I’ve often been asked which Sonlight levels we use for high school, how I determine which levels to do and which to skip. I’ve also been asked about some of the middle school levels (F, G, and H mainly) and whether or not they are high school-worthy. In other words, are they rigorous enough to assign high school credit on a transcript?
Continue reading
If you need to or want to work, but still want quality time with your children and a stellar education, you can do it. Whether you want to homeschool them full-time or supplement the brick-and-mortar school they get during the day, working and teaching are not mutually exclusive. You probably can find the time to homeschool or afterschool even if you work. You will have to stay flexible and change your way of thinking, though.
Laura Vanderkam, in 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, talks about the (often faulty) perception people have that there is no time. She points out that the 168 hours in a week is a tremendous amount of time. You can sleep 8 hours a night, work a full 40 hours, and still have 72 hours left in your week—time for almost two additional full-time jobs.
So where does all that time go?
Vanderkam recommends that you track your time for a week in half-hour increments (or 15 minutes, if you have a lot of quick changes) to see how you actually spend your time. Are you using those 72 unaccounted-for hours in a way that is in line with your core values?
For those who choose to work and homeschool, this can be especially helpful. Instead of feeling chronically short, you might find that you do have time to help provide for your family, spend meaningful time with your children, and if you use a well-laid out curriculum like Sonlight, you’ll also get to spend some time for yourself.
Although brick-and-mortar school takes all day, homeschooling doesn't take that long, especially at lower levels. For example, in the younger years with Sonlight, the recommended schedule takes about an hour. Even by upper elementary school, the schedule takes only a few hours a day. Choose a 4-day homeschool schedule, and you'll free up an entire day each week!
If you view your week through the 168-hour lens, do you think you can find five or ten hours a week to devote to educating your child? There are ways to sneak in the learning:
Once you get beyond the mindset that "school must happen between 8 am and 3 pm, and children should be in bed by 8 pm," there's space for creative scheduling. Nights and weekends are gifts of time. Use them well, and you will find that you really do have more time than you think.
One of the other helpful things that Vanderkam emphasizes is that you get to choose your priorities. While a bored homemaker in the 1960s might have made a raspberry cake with 16 steps, you choose to do other things with your time now. That's great! What amazing options are open to you!
So it's okay to let your ideas shift a little. For example, changing sheets once a week is a holdover from farming days, when people would often get a lot more dirty—and bathe a lot less—than modern office workers. If your sheets get changed every few weeks, who cares?
Obviously some things, like car maintenance, shouldn’t be ignored. Dishes and laundry should be maintained, to keep the house running smoothly. But dusting and window-washing? Less important. Going to bed with a spotless house every night? Depending on your personality, this will be more or less important to you, but the reality of homeschooling is that you and your children are home a lot of the time, making messes and exploring the world. Maybe a once-a-week general put-away is sufficient. A fifteen-minute daily clean adds up to almost two hours a week. That might be more than you want to spend, or a reasonable amount. But you get to choose.
In the realm of food preparation, you can also look for time savings. This is probably not the season to start whipping up crepes and galettes. Can you find meals your family generally enjoys, and rotate through them on a regular basis?
For example, one working, homeschooling mom went to all her children’s sporting events and ran the typical mom shuttle service. To stay afloat during her busiest years, her dinners looked like this:
She had a small range of dinners she rotated through on the other nights.
That isn’t necessarily the most healthy diet, but she saved her sanity. And the point is: you can rotate through meals once a week, according to your family’s food preferences. If a rotisserie chicken (or a chicken cooked in an Instant-Pot) makes your life run more smoothly, or pre-cut, frozen butternut squash saves you ten minutes, that might be worth it. There’s no award for “I riced my own cauliflower instead of using the frozen stuff,” or “I grated my own mozzarella by hand rather than using the food processor or buying shredded cheese.” Be grateful for the time savings.
Depending on the age of your children, and the helpfulness of your spouse, you can also delegate. Or, if it’s in the budget, hire out for certain tasks you dislike. Cinderella didn’t also homeschool and work outside the home, so if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, get some help. Or lower your expectations.
There’s no such thing as a good multi-tasker. There are people who shift their attention between tasks rapidly, but that is not efficient and helpful. It’s like sitting in a theater and having your phone ring every 15 seconds. Don’t do that to yourself. (The exception is, of course, for mindless tasks that you know how to do. A beginning driver needs to focus, but an experienced driver can listen to an audiobook. You can talk on the phone while doing the dishes. That isn’t actual multi-tasking, though, as those processes use different parts of the brain.)
