh, I could never spend that much time with my kids. I don't know how you do it."
Well, here's a secret many parents have discovered:
Homeschooling can actually improve your relationship with your kids, forging a close-knit family.
Homeschooling can help sibling relationships, and it can help your family grow closer.
How could that possibly be? I can't speak for other curriculum companies, but family bonding is a core value in Sonlight. We designed the curriculum approach itself to help families grow more closely tight-knit.
That's just one reason why the heart of Sonlight is reading together. Sure, I did math and science, handwriting and spelling with my children. But when I think about our homeschool, the main image I remember is cuddling on the couch to share a book.
First, time shared reading together can help fill up children's love tanks — a concept from The Five Love Languages. When you share a book as a family, you're automatically satisfying two of the five love languages during school time – quality time and (if you are close together on the couch) physical touch!
2. Builds a Common Family Culture
Reading together also builds a common family culture.
You'll develop inside jokes about characters, and your kids might start referencing your shared stories in play and at the dinner table. You get to express emotion alongside your children, whether you shed a tear at the end of a poignant work, or you all cry because you're laughing so hard at a funny part.
I remember lively discussions about our books during dinner and car trips. We talked about why a character made a particular choice and whether we agreed with it. As my children grew older, we found we enjoyed deep conversations more and more often. What a gift!
4. Allows for Shared Homeschooling
Literature-based homeschooling also gives the non-teaching spouse an easy way to get involved.
My husband John loved being able to participate in our homeschool through reading out loud. It gave him a wonderful opportunity to spend quality time with our kids on a regular basis. Many other dads have discovered the same in their own families.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating about how Sonlight helps families grow close, I wanted to share from others on this very issue.
"Sonlight gives me the opportunity to stop, slow down, and get lots of snuggle and one-on-one time with our blessings!" –Sara G. of New London, OH
"Some of our most cherished family memories are those in which we spend an evening listening to dad read some of our favorite Read-Alouds." –Kathy R. of Farmington, MI
"Homeschooling with Sonlight has allowed my husband and me to form a bond with our children that we were missing out on before." – Devaney L. of Silverhill, AL
"After homeschooling with Sonlight for eight years, my girls are officially best friends." -–Sue E. of La Crosse, WI
Homeschooling with Sonlight let my husband and me build the close-knit family culture we wanted. I will always be grateful for that.
Has homeschooling with literature-based Sonlight helped your family grow closer, too?
The good news is that homeschooling is a delight for children! We've shared before on the blog some of the reasons kids like being homeschooled, but with the influx of new pandemic homeschoolers, we thought it was due time to revisit the perks of homeschooling, told from the viewpoint of the students themselves.
We asked...Do your kids like being homeschooled? If so why? What are their favorite parts of the homeschool life?
Pajamas and Family Time
My 6 year old son said, “Because I get to wear pajamas and be with my baby brother.” My 9 year old said, “I get to lay on the floor and be in my pajamas. I don’t have to wake up super early and my school day is shorter.” As you can see, they love being in pajamas. 🤣 —Jb
Thank you for making me ask my kids this question. Their answers brightened my morning Jack 6 years old, 1st grade (attended kindergarten at a private preschool): “I love that we can cuddle up to read so many books together. That’s definitely the best part.” Lucy, 3: “I like learning counting with you and I like when Bubba (brother) helps with my school too.” —Nathalia W.
My twin boys (8) said: “I like being with you! And I like the Usborne World Book of Animals.” My other said “I like the books.” —Laura-Lee Hubert
More Time for Free Play
My 6yo LOVES the read-alouds. My 9yo loves that he gets to stay in pajamas (or a curriculum-relevant costume he creates 🤣) and that he has lots of time to play with LEGO when we’re done with school for the day. —Courtney W.
These are word for word quotes! Malachi, age 9 grade 4: "Kind of its not as long as public school and we get to be with my family and stay home and we're always done by lunch so we can be playing longer. I only would want to go to public school so I could be with my friends but I guess I get to play with them when they get home so I guess it's cool to stay home." Faith, age 5 grade K: "Yes I like being homeschooled. It's fun and I don't have to go somewhere and I can eat lunch with you and also I love sleeping in." Hannah, age 8 grade 3: "yea I like being homeschooled because I don't have to get up early and I can do school in my pajamas. And because I can stay home with you and don't have to leave you. And I get to do a bunch more things than other kids. Public school also has to do more work than us" —Sabrina M.
Carah, age 12 "All the books!" Gavin, age 9 "If I have to do it, might as well be home where I can go outside more." —Grace A.
