Ingenious Ways to Keep Younger Children Busy While Homeschooling

Share this post via email










Submit
Ingenious Ways to Keep Younger Children Busy While Homeschooling

Anyone who has toddlers and preschoolers at home knows that homeschooling is a challenge with little ones underfoot. Most preschoolers don’t have the patience to wait a few minutes while you work on a math problem with your 12-year-old or to play with one toy until you reach the end of a chapter. You will likely find your preschooler interrupting every few minutes,or your toddler finding trouble every time you try to focus on teaching spelling. 

Plan Ahead for Younger Children

After many years of homeschooling multiple children across wide age spans, I have learned tips to corral some of the chaos and keep us running more smoothly.

1. Create a Safe Play Area

Perhaps not all children were as adventure-seeking as some of mine, but I had a few escape artists over the years. By locking all exterior doors and windows and creating a safe play area (usually within eyesight) where I didn’t have to worry about their getting hurt, I didn’t have to spend as much time worrying about their physical safety. Also, because they could see and hear us, they were content to play longer.

I have seen families use baby gates, large indoor play areas, and pillows to create sectioned off areas for the young ones to play.

If you are homeschooling outdoors, large play areas, fencing, or even play pools (with water if you are very close by or dry pools filled with toys if you are not) can create a safe play area.

2. Plan Baby’s Schedule

We all know that babies don’t keep to a schedule. So planning for one might seem rather silly. But babies can have some predictable actions.

Check the baby’s diaper in between subjects so they are less likely to interrupt you while you are busy. Use a sling and feed them while reading aloud. Older children can help you turn the pages if you need both hands for a little bit. Try to predict the baby’s naptime so you can cover Table Subjects™ while the baby is sleeping.

3. Create Busy Bags and Toddler Trays 

Busy bags are simply a series of small bags, each filled with one activity a young child will enjoy. Bags can contain almost any toy or educational project.

Toddler trays are simply food trays with larger activities that might not fit in a bag, such as games, sensory bins, and puzzles. The storage device does not matter.

I usually had on hand about one bag for each 10 minutes I wanted my children to keep busy. I would hand them one bag at a time, and they had to play with the activity on a special rug we had near our learning area. When they were done, they picked up the pieces, put them back in the bag, and handed it quietly to me. Then I would silently put it back into a basket we had nearby and silently hand a fresh busy bag. Our basket also had books, art supplies, and ready-to-make crafts. 

If they didn’t pick up their pieces or were being too disruptive, they didn’t get a new activity. I tried to change up the bags every few days (cycling some in and out of the rotation and making new ones), to help keep them fresh. We did not allow them to play with the busy bags or toddler trays outside of school time, so as to maintain the novelty. These were school-only toys.

Sometimes, the activity would only last a minute or two. Other times, they would play for an hour or more. The choice of how long to use each activity was up to them. 

Easy Busy Bag Activities

To get you started with busy bags or toddler trays, here are some simple items you might already have on hand.

  • puzzles
  • games
  • lacing activities
  • blocks
  • paper with crayons, colored pencils, etc. 
  • coloring books with crayons
  • colored paper and scissors
  • shapes and shape mats
  • play-dough
  • fun books (or library books)
  • letter shapes
  • toy cars
  • toy animals
  • masking tape or scotch tape
  • wooden craft sticks
  • pipe cleaners
  • stickers

4. Use Read-Alouds as Bedtime Stories

You might wish to read some Read-Alouds or History books from your curriculum after the little ones have gone to sleep for the night. This will give you extra bonding time with your older children, while still checking things off your schedule. 

5. Let Family Help

Perhaps your mother would like to take the younger children for an hour a day while you get some work done. Or Aunt Sue would like to help out for a few hours every other weekend. Dad can even do math or science in his free time while you bathe the baby or play with the toddler (or vice versa). Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. 