Young children grow up. This isn’t meant to be a truism, but in the early years of parenting, children need so much help in every area. Getting four children into four car seats and boosters can take a while. But getting into the car with four ambulatory, tall children takes about ten seconds for everyone to pile in. If you’re in a season of intense parenting, realize that this season will shift at some point, and your children will not need you as much.
Which is, I suppose, both a blessing and a warning.
When you buy from Sonlight, you get a great product that produces proven results. To learn more about the perks of shopping with Sonlight, visit Sonlight Cares.
Sonlight teaches History using great books, in a method that over the last three decades has proven itself to be both powerful and effective. But why would we choose to rely on literature instead of other tried-and-true materials or methods? At Sonlight, we believe a literature-rich homeschool curriculum is ideal for a teaching history (and other subjects) for five main reasons.
Intuitively we know that context is important. For example, separate ingredients are better when they come together in a Caesar salad. That can of anchovies on its own isn’t so appealing, but as part of a dressing, it offers a savory note that enhances the salad.
Learning History, too, shouldn’t be a bunch of discrete facts. History is a series of interwoven stories, and stories are interesting to listen to. We all want to know what happens next! When you are engaged, you remember more. With the context, you understand more of what is happening.
The American colonies didn’t one day decide to shoot at British soldiers for fun. They had been building resentment for years. Sure, 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, is an important date. But so are the events leading up to 1776, the characters involved in 1776, the dangers, the monotony, the strategy, the daily life.
When you read for context, you gain far more than a flashcard date. You gain a story, a memory, an understanding.
If you treasure wonderful experiences with your children—who doesn’t?!—Sonlight is the perfect curriculum for you. Sonlight families don’t “do school.” They travel, with books, to a wide variety of interesting locations. They meet, with books, interesting people, some famous, some not. They experience triumphs (and some defeats).
Neuroscientists have found that reading about an event goes to the same place in the brain as experiencing that event.
If you’ve been thinking you would like to do more things with your children, go on more trips, expose them to more things, Sonlight is your ticket. Travel the world for far less than a plane ticket.
When you start Sonlight A with your children, your History / Bible / Literature education will take perhaps an hour. But that whole hour, your children will have been engaged with the learning process, as they listened to a comprehensive story Bible, a poem, some information about the wider world, a delightful book you read for their comprehension, and some sentences or pages that they read to you.
Many children, after spending this intensive time with a parent, are ready to spend time on their own: LEGO, outdoor activities, looking at books, drawing pictures, making up stories with a sibling. . . . They have time to experience the rest of the world.
You won’t be burnt out at the end of the year because your year won’t have been drudgery. It will have been filled with lovely moments!
Your children will check in with you a few times during the rest of the day, showing what they’ve made, coming for a hug, asking a question (“What’s for dinner?”)—but by spending focused time with them, they have thoughts to process and play to engage in, books to read, and creative endeavors to pursue.
Many Sonlight moms can go back to school for themselves or hold down part-time jobs because their children are able to be so independent once their school work is done.
There is only one Pride and Prejudice. There is only one Little Britches. Like the most outstanding people you’ve ever met, great books can’t be duplicated or imitated. In fact, although whole branches of the publishing industry spring up dedicated to bringing us books “in the tradition of Jane Austen,” that’s like store-brand cola—it’s a cheap knock-off.
With Sonlight, come meet the outstanding books, mostly published in the last century, but, especially in the high school programs, going back to ancient Mesopotamia. Four thousands years of unique, superb literature.
To enjoy these gems, you don’t need to go to university for an advanced degree. You don’t need tens of thousands of dollars for a private school education. You don’t need special tools or years of prep work.
If you can read, you can Sonlight. We’ve done the choosing and the planning for you.
A complete program, delivered to your door.
Great books produce outstanding students and thoughtful lifelong learners.
College professors routinely compliment Sonlight students on their writing ability, their clear communication, their depth of thought, their extensive knowledge of the world.
And Sonlight students, knowing that learning should be enjoyable, keep that joy going throughout their lives.
Sonlight’s History program is so fun that Sonlight children beg to do school on the weekends and during summer vacation. This is not History-because-we-have-to-get-it-done. This is History-because-we-get-to-do-it.
Ready to enjoy learning?
