If your home library is sorely lacking in the poetry genre, this list solves the problem with 11 poetry anthologies for kids. Although these are specifically for students, each book will appeal to all ages from young children to adults.
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Homeschooling overseas is hard. Let’s just start with that. A large part of the difficulty is due to the unique challenges of living abroad.
Add homeschooling to your life as an expatriate, and life reaches another level of complexity.
You’ve moved to Southeast Asia and suddenly realize that you have no idea where to buy the simplest of supplies for your next science experiment. If you dissolve into tears simply because you can't find a pack of magnets, you are not alone. I’ve been there.
Shopping and finding supplies tends to be one of the hardest skills to acquire when you move from one country to another. Many countries don’t have the large supermarkets popular in the West, so you need to figure out which small shops sell the things you need. Differences abound! Here are some ideas to solve this problem:
Homeschool is not well understood globally. In many countries, homeschool is not even legal for citizens! While it may be legal for foreign residents, the practice may raise eyebrows or confuse. Here are some ideas for handling confusion or suspicion about homeschooling:
As a foreigner abroad, you will likely need to learn a second language! Even if you don’t absolutely need to, I recommend putting in the effort to add language study to your schedule if you are planning to spend at least one year in the country. Here are some tips:
When you move far away from your homeland to a country where homeschooling is hardly ever heard of, you lose such your support system. This can be a very lonely road. Here are some ways to help:
How have you learned to handle the various challenges involved in homeschooling abroad?
Use SmoothCourse™ to select your ideal Sonlight curriculum. Start here.
With the grocery stockpiling and the enthusiastic handwashing comes another unexpected symptom of COVID-19– the need for an emergency lesson plan.
Schools across the country are closing to slow the spread of the virus, and many families are finding themselves with an unexpected amount of family bonding time. Sonlight has some experience (30 years in fact) with school at home, so we’ve compiled a list of emergency educational resources for those temporarily bringing school to their living rooms and kitchen tables.
While a schedule disruption may cause stress, look for moments of enjoyment in the extra time with your children. A tricky situation can also be a unique opportunity. Use these tools to keep up with academics—and chase away the cabin fever. You might build some surprising family memories along the way.
With limited opportunities to explore outside of the home, take advantage of the chance to travel around the world through books. The books that you choose to read with your children matter. Stay away from fluff, and opt for titles that are rich, engaging, and spark thoughtful conversations.
We’ve compiled book lists of some of our favorites over the years, so that you don’t have to waste time sifting through library shelves for books that your children will love to read. Check out our book packages, carefully curated by age range, or reference some of the book lists below; you just might find a new family favorite that makes them beg for one more chapter …and helps the hours fly by.
If your school-at-home situation is temporary and you don’t want to spend money on curriculum, Sonlight offers 3-weeks of free lesson plans to get you started.
Sonlight Instructor’s Guides are packed with notes and discussion questions, along with assignments for each day. If you’re looking for a no-prep way to facilitate History, Literature, Language Arts, Science, or Bible in your home, a Sonlight Instructor’s Guide sample is a good start.
Your kids can learn and keep their hands busy at the same time with hands-on learning projects.
If you don’t want to worry about gathering craft supplies, Sonlight offers hands-on learning kits with all of the supplies included.
Or, try some outside-of-the-box learning activities that take little to no supplies. Got a toddler in the house? We have ideas for that, too.
Add some art enrichment to your day, and you might find yourself wanting to keep the habit going as an afterschooling activity even when your kids are back in school. Experiment with different ways to get your creativity flowing…like recreating art from a favorite artist, following an online doodling tutorial, or drawing things you see in the backyard. You can also set up a student-led art station for your kids to explore on their own…while mom takes a break.
Art is an area that your children may not get to explore everyday in their typical school schedule, so enjoy the opportunity to add a new kind of creative outlet to your day. If you’re looking for a more formal art program, Sonlight has art appreciation books and curriculum available.