6. Use the Buddy System

If you have a large family, the buddy system might help. Have any older children you are not currently working with play with or watch over one younger sibling while you help other children or get some reading done. By pairing children for short time periods, you can be more assured that each youngster is getting attention while you focus more fully on the homeschool task at hand.

Buddies can change from day to day or even from minute to minute. The same two children do not always need to be buddies. For example, a 7-year-old can watch a 3-year-old sister while you do spelling with the 9-year-old, and then the 9-year-old can take over little sister duty while you and the 7-year-old work on math. 

Activities to Keep the Little Ones Busy

1. Finger Foods

I’ve found very young children who are hungry or thirsty are more likely to whine, cry, or want attention rather than ask for a snack. To keep them satisfied, I made sure to have a lot of healthy, protein-rich finger foods on hand.

2. Homemade Finger Paints

I would often buckle my nearly naked toddlers into a high chair and give them yogurts and puddings to use as finger paint. A washable drop cloth under the chair helped to contain much of the mess while giving them a safe place to explore the world of art. 

3. Swimming Pools

When some of my children were younger, we lived in a house that had an enclosed, heated porch. This was the perfect place to pull out a little kiddie pool and let the younger children splash and play while I read a book or helped the older ones with homework around the edge of the pool. I was right there to keep an eye on them every moment, and I still was able to get schoolwork finished as well.

Very often, I would take a child messy from the high chair painting session and place them in the pool to help clean up the worst of the mess.

4. Educational Videos, Audiobooks, and Music

Over the years, we have amassed a huge collection of educational music and songs. Sonlight helped get us started with their Sing the Word CDs and Geography Songs. Their Lyrical Life science songs quickly became favorites as well. We used these songs to branch off into finding other great sources of educational songs about a wide variety of topics. We often put these on and dance and clean together as a family. It helps the little ones to feel more included, and it provides learning of things they will need to know in the future. 

We don’t use audiobooks as much as some families do, but there are a lot of great books out on audio now. I use these with caution with my younger children, as they tend to tune them out more quickly than other forms of audio learning, but they still are great for quiet time. 

Educational videos are also great. You can have the little ones watch along with what the older children are learning, or fall back on great videos such as Veggie Tales or LeapFrog Letter Factory to teach values or letters with minimal effort.

I have found that if we break up our day using video or music which includes the toddlers and preschoolers, I fill up their attention buckets. Then they are more cooperative when we go back to Couch Subjects™ and Table Subjects™.

5. Include the Little Ones

Young children truly need greater levels of attention and often hate feeling left out. So where possible, try to include them in your homeschool day. If you have older children sitting at a table doing math, give the toddler paper and let them pretend to do math with you. They can scribble or draw, but if they want an actual lesson to learn from, you can try teaching them to make straight lines, Ts, or Os.

I have found that for me, the hardest time to teach was when we had many children under age seven in the house. Those days were chaotic; however, I found that by planning ahead, I was able to corral the chaos and keep our homeschool on track.

Homeschool Multiple Children Successfully

Teaching multiple children at different ages can sometimes feel difficult to manage. Sonlight makes it easier by dividing our curriculum into two types of subjects: Couch Subjects™ and Table Subjects™.

Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

12 More Books from American History That Teach Empathy

Share this post via email










Submit

With these 12 historical fiction novels set in America, you get the best of all worlds: reading skills, history content, and empathy.

Continue reading
Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Teaching the Hidden Curriculum by Integrating Sonlight into Life

Share this post via email










Submit
Teaching the Hidden Curriculum by Integrating Sonlight into Life

If Charlotte Mason was right, education is a life. Education will restructure a life, but it’s a two-way street. Life also structures education, intentionally or accidentally. 

It is near-impossible to drum up a sustained interest in ancient literature if it doesn’t enjoy so much as a mention in everyday conversation. Conversely, the table saw used by an uncle for his job as a carpenter will arouse a fascination, regardless of its absence in the curriculum.