At Sonlight, we know that every homeschool family is unique, and every student has individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. That’s why we offer multiple curriculum options, completely customizable to meet your needs.
Curious to see what this type of education might look like for your family? Go to SmoothCourse to explore your options.
Although your Sonlight Instructor's Guide might look overwhelming to begin with, after spending a few minutes getting acquainted, you will feel at ease with your big binder. It looks more confusing than it is! Even if you’ve never taught children before, you can do this!
Follow these five simple steps for a quick Instructor’s Guide orientation.
Sonlight sells Instructor’s Guides for three subjects:
They have the same general format—a schedule grid with notes—but cover different topics. When you ordered, you chose either a 4-day or a 5-day schedule, based on the overall workload you want to do, and whether you are in a co-op on the fifth day.
All Sonlight Instructor’s Guides have 36 numbered divisions. A traditional school year has 180 days, and 36 x 5 is 180. You can think of each division as a week, and Sonlight materials speak of 36 weeks, even though you often won’t actually do the four or five days on the schedule in a calendar week. The school year is filled with holidays, field trips, occasional illness, appointments, and so on. Rather, think of your year as “doing the next thing.”
With a 36 “week” division, you have many opportunities to celebrate progress. Every four weeks you’ve finished a month, every nine weeks you’ve finished a quarter, every 12 weeks you finish a trimester, and 18 weeks equals a semester. You’re never more than four weeks away from a milestone!
The Instructor’s Guide itself has three parts:
Notice that your schedule is a grid. At the top, you can see the total number of days you’ve finished (out of either 180, for a 5-day program, or 144, for a 4-day program), as well as where you are in that specific “week.”
The left column gives the name of the book you’ll use; the other four or five columns give the specifics about which pages you’ll read each week. For most weeks of the year, your weekly prep amounts to thirty seconds before you start reading to gather up any new books you’ll be starting that week. Easy!
Most Sonlighters work vertically, column by column, doing the assignments for a day, then moving on to the next school day. This gives you a range of assignments to enjoy every day.
Some people, however, prefer to work horizontally, perhaps reading all the poetry and all the History in a day, then doing the Read-Alouds next. This is a fine choice, too.
And other parents find that they want to read ahead in a book, and so they get a little ahead in the Read-Alouds, but stay on track with the History and Science. All of these are fine options.
Even if all you use is the Sonlight schedule, your IG purchase is still worth it. Sonlighters who only use the schedule still feel their children get an excellent education. But here are some of the additional features that you might choose to use.
See our IGs up close. Try three weeks of any Sonlight Instructor's Guide for free. Click here to get one for any level, preschool through twelfth grade.
I need to confess. While packing carry-ons for a flight, I pulled Captain Nobody off the Sonlight shelf and quickly stuck it in my daughter's backpack—as a independent free read. (You’ve never done that, right? Judged a Sonlight read-aloud by its cover, then ditched it?) After the sophistication of The Apprentice in History / Bible / Literature Level C, the cover of Captain Nobody just seemed...juvenile.
My daughter, who hasn’t yet learned to make snap judgements, enthusiastically devoured Captain Nobody in record time, oblivious to my uninformed opinion. Last month, when we spotted the book—narrated by author Dean Pitchford!—in our our library’s audiobook section, she nudged me and reminded me I was missing out.
So I entered the world of Captain Nobody. (I can’t believe I waited so long!)
If you haven’t met Newt Newman aka Captain Nobody, you might be surprised to hear me suggest the adventures of a spindly fourth-grader could have anything in common with the life of a homeschool mom. But good literature is relatable, and the common threads of human experience ring true across generations and cultures, bridging time and place.
If you’re already acquainted with Newt, you know he struggled with feeling
“I felt so angry on his behalf,” said one Sonlight mom as we chatted about Captain Nobody, “thinking it was so unfair that he, as a kid, went through it. But...I think that some of my anger was me feeling riled up about all the times I am taken for granted, myself.”
Young Newt was in charge of making breakfast, waking his brother up for school, and stepping into the roles his absent-minded parents forgot. And he felt like everyone around him could see directly through him. He writes,
“...nobody had eaten my breakfast.
I looked down at what was left. The sausages were cooling in their grease. The eggs were getting watery...
Now, I realize there’s not a lot I can do to help my family as they whiz through their busy days. And maybe I don’t build buildings or win ball games. But if make breakfast, the least they can do is eat it!”