Staying in the house can make everyone antsy. It’s important to stay active to keep grumpiness at bay, and there are ways to do that even if the weather outside is chilly.
Use these 10 Tips for Self-Care Through Exercise and Movement as a starting point. Finding an exercise video online or doing stretches in the living room might be just what you need to shake away feelings of anxiety.
Games are a fun way to pass the time while learning. See our top picks here.
You probably already have some of our favorites sitting around in your house, and this is a perfect time to dig them out of the closet. Reference our list of Top 10 Educational Games for Families that will get your brains working and some lighthearted competition flowing.
With the 2020 U.S. election season coming up, what better time for a crash course in government and civics? Check out these 6 Ways to Teach Civics at Home, or better yet, enjoy Sonlight's free Guide to Elections unit study. This interactive unit study activities cover a range of grades and ages, and will help you dive into the history and current events surrounding elections in America.
Looking for even more ideas? The Sonlight blog is packed with free tips, encouragement, and resources that are useful for families dealing with an unexpected change. Use these afterschooling ideas to add to the at-home curriculum provided by your school. We wish your family health and safety during this season – and little moments of surprising joy!
When you are starting out as a homeschooler or adding enrichment to a daycare or preschool program, which Sonlight early learning program will be the best fit for your family? All four of Sonlight’s programs for young students—Preschool, Pre-K, K, and A—use dozens of beautiful books that you and your child will love. But because children ages 3 to 7 develop different skills at different rates, which of these programs is the best fit for your child today?
Here's help choosing.
The recommended age and grade ranges for all Sonlight programs are changing beginning April 1, 2020. The NEW Sonlight scope & sequence outlines these four levels as such:
Let’s unpack this simple summary to find the best fit for your child.
Preschool is excellent for young children. 2-year-olds might enjoy some of the books, but most families enjoy this collection for children aged 3 or 4. That said, even children far past preschool age enjoy and revisit these books regularly. Many Sonlighters have come across their 6, 7, and even 8-year-olds looking at these books.
This is one of the best values of all the Sonlight programs, simply because of how much use these books offer a family.
The Pre-K program is an excellent program for either Pre-K or for Kindergarten.
The Sonlight K program works equally well for Kindergarten or 1st grade.
And Sonlight A was, for many years, Sonlight's kindergarten program. As of 2020, the easier Read-Alouds moved down to K, and Sonlight A kept the more challenging chapter books and added some new ones. Thus, the 2020 Sonlight A is more suited to a first and second grade audience. Ideally, you can start this program with a child aged 6 or 7.
If you’re trying to pick between the four earliest Sonlight programs, here’s a quick guide, based on the types of Read-Alouds included in each program.
If your children love picture books, then celebrate that love of beauty and rich stories told in few words with Sonlight Preschool, a program composed almost entirely picture books with very few words.
Sonlight Pre-K starts to include chapter books with a single illustration per chapter, and picture books with more words per page. This program includes a series of workbooks that helps you gauge your children’s academic readiness, and reading readiness exercises. Much of this would be considered traditional Kindergarten material, and some of our customers claim that Sonlight Pre-K is more robust than other company's Kindergarten programs.
Sonlight K, new in 2020, introduces American history to a young audience. This program will be available on April 1, 2020.
The Sonlight exclusive history spine, Heroes and Happenings, includes 60 biographies of famous people and events from history. These are mostly less than 1000 words (about the length of this blog post), with multiple full-color illustrations per chapter. This program includes engaging and delightful Read-Alouds, mostly short chapter books, heavily illustrated.
If when you read aloud a chapter book, your children wiggle like crazy, or you find yourself saying, “Pay attention!” then maybe wait a little longer before using Sonlight A. Choose Pre-K or K instead. Most of the books in A are chapter books. Enjoyable, entertaining, exciting . . . but chapter books. Not all 5 and 6-year-olds are ready for chapter books.