There is a curriculum in the space between lessons, in the figures who model ongoing, meaningful learning projects. Here are four ways you can take Sonlight to the in-between places.

1. Bring Math-U-See to the Workplace

I can sympathise with my daughter who sees mathematics as a distraction from real life. She would drop it in a heartbeat to connect with a friend, but I want her to experience the places where mathematics is actually the means of social connection.

One evening I asked a friend who owns an artisan bakery if he would let us come and be a fly on the wall, to see the inner workings of the bakery. (Whether we proved to be more like a fly on the wall or like a bull in a china shop, they invited us back.)

The next time, I brought the Math-U-See manipulatives in the car. Over lunch with the children, I interviewed the couple who owned the business. I asked them why they started it. I asked about their experience employing staff, and about the finances.

Before driving home, I turned to the backseats and used the manipulatives I had brought to explain income, expenses, and profit. 

Before we next visited, I asked my seven-year-old to be an investigative journalist. After questioning them, she wrote in her journal that they loved reading comments from satisfied customers and that they were using ratios to measure the right amount of flour. 

The next morning, the kids were playing baker shop featuring the 1:10 ratio and some very happy customers. The hidden curriculum had worked into their pretend play.

My daughter needed to see that the manipulatives communicated something, not just of educational value to Daddy, but of social value in a person’s life-work. 

2. Bring The Odyssey to the Dinner Table

Those who are not stay-at-home parents enjoy a special opportunity to flesh out the relation between your learning program and the adult world. They can set your learning to the tune of something bigger.

Set up a video call with the missionary family your church supports, and ask them if they have ever had to be honest with the government like Gladys in Gladys Aylward. Have your archaeologist sister-in-law over for lunch and ask if she has encountered superstitions like the archaeologist in Sticks Across the Chimney

If your conversation with your partner over dinner consists of nothing but money problems, scheduling, and an occasional movie, those little listeners may begin to believe that math only presents problems later in life, and that literature is something one grows out of altogether. 

On the other hand, if mom and dad have a conversation over dinner about the difference between the portrayal of violence in The Odyssey and in the Old Testament, maybe literature is a serious business. That's when the hidden curriculum comes into focus. Maybe understanding cultural perspectives on suffering is a note in the song worth hearing, even when there is a schedule to worry about.

3. Bring Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to the Trampoline

When I started homeschooling my kids, I would read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to my two eldest who bounced on the trampoline. I would walk around the trampoline, talking over the maddening squeak, putting the six-month-old to sleep in the encircling push-chair. I can’t say I was enjoying Alice, having read it aloud four times already, but this was a moment for the hidden curriculum. 

When I was a young teen, I played music to my father in the car. I was into Christian death metal. He wasn’t. Not only did he listen for hours, he would listen closely enough to analyse the music with me. 

Daddy, a former music producer, regarded my musical interests as more important than his. When it came to another day around the trampoline, I called Daddy’s humility to mind. 

There is a time for grammar, and there is a time for the fifth reading of Alice. Follow them to the trampoline and they will eventually follow you to the chalkboard.

It matters where you take the Sonlight curriculum. It matters

  • If you expose Math-U-See to meaningful work,
  • If your partner takes The Odyssey seriously
  • And if you take Alice to the Sisyphean trampoline.

Take the Sonlight curriculum to the in-between places and allow it to illuminate your children. The curriculum behind the curriculum is the life and heart of the purposeful parent. You are the hidden curriculum.

a Sonlight education

Be confident in your curriculum purchase by following three easy steps.

Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , | Leave a comment

From Public School to Homeschool: What Counts as School?

Share this post via email










Submit
From Public School to Homeschool: What Counts as School?

In public school, it’s easy to quantify school time. School time is from the time you arrive to the time you leave, approximately seven hours or so.

Defining school hours gets a little murky, though, when we begin talking about homeschool. Let’s take a look at this curiosity.

How Long Are Public School Hours?