Newt felt unappreciated and invisible, day after day, even as he obediently maintained his school and chore responsibilities. Fellow breakfast-maker, do you, too, feel as though the effort you pour into your household and family goes unseen? Does it seem like you’re plugging away on a hamster wheel with no visible progress? I’d venture to guess you’ve experienced inklings of these feelings at some point in your parenting journey; I know I certainly have.
And, like Newt, I sometimes feel like everyone around me is doing
while I am stuck in the cycle of thankless tasks. In a culture so enraptured with superheros, mountaintop experiences, and exceptional feats, it’s easy to feel lost, unable to see our own ordinary place in a world of more-than-ordinary influences.
Our culture—human nature as a whole, really—holds a skewed sense of heroes, doesn’t it? We walk right past those toiling quietly behind the scenes, and make a beeline toward the charismatic, flashy, extroverted personalities engaged in highly visible work.
As Newt faithfully plods forward, looking for examples of heroes, he slowly comes to the realization he has nothing in common with the kind of heroes people admire. You, too? Newt mourns,
“For one thing, most of my heroes stretch and transform their bodies into fantastic shapes. Tommy Origami, for instance, can fold his body into a packet the size of a postage stamp. Who was I kidding? I can barely touch my toes.”
To put Newt’s lament into homeschool mom terms, “Most of my heroes are put together, organized, and have time to write books on top of curating a picture-perfect homeschool” or “Most of my heroes are running orphanages, feeding the hungry, and forging new paths in faraway lands.” Like Newt, we might sigh to ourselves, “Who am I kidding?” as we’re limping through yet another math lesson and stacking yet another round of dishes.
But when done for Lord, work—all work—is worship. When we embrace this, we see the hallowed holy ground in quiet thankless tasks, carried out in the uneventful mundane hours. Our daily chores may not be prettified with the label of any official ministry or broadcast out to the world, but this work of raising and schooling children is elevated to the highest calling, when viewed in light of the gospel. So if we’re looking to find fulfillment by emulating a homeschool guru or other elusive hero, we simply will not find it. But when we dedicate our every task to God, we find peace and contentment.
Fellow mama, you who are
don’t waste your energy striving to mimic someone you follow on social media! Don’t wear yourself out comparing yourself to a homeschool convention speaker or inspirational, do-everything, author you admire. They all have behind-the-scenes bad days, too—and just as many of them as you do.
Precious friend, you are you. You are not ‘supposed to be’ anyone else. You are you.
And our literary pal Newt Newman, too, discovered this.
“I’m not ‘supposed to be’ anybody...I am Captain Nobody.”
Maybe heroes walk around in stretched-out red sweatpants and a handmade mask, like he did. Or maybe they wear a top-knot, a slouchy homeschool tee, and printed leggings. That’s not the important part. The important part is—
“You [yes, you!] are Captain Nobody! Defender of the little guy, champion of the downtrodden. Remember?”
You’re doing the most important work.
To find out more about Sonlight's unmatched Read-Alouds, and our complete book-based homeschool programs, order a complimentary copy of your catalog today.
If you’re raising an advanced reader, you are probably, like me, thankful for the public library. We have raised ten kids who love books. You can imagine, that’s a ton of books being schlepped back and forth, piled in little boxes and cubbies—representing a mountain of financial savings.
We had a couple of young readers who were hungry to move up the reading shelves as quickly as possible, devouring more challenging material. Although I wanted to provide the books they craved, I also needed discernment in choosing books that matched their maturity levels.
When their little hands started reaching for longer and tougher books I asked, "How do I satisfy their desire for more difficult reading while protecting them from adult themes they aren’t ready for?”
When reading ability is outpacing emotional maturity, it can be a challenge to find suitable books. Here is what I learned in my quest to appropriately challenge my advanced readers while protecting their impressionable hearts.
The Young Adult (YA) section of the library was tempting new territory for my advanced readers. A few familiar titles made it seem like a natural place to find books. However, after talking to my local children's librarian I learned a key fact. The YA designation of literature is recommended for readers in their teens, usually due to the maturity of the subject matter and not due to the reading level as you may assume.
She told me about her experience using the Accelerated Reader Bookfinder to determine the reading level of books. Most of the YA books in her collection were written to a fifth grade level—not especially advanced, yet many of the books had content that my elementary aged advanced readers simply weren't ready for.