Still not sure if Sonlight Preschool, Pre-K, K, or A is best? Or are you trying to combine more than one child with one of these programs? Contact a Sonlight Homeschool Advisor to talk through the options. And if even if you need to exchange a program for a better fit, our guarantee allows for that.
Click here to connect with a homeschool consultant who can provide personalized help with choosing the right curriculum.
Homeschool families often end up choosing the homeschool lifestyle because they enjoy the freedom to make their own educational choices. They shun following a set of standardized guidelines about what each and every school day ought to include. Along the way, each homeschool family designates some aspects of school as extras and others as priorities.
Sometimes the extras starts to fall off the table as you settle into a routine that covers all the core classes and still allows your family to meet its outside commitments. This is a normal phenomenon and nothing to be alarmed over. However, I am making a plea not to drop all extras from your homeschool schedule...or at least not to drop them all the time.
Homeschoolers are nothing if not flexible. But in the midst of busy-yet-routine homeschool days, we sometimes forget that activities we consider extra can be some of the most memorable and impactful aspects of our homeschool years. They are worth making time for!
Here are a four homeschool activities, commonly deemed extras, along with reasons why not to skip them.
I heard it just the other day in a comment made by a teen studying Exploring Creation with Biology as she flipped the page and moved on with the chapter, “Oh, we always skip the science experiment.”
Yeah, we do. And it is probably not a good thing that she doesn’t even ask if we're going to attempt the science experiment. It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time we did have a microscope, and we did do the dissections. I distinctly remember the smell as we carefully cut into a starfish and a crayfish and searched for the body parts listed in the textbook.
But years go by. Microscopes are used a little too enthusiastically by a few too many would-be scientists, schedules get busy, and somewhere along the way, we no longer do dissections. Nor do we sprout beans, stick celery in colored water, play with magnets, or make whirlwinds in a soda bottle.
But that’s not the way ought to be, at least not always.
Maybe we can’t get the supplies for every suggested experiment. Maybe we don’t have the time to apply every concept taught in the books to an experiment with actual materials. But they shouldn’t become such an extra that our children automatically assume a science experiment isn’t going to happen. I mean, have you ever seen a kid complain about having to do a science experiment?
Maintain the sense of wonder in learning about Creation by making it a priority to, at least occasionally, experiment with scientific principles in action.
Mapwork is easy to make a part of your core school hours when you pair it with your daily HBL time. However, if you keep your Markable map and your markers stashed away in a safe place...somewhere in the depths of the black hole of homeschool supplies...it’s all too easy for mapwork to become a nonessential activity that gets forgotten.
Almost nobody has as masterful a grasp of geography as they ought to. Mapwork helps.
Identifying real-world locations mentioned in the books they read assists kids to understand distance, location, and the globe itself. Do what works for you to make it part of your everyday school schedule rather than something so infrequent that you can’t even remember where the map is.
There are homeschool parents on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to arts and crafts. For some, crafts are what they live for, and they delight in coming up with unique, three-dimensional artistic activities.
Other parents quake in fear at the thought of glitter, glue, markers, and paint. The idea of saving boxes and tubes to transform into musical instruments occurs to them for a second...and then they set the box of recycling by the curb anyway.
Either attitude is a bent of personality; neither bent is right or wrong. However, what can’t be denied is the innate value of art and craft experiences in children’s education. Scribbling, painting, cutting, and gluing develop important motor skills.
Let the arts and crafts happen. If you’re not the type inclined towards intricate hands-on crafts for your kids, that’s okay! But you can provide the materials and the designated time for art and see what results. If you are looking for purposeful crafts made so easy that you’re not tempted to skip them altogether anymore, then look into Sonlight’s Hands-On History Project Kits! Lap Book kits are another excellent option for upper-elementary and middle grades.
I know, I know. If anything, it seems PE class ought to be the one class we homeschoolers can skip without any regret or compunction at all. Nobody seems to have wonderful tales of their PE classes in public school.