Public school is about seven hours each day, Monday through Friday. However, during the course of a school day, we can easily chisel out lunch time and the after-lunch break or recess as not being actual learning time.

Then, what about all those transition times...

  • five minutes between each class
  • bathroom breaks
  • water fountain breaks
  • assemblies
  • time passing out and taking up permission forms and other paperwork
  • school announcements

What about early finishers? How about fun field trips?

When we analyze the time spent actually learning, we can find quite a bit of gray area in public school as well. So let’s start this conversation with the fact that actual time spent schooling is fluid, and much of it depends on the student’s choices of how they use their time.

What Defines Educational Time?

In the homeschooling world, some of us tend to believe that we can’t count certain activities as school. We may fret over what is truly school time.

Those of us who have to turn in hours to our state education department can be plagued by indecision over what qualifies as educational time.

  • We may spend an entire day on a field trip to a state park and wonder if we can count it as school.
  • We spend an hour cooking with our children and instead of viewing it as part of our child’s education, we may be tempted to tack on an extra hour at the end of the day to do the so-called real work. 

However, education really cannot be quantified. It makes us feel better to do so, but if we took an honest look at a well-rounded education, none of us could actually say how many hours we spend each day educating our child, not even our public school children.

Does a well-rounded education end at 3:30 pm? Of course not! A child who shadows their father during a home improvement project or rides a bike down their street is still educating themselves. I would argue that most of life is education

So Really, What Counts as School?

I think that’s the mindset shift that we all need to make, whether you homeschool or send your child to public school. Education does not stop when the child leaves the building, and education does not begin when the child opens the workbook. Education is about teaching the whole child many different skills and teaching them to be a productive adult.

I have always felt that anything that prepares children for becoming an adult can be counted as school hours. Think life skills and knowledge... anything under that umbrella should be counted as school hours.

However, everyone—even adults—needs rest and play, so I also believe that we can count certain amounts of that as well. I truly believe that if you sat down to add up a child’s hours going toward their education, you would have a shocking number. We would all be surprised to see just how many hours could be counted for educational time. 

What If My State Requires Hours?

Many of us do need to quantify our school hours due to state laws. So how should we do the impossible and quantify our child’s education in something as small as hours?

My best advice is to do the same as public schools. Figure your usual weekly schedule, count up your hours and multiply by 36 weeks. That is an estimate of your actual school time. But I urge all parents to know in their hearts that the true amount of education they are pouring into their child is not contained within a school day. Instead, it overflows into every facet of life.

We have to shift our mindset to reflect this new way of thinking about education. Education is absolutely un-quantifiable.

Everything is education.

Every hour of every day educates a child. Now, how we use those hours is our choice, but we are constantly teaching our child with everything that we do, constantly preparing them for life with the use of every hour. 

So, what truly counts as school you ask? Everything.

Choose your Sonlight curriculum
Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

How Sonlight Helps You Talk with Your Children about Racism

Share this post via email










Submit

Even if we believe we need to talk with our children about race, the task can feel daunting at times.

Continue reading
Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Talking to Children about Race

Share this post via email










Submit
Talking to Children about Race

Have you ever read a book you couldn't stop thinking about? I keep returning to Nurture Shock because it has challenged some of my assumptions about child development.

Take race relations, for example. Popular thought goes something like this: We can raise our children to be color-blind if we just put them in diverse environments and never talk about race.

But does that really work?

The authors of Nurture Shock say it doesn't. Instead, they present convincing evidence from many studies to show that even young children do notice skin color.

I admit that as parents, we can be very uncomfortable talking about race. I am even a touch hesitant to write about it, lest I unintentionally/needlessly offend. In their research, co-authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman pick up on parents' extreme hesitance to talk about this issue.

In particular, they note that white parents tend to feel especially uncomfortable talking about race. Perhaps parents seek to avoid any hint of prejudice by simply never mentioning skin color. But we do our children a disservice by remaining mute on the issue. Our children need us to help them make sense of their world in so many other arenas … why not race, too?