My librarian did put me onto the trail of two great options for high level reading, though, and I found two others on my own:
It is not surprising when you think of it, after all, picture books are almost exclusively written with adult readers in mind, so they have a broad and rich vocabulary. They are written to speak to children’s interests however, with subjects that are engaging and art that inspires creativity. I confidently piled up more picture books, knowing these would challenge my young readers more than a YA novel.
Poetry scored high on the AR index because of its complex structure and diverse vocabulary. These are precisely the ingredients that help to build critical thinking and strong reading skills. After speaking with our librarian, I was grateful that Sonlight curriculum includes poetry collections for every level.
In my own search of the AR book-finder site, I saw that the greatest source of upper level reading is nonfiction. For example, books about history and technology are full of rich new vocabulary for young readers.
How do we enjoy nonfiction in our home? We love to explore a stack of books that cover a specific subject, like when we read Carry On Mr. Bowditch and checked out all of the books on sailboats. The beauty of nonfiction is that you can always find a few books about the subjects you are covering in school if you want to extend your lessons into recreational reading time.
My last source of advanced reading material is current events. We have used WORLD Magazine for ten years. We received the physical magazine then transitioned into the digital age by switching to the online format. We love that WORLD comes from a Christian worldview and is available in age categories you can choose to fit your family.
I also found Newsela and signed up for a free account. It is a secular site but is full of current news and events. The site allows you to choose news articles and to set the reading level of that article for your child, from 3rd to 12th grade. Difficult vocabulary words are highlighted and defined in the text making integration of new words easy for your child to do as they read.
Incorporating high index picture books, beautiful poetry, nonfiction, and news articles made it easy for me to find satisfying reading that filled my advanced readers' minds with information even outside of school time. I was able to always have a supply of new reading material ready for them.
When my young teens were ready to start choosing YA books for themselves, we helped them transition by doing a personal study on discernment, written by a fellow homeschool graduate. It gave me confidence that my children were ready to take over their library experience with good judgement. It is hard to believe, but this group of readers is entering college in the fall. We are still talking about what they are reading but now, they are giving me great book recommendations, too.
If you are not sure your young reader's reading level, you can check with a free Sonlight reading assessment.
Even for veteran homeschool parents, choosing a homeschool curriculum for the new school year can be a wrenching decision. Recently I was faced with a tough decision: Would I choose a 4-day curriculum or a 5-day curriculum?
I provide daycare for at least three children each day. On Fridays I have six extra kids on top of my own five children. As you can imagine, doing school on that day is impossible. There is far too much going on to be able to read over all the little ones I'm caring for. Plus my children don’t retain what we are studying with all the chaos going on. Taking Fridays off each week has been a relief! Plus the extra day gives us a long weekend which we all love.
So I already knew that we would be homeschooling four days a week, but the question was whether I would buy the 4-day or 5-day Sonlight schedule.
My fear of purchasing the 4-day curriculum was that we would miss out on amazing stories and great lessons. If you have ever used Sonlight before, you understand just how wonderful every single one of the books is. I had a major case of curriculum FOMO (fear of missing out).
On the other hand, if I purchased the 5-day curriculum, how would I manage to get through the program when we have homeschool lessons only four days each week?
Such a tough decision!
My curriculum FOMO is not unique to me! So many people had this same fear of missing out on great books that Sonlight now offers sets of the books removed from the 4-day programs.
In the end, I decided to purchase the 5-day curriculum and adapt it to our four-day-a-week homeschool calendar. The way I see it, I get the best of both worlds.
I can rearrange the Instructor's Guide, getting all the amazing resources in the full 5-day program but homeschool my kids only 4 days a week like we have for years.
Once I decided on the 5-day program, I had to plan our year. There were a couple of scenarios I considered.
One scenario is to simply split the reading and work from day five into each of the other 4 days. The extra work isn't a burden when spread out like this.
The second option is to go through the Instructor's Guide day by day (not worrying about weeks) and then continue into the summer as needed.
In the end, we chose to go with option #2. I homeschool my children year round, so doing the extra day throughout the summer isn’t a problem at all for us. It keeps the kids from getting bored and prevents summer slide.
This is the schedule for us at this stage of our homeschool. There were other times that this schedule would not have worked for us, and admittedly it may not work in the future. One thing I have realized with a few years of homeschooling under my belt is to be flexible and take each year as it comes, being willing to adapt to new circumstances and needs.
If you are struggling to choose between a 4-day and 5-day program, we have experienced homeschooling moms who would love to talk to you. Click here to schedule an appointment with an advisor.