My (then 9 year old) boy when asked which he preferred "Homeschool. Because I'm usually done by lunch, and then I can do what I like. Also, I wouldn't be able to take my knife to a real school." 😂 Background info: we live in Papua New Guinea, and bush knives/machetes are seen as garden tools not weapons and children grow up using them from a young age! —Cheree V.
“Being at home and I get to play outside in the snow when I want to,” Jaxson, age 8 “We get to go at our own pace,” Emma, age 11. —Lindsey M.
More Freedom in Learning
My older kids like to be able to negotiate assignments, for example, "Can I write about this instead of that? Can I give it to you Saturday instead of Thursday?" —Jen M. P.
16 yo -"Yes, I love homeschooling. I can work at my own pace. Also, where else can I study Elvis for school?" (She's doing 20th century history, and for the 50's her decade project is on rock and roll. So she's been watching Elvis videos, along with other 50's singers and bands.). 14 yo - "Sure, I like it. I'm done really early and can study stuff I like." 12 yo - "Yes. Because it's not really school." (She's doing Core F and loves all the projects and videos we get to do. Also does Math-U-See math and Sonlight Language Arts and Apologia science. Really, she's never done anything else for school and somehow she still thinks this isn't "real" school. I guess it isn't like what her swim friends talk about.) 10 yo - "Yes. Except the writing. The cooking is the best." (He's my little chef. Entered his first cooking competition just before he turned 9 with his own chili recipe. So he's loving finding recipes from the countries in Core F and creating those dishes.) —Jannette M. I.
Luna age 11 “Yes I love homeschooling I can do it at my own pace.” —Kerri S.
My daughter is 16 years old and in 11th grade. We started homeschooling two years ago after a rough first year of high school. What she loves the most is the individual attention I can give her which makes her school day much shorter because we aren’t working around 32 other kids in a classroom. She loves starting later and finishing earlier. And she finally has learned to enjoy reading rather than being intimidated by it and loathing it. She also loves switching up the order we do things in based on how her vision is that day and what she can see (as she is blind, and her vision will fluctuate throughout the day.) Finally, she loves the flexibly homeschool gives us to travel and do school at the same time. —Tammie H.
Lauren (10) says, "I can do as much work as I want in one day, and if I'm sick, I can take the complete day off. And stuff like that." Brooke (12) says, "Everything. I would never want to go to public school. I like that I get to plan my own schedule, and some days I can do as much as I want and get ahead, so that I can take a day off. That you get to be my teacher, and I don't have to talk to people I don't know, or have teachers I don't like." 😂 —Amy R.
"I can listen in on [my older sister's] lessons--and you can't do that in a regular school." - Breeze, 11yo (Core F) "I like planning out my own schedule and choosing what I get to study." - Raine, 13yo (Core H) —Rheea H.
Home Is More Comfortable
My high school junior just took the PSAT today at our local high school. I asked him if he wished he went to school there. In a nutshell, he said "No!" because the chairs are so uncomfortable. 🤣 He also said he knows they don't get the same history and civics education that he is getting at home with SL. —Ann S. K.
"I guess it's not having to call the teacher ma'am or sir or Mr. or Mrs." - Annika, age 7 (2nd grade) —Sharon R. W.
7 year old girl, second grade, says she loves the freedom of homeschooling. She is a fidget bug and can wiggle, move all she wants too, take breaks when she needs too, play outside when others kids are in big school and we can play in the snow and do snow sculptures for art and play in the rain and study things she loves to learn about. She can take more time to do things if she needs too and can play outside and do class outside or at the beach or in the woods or anywhere. School can be over when she gets her work done and she can eat snacks when she wants too as long as her work gets done. She can eat and do school work. —Claudette A.
More Time with Mom
Micah, age 7, says "Because it's more fun. It's shorter, and I get to do it with you!" —Jessica P.
Maggie age 8, "yes I like being homeschooled" because "I get to stay home with Mom, I don't have to eat tuna sandwiches everyday, I get to keep all the books and I get to pick out my own math (curriculum)." —Marabeth V. D.
Evelyn age 6- I like that I get to go see friends or my grandparents during the day when other kids are at school all day. I love read-aloud time the most and spending time with my mommy. —TiAnna A. W.
“What I love most about homeschooling is my teacher (mom)” Emery, age 6, 1st grade. Made my day ❤️ —Melissa W. G.
Jack 6 years old, 1st grade (attended kindergarten at a private preschool): “I love that we can cuddle up to read so many books together. That’s definitely the best part.” 
Lucy, 3: “I like learning counting with you and I like when Bubba (brother) helps with my school too.” 