Children Are Not Color-blind

Have you noticed that children have a driving need to categorize and organize their world? As the Bronson notes, "Children categorize everything from food to toys to people at a young age." And it appears children categorize by skin color as well.

For example, researchers tested three-year-olds by displaying photographs of other children and asking whom they would like to have as friends. A stunning 86% of the white children chose photographs of other white children. When those same children were five and six, researchers gave them a small deck of cards and asked them to divide the cards into two piles any way they wished. While 16% sorted by gender and 16% used other factors (such as age), 68% of the children sorted the cards by race. Even at six months old (through a fascinating study I don't have time to explain here), children were naturally attuned to race differences. Researcher Dr. Phyllis Katz concluded "At no point in the study did the children exhibit the Rousseau-type of color-blindness that many adults expect."

Since children notice these categories during their most formative years, it follows that we should help them understand what they see.

Here are some pointers from the book:

1. Parents should not just drop hints about racial equality. We should talk about it explicitly.

When parents want to teach their children about racial equality, they tend to say things like "God made everyone equal." But Bronson's findings show such vague statements don't convey much meaning to kids. They don't translate into the concrete messages we want our kids to embrace.

So instead, we can say things more explicitly, such as: "God made people with different skin colors. He loves all of us, no matter what color our skin is or where we come from. Our family also loves people who are black, brown, white and anywhere in between!"

2. As kids generalize in order to understand their own identity, they may say things about race that make you cringe.

This doesn't mean they'll grow up to be racist, but it does mean you have a great opportunity to teach.

When Bronson's young son, Luke, began asserting that his favorite basketball player on TV was the one "with skin like us," Bronson kept talking with Luke until he got to the bottom of the issue. It turns out that Luke was self-conscious about his hair, which looked so different than the black players' hair-styles. I like how Bronson sums it up: "My son was looking for his own identity, and looking for role models. … I dealt with these moments explicitly, telling my son it was wrong to choose anyone as his friend, or his favorite, on the basis of their skin color or even their hairstyle. We pointed out how certain friends wouldn't be in our lives if we picked friends for their color. He got the message, and over time he not only accepted but embraced this lesson. Now he talks openly about equality and the wrongfulness of discrimination."

3. Merely placing children in proximity with children of other races doesn't seem to help unite races.

Bronson says that the more diversity there is in a public high school, the more the students will self-segregate by race. Unless there are specific initiatives to help children think constructively about race relations and form cross-racial friendships, the pressure to fit in with one's own ethnic group trumps.

In their research of many scientific studies, Bronson and Merryman found that merely putting children in situations where they encounter other races isn't enough. Parents need to talk about the fact that we can be friends and interact with people of other races just as we would with people who happen to have the same skin color as we do.

4. Books about race relations can help children understand their world more appropriately.

Bronson didn't spend much time on this point, but I of course found it fascinating! And it reinforced what I already knew: literature helps open up important conversations you need to have with your children.I have found that to be true in my own family. It never crossed my mind that I needed to talk to my children to let them know that just as girls can grow up to be doctors and engineers, so too can Blacks, Native Americans, Whites and Hispanics. But, my children grew up with clear understandings of racial issues.

I believe this is because we studied so many cultures around the world and did not shy away from difficult racial issues. As the children grew, we simply read, discussed and were deeply impacted by Sonlight books we shared, such as:

Why do I think reading is a huge key to helping raise children who don't judge others based on race? Read more here.

If you're as intrigued as I am by these reflections on race relations and child development, I'd suggest you track down a copy of Nurture Shock. Perhaps you'll find the whole book as interesting as I did.

As parents, may we be purposeful in imparting to our children all of our heritage and raising them with a right understanding. Let's help our kids make sense of this fascinating world God created.

Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Finally, an American History Curriculum for Kindergarten!