I distinctly remember my mom’s embarrassment when our whole family attended a party at a skating rink. We spent the whole evening falling down! None of us had ever even tried on a pair of skates before. My mom bought roller-blades for each of us the very next day and had us skate circles in the driveway until we developed the skill.
Particularly for families who don’t participate in any organized sports, it’s easy to let obvious childhood physical skills slip through the cracks and assume that backyard play is adequate. But there are many sports-related skills that are helpful for kids to acquire:
You can use Home School Family Fitness if you want a structured approach for practicing these kinds of skills as a family.
In your attempt to become a homeschool essentialist or minimalist, don't throw out all the extras. When it comes to science experiments, hands-on activities, mapwork, and PE, homeschooling offers the individualized instruction where these kinds of activities can truly shine! It would be a huge mistake to cut them out all of the time.
Round out your children's education with carefully chosen electives that cover a wide scope of disciplines.
Sonlight’s complete curriculum packages come with everything you need to teach your child. But when budgets are tight, it’s easy to wonder if all those items are truly necessary or how they will be incorporated. You may be tempted to skimp on some of the things you consider extras.
Sonlight’s Markable Map is one product which might seem redundant, considering the laminated maps already included in the Instructor’s Guides. But, used together, mapwork boosts your child’s understanding of history, geography, and the world at large in a painless, easy-to-use way. Be sure to get the Markable Map!
Sonlight has carefully designed maps to accompany the places you will be learning about in their books throughout the year. Newer Instructor’s Guides for History / Bible / Literature (HBL) A through HBL J have lovely laminated maps in the front, and high school level Instructor’s Guides and older guides have multiple paper maps instead. These maps are labeled, and the Instructor’s Guides clearly reference the areas of study.
Additionally, Sonlight offers a large, blank laminated map with wet-erase markers for your child to learn geography. This is the Markable Map. The wet-erase markers don’t wipe off as easily as typical dry-erase markers do, so they stand up to heavier daily use.
There are specific benefits our family found to using Sonlight’s Markable Map and laminated maps in the Instructor’s Guides that most other maps, atlases, and globes don't provide.
Most families only ever need one Markable Map, but with homeschooling multiple kids using multiple levels, I’ve found perks to using one map per program. Some families like to purchase two, so they can display each side (USA and world) and have both visible at the same time.
Sonlight’s carefully designed maps help create a visual reminder of what your child is learning. But, it doesn’t stop there. The mapwork crosses a variety of learning styles and adds that essential hands-on component many children need. This multi-sensory approach to learning between the books and maps helps create long-lasting memories of key places and events.
At the beginning of every homeschool year, I fully intend to make use of every single aspect of my Sonlight curriculum. But as the year moves on, I find myself forgetting to do the mapwork activities or putting them off until there are so many that I feel behind. When I reframed my thinking and gave myself more visual reminders, I was able to remember the mapwork on a regular basis.
Sometimes, even fun or useful information can seem dry and boring. Here are some games and activities I have used sporadically to help liven things up and help my children look forward to learning about geography.
Mapping provides great learning opportunities for your children and aids in retention. Even if you can’t do all the mapping activities in your guide, these tips might help you to use them more often, make them more fun or interesting, and help you review. If you have any more ideas or suggestion, leave them in the comments for others to try.
See how Sonlight's detailed Instructor's Guides save you time and tell you precisely what to teach.
At the age of fourteen, I began teaching piano lessons. I started small, simply taking a handful of students off the hands of my already-booked piano teacher. As time went on, however, I found myself teaching almost every day after school.
During my senior year, I went to a college audition, never expecting to be offered anything. I just thought I’d give it a try and was shocked to receive a full music scholarship. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that a music degree wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to teach. While it was difficult leaving behind a full music scholarship, I still know that it was the right decision. I wanted to teach elementary school.
I was definitely musically talented though, even though it was something I had to work on. It didn’t come naturally. Thankfully, I loved working on it.