Share this post via email










Submit

This post was originally published as Finally, a Kindergarten American History Curriculum! on Oaxacaborn blog. It is reposted here with permission of the author, Gina Munsey.

Finally, an American History Curriculum for Kindergarten!

Does an accurate American history curriculum for kindergarten actually exist?

A good homeschool history curriculum is difficult to find, isn’t it? And US history is particularly hard to teach.  I have very little tolerance for oversimplified books which whitewash the complexity of our nation’s beginnings, idolize outward morality, virtue, and character, or put Columbus and Washington on a pedestal of American exceptionalism.  But most truly accurate US history books are geared toward a much older audience, and aren’t designed to give a broad sweeping overview to sensitive kindergarteners or first graders. American history is messy, ugly, grim, and often brutal. Teaching true American history to small children — even with picture books — is not easy.

So how do we find accurate US history books which will capture the tender imaginations of precious five- and six-year-olds?

A diverse and global worldview is so important to me. When my daughter started kindergarten several years ago, we chose to begin with Sonlight’s overview of world history and cultures (Sonlight’s new American history curriculum for kindergarten didn’t exist yet). As someone who spent my early years outside the United States, I think it’s crucial for kids — especially Christian kids! — to see God’s hand on the entire globe. And as a second-generation homeschooler, I have never been impressed with how some curriculum publishers handle elementary US history, anyway. Many tend to over-emphasize America’s place in the vast global world God created, gloss over the nuanced complexity of multifaceted historical figures, and simplify history to the point of inaccuracy.

Yet as Americans, we need to teach our kids about our nation’s beginning, right? We need teach our kids about all the tangled threads of the early years — all the stories — and show them how these threads been knotted and woven together into the nation we have today.

So I’m really excited about Sonlight’s brand-new American history curriculum for kindergarten!

Sonlight's Kindergarten Program Exploring American History for ages 5-6

A Sonlight education is a literature-based education, so it’s no surprise that Sonlight’s new Kindergarten program, Exploring American History  tells a gentle, age-appropriate story of our nation’s beginnings through dozens and dozens of interconnected stories.

Using a combination of

  • picture books,
  • read-alouds,
  • a bonus book list,
  • an Instructor’s guide, and
  • brand-new two-volume history spine called Heroes & Happenings,

five- and six-year-olds can see how the threads of American history weave together, knots and tangles and all.

Exploring American History: History / Bible / Literature K (or HBL K, for short) introduces kids to men and women such as

  • African-American inventor Benjamin Banneker,
  • Cherokee linguist Sequoyah,
  • first female doctor Elizabeth Blackwell,
  • abolitionist Harriet Tubman,
  • daredevil pilot Ruth Law, and
  • so many more.

But before I tell you more about Heroes & Happenings, the newly-published history spine, let’s pause here and quickly talk about how Sonlight is formatted.

An overview of Sonlight’s History / Bible / Literature (HBL) format

HBL stands for History, Bible, and Literature. There’s an HBL kit for each grade — click to see the huge stack of books included in the kindergarten HBL — which contains everything you need to teach

  • history,
  • social studies,
  • timeline,
  • geography,
  • Bible,
  • reading, and
  • literature,

in the form of really really great books, all scheduled out for you in a magical Instructor’s Guide.

A Sonlight Instructor’s Guide is open-and-go

A Sonlight Instructor’s Guide is open-and-go, and contains…

  • …weekly schedule grids,
  • daily page-by-page reading schedules for every single book,
  • Scripture memory verses,
  • comprehension questions,
  • oral narration cues,
  • a laminated map and an easy way to integrate geography,
  • cultural literacy notes,
  • vocabulary definitions,
  • timeline prompts, and
  • additional teaching notes.

If you want to use Sonlight for more than history, bible, and literature, Sonlight also offers an all-subjects package. This complete grade set includes

  • the HBL and Instructor’s Guide discussed above, plus
  • math,
  • science, and
  • language arts.

In this review, though, I’m focusing particularly on the history portion of Exploring American History: History / Bible / Literature K. In HBL K, history takes on the form of

  • Heroes and Happenings, Vol. 1
  • Heroes and Happenings, Vol. 2
  • the Instructor’s Guide
  • picture books about history, and
  • an enormous bonus booklist — 250 ADDITIONAL TITLES! (More on that in a bit.)

Let’s talk about Heroes and Happenings, the new history spine.

Heroes and Happenings is a Sonlight-exclusive, written specifically for this kindergarten curriculum. It’s a two-volume paperback set, illustrated by children’s book artists.

  • Volume One: Leif Erickson (c. 1000) to Jan Matzeliger (c. 1850)
  • Volume Two: Thomas Edison (c. 1870) to Temple Grandin (current day)

Each volume is around 150 full-color glossy pages, for a total of 60 stories across 300 pages. What a lot of stories! Although the books progress chronologically, each chapter can stand alone, too. This makes it a great reference book for elementary-age kids who are learning to write research papers, so keep it around after kindergarten ends!

Each of the sixty stories centers around a specific person or event, with a length of about four pages (two 2-page spreads) —  just right for young attention spans. And every single page is illustrated, so there’s always something for your little learner to look at as you read aloud.

Heroes and Happenings hits the high points of American history, of course, telling the stories of the Stamp Act and the Constitution Convention through to Westward Expansion and the moon landing. But Sonlight always does a really good job teaching cultural literacy, too. This kindergarten history course also contains all sorts of delightful and unusual tidbits, such as the Ferris wheel, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, bonsai trees, ballet, computer programming, and more.

I also really love the sidebars full of fascinating vocabulary definitions, and all the colorful illustrated maps included alongside the illustrations. Between the

  • biographies,
  • additional reading lists,
  • cultural literacy topics,
  • maps, and
  • vocabulary highlights,

there are a nearly infinite number of opportunities here for rabbit trails. This homeschool curriculum is excellent for encouraging curiosity and nurturing lifelong learners.

How picture-book based is Sonlight’s new American history program?

Heroes and Happenings is full-color, illustrated by picture-book artists, and written in a narrative style which makes it a delight to read aloud. Depending on if you purchase the 4-day package or the 5-day package, there are either 8 or 10 American history picture books included in the Sonlight package and scheduled in to the Instructor’s Guide daily and weekly schedules.

But there’s the potential for literally hundreds more books.

Yes, hundreds.

A bonus list of 250 US history books, recommended by Sonlight

At the end of every Heroes and Happenings chapter, a useful “Want to know more?” section lists at least additional book suggestions. These are a good mix of popular title and hidden gems, along with Coretta Scott King Award books and Caldecott winners. (And there are occasional notes about the books’ content; for instance, the author lists d’Aulaires’ Columbus, but warns it has “more myths and stories about Columbus rather than facts.”)

The last few pages of each volume of Heroes and Happenings also contain an appendix of even more book recommendations, organized chronologically by century. I counted through both volumes by hand, and between the end-of-chapter recommendations and the additional booklist in the appendices, there are 250 total book recommendations.

Two-hundred and fifty! This is such a unique and wonderful bonus feature, and not something I’ve ever seen before from Sonlight.

If Sonlight were to have included all of these picture books and juvenile literature selections in the curriculum package, it would have made the bundle absurdly cost-prohibitive, I am sure. Instead, by listing them throughout Heroes and HappeningsSonlight gives you the option to enrich your experience by reading further and deeper, should you so choose.

(Of course, you don’t have to; the history curriculum is already full and rich as-is. One of Sonlight’s big draws is its utter simplicity; simply open and go! But having access to all these additional book titles is a really incredible perk.)

How does Sonlight’s new kindergarten history program tell the stories of indigenous people and people of color?

When I chatted with friends about this new kindergarten history program, questions about accurate portrayal popped up again and again.