Many years after my last piano lesson, I found out that my piano teacher had planned on telling my mother to save her money and take me out of lessons. After a few months, she could see no natural talent in me. However, that particular week when she was going to inform my mom, something clicked inside me. From that lesson on, I made a continual progression upward. By the time I finished my senior year of high school, I was playing some of the most difficult classical music.
My husband and I married when I was just 19. Teaching piano lessons helped get us through our poor college years, and I soon found myself with my own overwhelming wait list. I taught lessons every single weekday right after school until 7:30 each night. It was both exhausting and wonderful all at the same time.
However, when college ended, I secured a teaching position at our local elementary school and decided to stop teaching piano lessons.
It was a difficult decision.
I loved my students dearly, and I knew that many of them may not find another teacher, but I also knew that my first year of public school teaching would be one of my most trying. Not only was I a novice teacher, but I found out that I was pregnant.
And that was essentially the end of my piano playing.
Once my sweet baby arrived, there was no time to play piano. As he got older, I found snippets of time, but I always had more than two hands on the piano, so playing anything formal was frustrating, to say the least. As more babies arrived, more hands joined me on the piano until eventually, the piano collected dust.
As a young mother, I remember lamenting the death of my piano-playing to a coworker, and was surprised to find that instead of commiserating with me, she offered me one of the best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever received.
She said, “You haven’t lost your gift. You’ve just tucked it away in your toolbox for a season. One day, you’ll find a reason to use it again, and when you do, you’ll open your toolbox and pull it out. With a little practice, you’ll shake the rust off and move on without missing a beat. Until then, just think of all the skills and gifts you are adding to your toolbox now.”
As I thought about this, I realized how right she was. I wasn’t losing my gift of music. God was simply busy developing new gifts in me. With my new motherhood and my new job, He was stirring up compassion and patience, stretching my selflessness and pushing the limits of my endurance.
What a perspective change.
Thirteen years later, I’ve found myself pulling out my musical gift once again. Oddly enough, this time it isn’t for service to others.
It’s for me.
And what an incredible gift it is now, especially since it’s a personal gift God gave to me to help me through a tough time.
In the last year, our adopted son has entered into a particularly difficult season. It has been a trial for the entire family. I have found that the piano is my escape. I go sit at the piano and spend time with God when I'm feeling frustrated . When I rise from the bench, I felt refreshed and ready to go again.
I didn’t even recognize it as a form of therapy until my grandmother grew sick, and we found out she was dying. The next thirteen days were hard on my family. I grieved so hard for her, and the only solace that I found was playing the piano. Her death was difficult enough, but in addition to my grief for her, I found that I also grieved again for my grandfather, who passed away seventeen years ago. It’s so strange to find that wounds that you thought were healed are still actually quite fresh. They both loved to hear me play.
So, during that season of life, I sat and I played through my tears.
When the notes grew too blurry to see, I let the muscle memory in my fingers take over and play for me. There was definitely a little rust to shake off, but it didn’t matter. It was very much like riding a bicycle. It was as if God had impressed on my parents decades before to pay for years of lessons for this moment in life when I would need my music to help me cope.
It was a gift from God, just for me.
Since then, I am still finding my way to the piano when I am frustrated or on days when grief strikes again. However, I am also noticing myself being drawn to the piano more often to play just for fun again—just because I love to make music for the Lord.
Yes, these days, I’m keeping the dust knocked off the piano pretty regularly, and it feels so good.
I really thought I’d never play again. And I assumed if I did play, it would be a sad reminder of what it once was. I was so wrong, and I’m so glad that I didn’t give up.
Those wise words, spoken by my coworker that day have played over in my head millions of times since then—not only about piano playing, but about the myriad of other gifts and skills we acquire throughout life.
We spend time learning how to do something, just to wonder later if it was a waste.
It’s never a waste.
You are constantly adding to your toolbox, tucking things away and waiting...and at just the right time, you will use those gifts and skills again.
Don’t lose hope! Simply tuck your gift safely into your toolbox. It will be there when you need it.
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