  • “I’m curious to hear how it handles race.”
  • “Is this less ethno- and Eurocentric than other curriculums?”
  • “Is [it] from a colonizer’s perspective?”
  • “How are women represented?”
  • “How white-washed is it?”
  • Are “multiple voices and views are represented?”

These are all important questions. As parents, we have an enormous responsibility

  • to equip our children to rightly handle truth (Timothy 2:15),
  • to love those around us (Mark 12:30-31), and
  • to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God. (Micah 6:8)

We need to make correct choices for our family, and evaluate wisely. The books we read and the media we consume play a large part in shaping our worldview, for better for worse. Let’s break down the content in Heroes & Happenings numerically:

  • 3 of the 60 stories are about Native Americans (Squanto, Sequoyah, and the Navajo Code Talkers)
  • 11 of the 60 stories are about African-Americans (David Drake, Bass Reeves, Martin Luther King Jr., and more)
  • 12 of the 60 stories are about women (Temple Grandin, Grace Hopper, Harriet Tubman, and more)
  • 15 of the 60 stories are about events (the Constitutional Convention, immigration, the Statue of Liberty, the Yamaki pine, and more), and
  • 33 of the 60 stories are about men (Randolph Caldecott, John James Audubon, Noah Webster, and more.)

I appreciate how the book doesn’t spend a disproportionate amount of time on pilgrims and pioneers, but spans a broad range of topics, interests, and timelines.

When I’m assessing an American history book, after a scan through the table of contents for a skeletal overview, I also like to physically flip to a few specific sections and spot-read. Glancing at these hot topics generally gives me peek into the author’s perspective, and gives me an idea of what sort of  worldview will be communicated to my children. Here are some excerpts and pull-quotes from Heroes & Happenings, so you can assess the book as well.

On the colonists — 

“When European settlers came to North America, the people who already lived there…didn’t like having their lands taken over.

Imagine how upsetting it would be if twelve decided to come in to your house, eat your food, use your bathroom, and sleep in your bed. Maybe you could handle it if those twelve people stayed for a week. You might even find it fun if you liked the people.

But now imagine those twelve people stayed in your house for the rest of their lives. They would marry, and have children — it would be too much.

Something like this happened to the Native Americans. The European settlers came, and took over Native American land, and stole their food — it was too much.”

On Tisquantum / Squanto — 

“The Europeans didn’t just kidnap Patuxet men, they also brought an unwelcome visitor to them: disease.”

On Thomas Jefferson — 

“Thomas Jefferson had written the Declaration of Independence, in which he said, ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator will certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Jefferson wrote that, but he didn’t act as if all men were created equal — he owned many enslaved men and women.

…Jefferson claimed that he wished the enslaved could soon be in a better condition…Although Jefferson wrote this, he did not actually free any of his enslaved people, and freed only a few in his will. This injustice would not end with Jefferson, unfortunately.”

On the Navajo — 

“The government forced Navajo children to attend boarding school…the teachers tried to make the children more like European Americans and less like Navajos. Adults at the boarding school cut off the children’s hair, discarded their traditional clothes, took their silver jewelry, and changed their names. Administrators forbade the use of the Navajo language…even during their free time.”

Sonlight never shies away from hard topics (here are 5 reasons to read books about difficult things.) Throughout every Sonlight course, parents are encouraged to engage their child in meaningful conversations — there are even dialogue prompts in the Instructor’s Guide to help start these super-important discussions.

Talk to your kids. No matter what curriculum you choose, it can never replace relationships and conversations. No book can replace empathy, kindness and courage. No history program can replace critical thinking, wisdom, discernment, or teaching our kids how to think and evaluate what they’re reading.

So talk to your kids.

Model Christ for your kids.

Be the light in a dark and broken world.

And go download a free preview of Exploring American History – just click on the Samples tab!

Introducing Sonlight's New Kindergarten Program: Exploring American History
Share this post via email










Submit
Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment