These cookies are the most traditional Christmas cookie in Sweden. They date back to the Middle Ages when spices such as cloves and pepper were rare and expensive. They were used for special occasions. It’s a spice cookie similar to other countries’ spice cookies such as Pfeffernüsse or Speculaas.
This PDF file is formatted to print the same size as Sonlight's Recipe Cards so you can easily add it to your recipe collection!
Pepparkakor
Ingredients:
4 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup golden syrup (or sub light corn syrup if you can’t find golden syrup)
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Instructions:
Sift together the flour, baking soda, ginger and cloves into a bowl. Whisk in the salt and pepper.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until soft and creamy, about 3 minutes.
Add the syrup and beat until combined, then add in the heavy cream and lemon juice and beat until blended.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, one cup at a time, beating until blended.
Divide dough into 4 equal sections, shaping each quarter into a ball, then flatten to form a disc. Wrap each disc with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of 12 hours or up to 2 days. (You can also freeze up to 3 months. Let thaw to room temperature before rolling out.)
When you’re ready to make the cookies, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Place one dough disk on a clean, floured work surface. Using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough to 1/8 to ¼-inch thickness. (Since this is a sticky dough, leave the other discs in the refrigerator until you are ready for the next batch of cookies. Otherwise the dough can stick to the rolling pin, work surface, and cookie cutters.)
Using cookie cutters, cut out the cookies and place them one inch apart on the baking sheets.
Bake for about 6 minutes or until golden brown. You might need to switch the baking sheets between racks midway through. You may also need to refrigerate any prepared baking sheets you cannot bake right away.
Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the cookie sheet before moving them to wire racks. Let cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.
Now is a great time to begin curating recipes to develop into your own Christmas traditions. Sonlight has some simple recipe cards where you can record your favorites and create your own Christmas Cookie Collection.
Timelines are an essential part of teaching history. This valuable—yet simple— tool helps students understand the chronology of historical events and make connections between individual events and people. In addition to providing big-picture context to your history studies, here are 5 more benefits to using a Timeline in your homeschool.
Timelines offer children a visual representation of what they are studying in history. Students can quickly see how events and historical figures relate chronologically. Sonlight's Timeline Book paired with program-specific Timeline Figures make creating your own timeline easy and delightful.
1. Timelines help kids make connections.
Your kids might be surprised that Catherine the Great and George Washington lived during the same time period. Or that Christopher Columbus and Leonardo da Vinci were contemporaries.
Over the years using your Timeline, students will form connections between the events and people they’ve read about in past years and people they’re currently studying.
In addition, if you encourage them to research and plug-in dates related to family members from previous generations, they gain a whole new perspective on how their family fits into the flow of history.
2. Timelines help kids grasp the overlapping or concurrency of seemingly unrelated events or cultures.
A timeline acts to tie history together. As students add people, events, discoveries, and inventions to their timelines, they discover how these smaller puzzle pieces fit together into the bigger picture of history.
For example, a timeline can help students understand that the Holocaust was a progression of events, decisions, actions, and inactions, not a singular inescapable fate. The Timeline Book makes history a living subject.
3. Timelines help kids situate newly encountered events and figures in relation to those they've already studied.
For example, students may think that the only thing happening in the world in 1862 was the Emancipation Proclamation, but the U.S. Mint was established in Denver, CO that same year and the bowling ball was invented!
Use this as a prompt to have your students consider “How did people from around the world contribute to this event, idea, etc.? Does this event remind you of something else in history?"
4. Timelines enhance comprehension.
Every time you place a new timeline figure, you’re cementing the learning from your history reading and tying each character into the bigger picture of history. Instead of just memorizing dates and facts, your children now have context for the events they’ve studied.
BONUS: with a timeline, students have the opportunity to look back over what they have learned and review it. Adding a visual resource to what they’ve learned from a book further cements that knowledge and improves retention.
5. Timelines help kids develop critical thinking skills.
Timelines help students discover patterns in history. Rising tensions, war, times of economic depression, times of prosperity—these tend to cycle in almost every developed nation around the world. When students look back over their timelines, they can find specific types of events more easily and compare them to current events.
TIP: Instead of simply adding a person or event to your timeline, ask your student if they’ve noticed any patterns. For example, “Have you noticed any similarities about events before a war begins?”
You can order a Timeline Book (just once!) that you’ll use throughout your entire homeschool experience.
Timelines are such a valuable tool to make your study of history visual and cohesive that we schedule Timeline Activities in our History / Bible / Literature Instructor's Guides and include Timeline Figures in every History / Bible / Literature package.
"Already they are making connections when we add new stickers to our Timeline Book, and they notice what else is already on the page!" —Cynthia H. of Champaign, IL
Your Sonlight Instructor's Guides tell you exactly where to place your timeline figures and how to do the mapping activities. Learn more about Sonlight's guides here.
When you picture a positive homeschool day, how does it look in your imagination?
Are you frantically searching for “the good” pencils, trying to remember which lesson you’re on, and not sure which book to read first? Or, are you heading into your homeschool day, confident and ready?
No matter what your natural tendencies, organization can help you cultivate a peaceful, thriving homeschool. These 15 ideas, tips, and tricks have everything you need or create a more orderly approach to learning in your home.
Sonlight Makes Homeschool Organization Easy
The idea of organizing can send many homeschool parents into a whirlwind of worry.
Don’t fret! Organization does not come naturally to everyone, and we can promise that not every other homeschool parent is a “natural organizer.”
The good news is, it does get easier to build systems and routines over time.
In an effort to support you in your homeschool, we asked veteran Sonlight moms for their very best organizational advice.
Below, we break down their top tips and solutions into 3 categories:
Sonlight organization (content)
Time organization
Physical organization (the ‘stuff’ of homeschooling)
We also want to invite you to to hear directly from the moms. They had so much to share, we thought you might want to take a listen.
Everything You Need to Know About Organizing Sonlight Content
First, good news: Sonlight curriculum materials will actually help you feel more organized because they are created to be open-and-go. Our program takes the guesswork out of lesson planning.
Our Instructor’s Guides (IGs) give you a complete plan, but also allow for flexibility because everything is broken down step-by-step. We know what real-life homeschooling is like, so our IGs are designed for busy homeschool parents.
Sonlight Homeschool Instructor’s Guides
We’ve heard homeschool moms call their Sonlight IG their homeschool brain.
A blessing.
A lifeline.
We’ve even heard them joke that Sonlight Instructor’s Guides do everything but make the coffee!
While the IG offers 36 weeks—an entire school year—of daily, no-prep lessons, it can seem overwhelming (and the big blue binder it comes in is heavy).
Our veteran moms have found ways to lessen any intimidation:
Adapting Instructor Guides to your homeschool style
While the IG is a key component of your homeschool routine and can help you easily create a daily plan, it is not a rigid taskmaster. You don’t have to do something just because it’s scheduled in your IG, or check every box.
As Jen puts it: “The homeschool police do not come if you skip something in the IG. Use it as you need it!”
If organization comes naturally for you, you can absolutely fill in dates and create detailed notes.
But if your family loves variety, your IG is easy to customize:
You can simply cross out what you don’t want to do—you’re the boss!
You can break the IG up into more “manageable” feeling pieces like our mentors mentioned above.
The key is to remember that the guide is there for you, but we’ve made it adaptable, so you can set up your schedule your way.
The homeschool police do not come if you skip something in the IG. Use it as you need it!”—Jennifer Price, Sonlight Mentor & Homeschool Mom
Flexing the Sonlight Schedule Without Breaking It
Plenty of Sonlight families homeschool four days a week instead of five, or use loop or block scheduling.
“With my first child it was easy to teach Day One as scheduled in the IG. With my second child, I learned to flex the schedule and use it more as a checklist. We often followed the schedule horizontally and read an entire book in one day versus breaking it into daily chapters over the course of the week.”
"Plenty of students (and their parents too) may struggle with “switching gears.” This meant Jen started reading more of one book at a time.
“You know their attention, tolerance … if you can work in fewer books a day, but in larger chunks, there's less transition time between things."
Getting to All the Books
Our Sonlight homeschool veterans agreed, there are a lot of ways to pace Sonlight’s literature-based curriculum.
Johna, for instance, uses a 4-day school year schedule, and adds on extra readers during the summer or saves them for evening reading with the whole family. She may save them for summer breaks when traveling in the car, or choose audiobook versions if she’s driving.
“As soon as I switched my mindset from, ‘I have to do all of these,’ to ‘I get to do these,’ my brain was like ‘ohh—now I can do it. It's easier."
Time Organization and Planning Your Homeschool Days
We’ve discussed ways our homeschool veterans make Sonlight content work for them, but what about balancing multiple children? And what if you also work?
Our experienced Sonlight moms have been there.
Balancing Multiple Learners
Our moms are the first to admit that when you homeschool, finding a way to meet all kids’ needs, and giving age-appropriate help can be a challenge.
“I have two that are night owls, so getting them up first thing in the morning to do school was never going to be productive. But I had two other kids who wanted to work in the morning. So I started with one of (them), then kind of worked my way, kid to kid to kid to kid.”
Another benefit of Sonlight is that your students often overhear each other’s Read-Alouds, exposing them to even more books.
“I work 2 1/2 jobs. I have my real job, I have homeschooling, and then I have my mom job all the time. Moms are never off, really. And so yes, I always say I have 2 1/2 jobs.”
So, yes, it is possible to combine work and homeschooling, but again, the key is to stay flexible with instructor guides, scheduling and expectations.
Our veterans also remind us that school doesn’t have to happen just 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
In fact as Jen shared above, sometimes it works best to keep with your kids’ natural early-bird or night-owl rhythms.
“We do school at night on weekdays. That's just something that works better for all of us,” Sunny says. “I was wrapping up school with my 4th grader at 9 p.m. last night. We let our kids sleep in as a result because my husband and I are working during the day.”
Physical Organization In Your Homeschool
Another aspect of homeschooling that can feel daunting is dealing with all the homeschool stuff, like papers, books, and school supplies, especially if you have multiple kids.
That’s just your students’ supplies! As a homeschool parent, you also often have your own paperwork to track.
This is what our homeschool veterans advise:
Paper Organization Magazine holders for notebooks, and if possible, color-coding them by child works well in keeping track of paper products in your homeschool. For worksheets, try color-coded bins.
Teach kids to put all their notebooks and papers away at the end of the day, according to their color.
School and Art Supplies “My oldest was an artist, and so she had to have the right colored pencils and the right kind of erasers,” Jen says. “We very quickly learned that everybody needed their own pink erasers because I just wasn't willing to do battle about who touched the eraser every day.”
She suggests individual soft-sided pencil cases that can clip into three-ring binders. But for Sunny, one group of school supplies generally works better.
“My artsy creative kid does have his own markers and things that he uses for non-school related things, but school supplies all have to come back to one bucket system that we have,” she says. “We found it was just a little bit easier to keep crayons from spreading all over the house if we kept one bucket for everybody. But you do kind of have to play around with that and see what's gonna work well with your kids.”
Your Home Library: Organizing Books Because Sonlight is a literature-based program, there are plenty of books to keep organized. Our veteran moms recommend using clear plastic bins with secure lids.
“They're mouse-proof. They're waterproof. They take up almost no space … you can put them in the corner of a bedroom in just a stack.” —Jen, Sonlight Mom Mentor
Sunny has a different approach:
“I really like the IKEA all the way to the ceiling bookshelves because you can hold so much in those,” she says. “We have from preschool all the way up to level 200 on two of those IKEA bookshelves … so they do hold quite a bit. One of the best things about Sonlight is having that beautiful home library.”
The School Room Our Sonlight veterans point out that you really don’t need a “school room,” especially one that looks like a Pinterest photo. Sonlight encourages “table subjects” and couch subjects,” so really, portability is key.
But how long do you have to hold on to your child’s portfolios?
“I always got a letter back that said ‘thank you for turning this in, your responsibility for this home school year has been completed,” Jen says. “I kept that letter. I trashed everything else.If you are one of those moms who it is the joy of your heart to keep every single paper that ever crossed by your child's hand, then please do. Do not let me discourage you, but for the people who are not quite on that level, I throw everything away.”
For even more organizational tips from veteran homeschool moms, check out the video below.
The Key To Successful Homeschool Organization
Keeping your homeschool organized can feel overwhelming, but the moms we spoke with say the key is to take things one step at a time.
“Just trust the process,” says Johna. “Just do the next thing. Don't worry about what's going to happen in three weeks or in two weeks. You just worry about today knowing that when you get done with today, there's going to be tomorrow and you're going to do the next thing and it's going to be OK. I promise you.”
Having an organized homeschool starts with an organized curriculum. See how Sonlight saves you time and keeps your lesson plans on track.
Spelling tests on Friday, language tests every other Friday, math tests after each unit (usually landing on Friday somehow), science test after each unit (also on Friday)....
If your school experience was like mine, Fridays were usually test days.
In addition to regular, routine tests and quizzes, public schools administer yearly standardized testing, too. In some schools, teachers can spend significant time teaching how to take standardized tests, how to get high scores on those tests, and how to manage stress and anxiety during testing times.
Public school students become accustomed to plenty of testing.
Why Do Public Schools Test So Much?
In a class of 25, it's impossible for a teacher to constantly monitor which skills each student knows without widespread testing. Routine assessments allow teachers to pinpoint exactly where a child is on the learning spectrum. If her class is consistently low in a particular skill, she will be able to adjust her instruction to cover those weak skills. Testing also allows teachers to concretely communicate with parents about how their child is performing in class.
On a larger scale, standardized testing can give schools a picture of how they are doing in comparison to other schools in the nation. This can help schools to identify weak areas and address them. Standardized testing can also help a student’s parents to see weaknesses and strengths and stay informed on their child’s progress without being right beside them all day.
These are a few valid reasons that public schools use a lot of traditional testing methods.
Why Should Homeschoolers Shift Their Mindset on Testing?
Homeschoolers should shift their mindset on testing methods because homeschooling is a totally different method of educating.
Homeschoolers have significantly lower teacher-to-student ratios. In addition, homeschool parents are even more invested than teachers in the endeavor of educating because they are educating their own child. Finally, most homeschoolers use a curriculum that is already developed from beginning to end, so they are constantly building on concepts. If homeschoolers stick with one curriculum company throughout their schooling, they can be fairly certain that there will be minimal, if any, gaps in their child’s education.
Because of this unique combination, homeschoolers simply don’t need testing in the traditional sense. Most homeschool parents work closely enough with their children each day that they will know their child’s weaknesses and strengths. We also don’t have to test masses of children at one time. We are able to assess what a child knows in a one-on-one setting. This is what makes assessing different for homeschoolers.
So If I Don’t Do Traditional Testing, What Should I Do?
When you think of testing, the picture in your mind is probably a child sitting in a desk with paper and pencil and a little anxiety mixed in.
I want to challenge you to shift your mindset from testing to assessing.
Assessing means to evaluate or estimate one’s ability. This is what we are doing constantly, and we usually don’t even know it.
When I watch my daughter work on a gymnastics skill like a cartwheel, I am assessing her ability to accomplish that skill. When she first starts, I will probably say something like, “That was a good try! Keep working on it!” As she keeps trying and progresses, I might say, “Oh, you’ve almost got it! I can tell you’ve been practicing!” When she finally nails the landing, we are going to celebrate, and I’ll probably say something like, “Yes! I knew you’d nail it this time! You’ve got it! Way to work hard!” I have just assessed her ability in that gymnastics skill. If I had handed her a pencil and a piece of paper, and said, “Okay, show me with this pencil and paper that you know how to do a cartwheel,” well, you’d probably call me crazy.
And yet, we tend to think of school only in paper and pencil terms.
If a child can spell a word correctly out loud, must I force him to write it down to know that he can? Of course not! He just spelled it out loud correctly. As homeschoolers, we need to shift our mindset past the traditional testing methods and move toward the methods that best suit our children.
So that’s brings us to the million dollar question:
How do I assess my child?
There are so many ways to assess your child that I couldn’t write them all down if I tried, but let me see if I can give you a short synopsis.
Assess with Oral Narration
Oral narration is an undervalued yet extremely effective and gentle tool.
After reading a passage from a novel or a science lesson, have your child narrate (tell back or summarize) what they read to you. In the early years, you’ll probably need to prompt their narration with some questions, but as your child grows accustomed to the practice, narration will come completely natural, and you and your child will both forget that you are assessing them.
Generally, the practice of oral narration leads to a life of rich discussionbetween you and your child. It also hits those speech and communication goals. In oral narration, you are asking your child to go above simple memory recall and move on to more mature levels of information processing, such as synthesizing, summarizing, and analyzing.
Assess with Projects
Many times after reading a book, I’ll have my daughter create a piece of art that reflects her reading. She has the heart of an artist, so this type of assessment is very exciting for her. She has created some gorgeous works of art as a response to her literature reading. Most recently, she painted a portrait of the award-winning racehorse, Sea Biscuit, after reading his biography. Her attention to detail was stunning, and it showed me so much more than a multiple choice test ever could. From her artwork, I could tell that she lived in Sea Biscuit’s world while she was reading his story.
Another example that comes to mind is when our co-op recently learned about adding money, so we opened a restaurant. The children designed and wrote out their menus. Then, they planned and prepared the opening of their restaurant. They each took turns being customers and waiters and all had plenty of practice adding up the customers’ tickets. They had the time of their life, and the restaurant business kept going long past my assessment time.
Other project-based assessments could include
science projects or experiments
opening a lemonade stand
creating a diorama for history
building a cardboard clubhouse to demonstrate measurement skills
writing a quick book recommendation for a friend
Your imagination is your sole limit when it comes to project-based learning. Most of the time, you’ll find that project-based assessments will cross into multiple academic areas, and you’ll be able to assess a few other skills too.
Of course, the best part about this type of learning is that there is zero anxiety. Your child will not even know that they are being tested. They will just think that Mom and Dad are the best teachers ever. (And you are!)
Assess by Trading Places
There is nothing that shows your knowledge on a certain topic more than having to teach it. Leverage this power of teaching with your kids. Trade places with them and tell them that you’ll be the student while they are the teacher.
If your child can explain a skill to you, you can be sure that they know it. This is a particularly great way to assess math, but it works for any subject.
You can also do this in a more organic way by saying, “Could you teach your sister how to multiply 3 x 4? I’m just so busy right now.” Teaching siblings is a great way to assess knowledge...that is, of course, if the younger sibling is a willing student!
Assess with Paper and Pencil Testing
Are you surprised that I included this method? Believe it or not, I’m not opposed to traditional testing, but I use it sparingly.
There is value in teaching your child how to test well, especially as they get in the upper grades. Your older student will need to know how to take tests, so it’s important to sprinkle in formal assessments as they get older.
However, I would give a little advice: Don’t beat a dead horse. If your child can do three problems correctly, don’t make them answer twenty. Testing with paper and pencil should be purposeful, not busy work, and it should challenge students, especially in higher levels, to think on higher levels, not simply recalling information over and over.
I listed traditional testing last, because I think it should be the last option on our minds, particularly in the younger years. While there is value in it, homeschoolers have the ability to make assessment as exciting as learning, and children should be thrilled by learning, not burdened by it.
If cramming for a test is necessary, your child probably hasn’t really learned the material yet, and I would recommend that you spend a little more time on it. The educational process should be a delightful time in a person’s life. It should be full of wonder and appreciation for all the wonderful things God has given us to marvel. Assessing doesn’t have to ruin that wonder and appreciation.
Imagine going to bed each night without worrying about what to teach in the morning. That's what Sonlight Instructor's Guides offer you!
Homeschooling is a choice that can make a big difference in the overall education of your child. But what happens when you need to consider the needs of multiple children? The fact is most homeschooling families are doing so with multiple children. If you find yourself wondering how to best approach educating more than one learner at home, you are not alone!
The Reality Of Homeschooling Multiple Children
Although it may feel overwhelming at first, homeschooling multiple children is not only doable, but in many instances, it may actually add to your children’s educational experience. Combined learning offers opportunities for discussion and contemplation. Having siblings who can work together may take some of the pressure off of you, as the teacher/parent. Finally, homeschooling multiple ages allows for an overall lifestyle of learning that supports sibling closeness and parent-child relationships.
While there are many benefits, that certainly doesn’t mean that it is easy!
Because we know this is a pressing concern for many homeschoolers, we gathered Sonlight parent mentors from all walks of life, with children of all ages, and asked for their very best tips and tricks for homeschooling multiple ages.
Top Tips For Homeschooling Multiple Ages
We met with several of our Sonlight Homeschool Mentors and asked them to share what has worked best for them in their own homeschools, and in their experiences supporting other homeschool families.
These are their very best tips for thriving while homeschooling multiple children.
1. Use Your Parental Expertise
You know your children best! One important tip is to use this to your advantage.
“Deal with the highest maintenance kid first thing in the day. This should keep the highest energy child calm and focused, and that sometimes helps everybody else do the same. Also, you know who the instigator is in your family. If you keep the instigator within your line of sight, or even within your reach, things can go much more smoothly. You’ll be able to head things off at the pass as behaviors are brewing, rather than letting them fester into something that takes the entire day off the rails.”
2. Use Your Personal Discretionary Time Wisely
Each time you add a child to the homeschooling mix, you will notice less and less discretionary time available for your wants and needs. You will want to be intentional about scheduling and keeping your personal time your own. You will also want to consider how to best use it wisely. Sonlight homeschool mom and Mentor, Amber Severance’s advice went so far as to recommend that on homeschool days, you have an easy hairstyle.
Anything and everything you can do to preserve your own time is essential to maintain your own health and self-care as you homeschool multiple-aged children.
3. Flexibility Is Key
Ask any veteran homeschool mom, and she will likely tell you that the most predictable thing in your homeschool is that there will be interruptions and a need to adjust your plans and schedule. Essentially, the most predictable part of homeschooling multiple children is the unpredictability.
“My top tip for homeschooling with multiple students is to always be adapting and adjusting to what works best for the time. Over the years, this has looked different for us as we have homeschooled with 1, 2, 3, and 4 students. For example, one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas break is to step back. It's a great time to evaluate what you've been doing, if there are any problem spots, and how you might adjust. Just little adjustments sometimes can make a big difference.”
Christie Cook, Sonlight Homeschool Mentor
4. Schedule It All
Many parents homeschooling multiple ages say the secret to their success is scheduling every part of the day, by subject, by child. For example, homeschool mom Johna Lawrence shares,
“I did it by scheduling. When I had all four kids during school, or even just the top three kids, I would schedule one of my oldest kids to play with the youngest while I worked with the other two. They may or may not be in the same subject, but handling two at a time was a lot easier than having four kids asking me five different things. Chart out your day and schedule some bonding time with the older kids to be with the youngest ones to help them read a book, play blocks, anything that helps create some space in your day.”
5. Manage Expectations
Sometimes, the very best thing you can do in your homeschool, no matter how many children you have in your care, is to let go and be realistic about your expectations.
For Sonlight Mentor Amber Severance, one of her most challenging homeschooling times was having her fifth child and then moving within two weeks to live with her parents. She has been homeschooling since her oldest, who is 24, was in preschool, with a 12-year age gap between her oldest and youngest children. She says,
“We made it through by managing expectations. We can talk about scheduling, but part of it is a mental game where you say, this is my life and this is my choice and we're going to accept it, and do our best by God's grace.”
Homeschooling Multiple Ages With Sonlight
We agree with our homeschool mentors and appreciate their sharing so many wonderful tips and hard-won wisdom!
Sonlight is designed to support families homeschooling multiple children in so many ways. A simple example is in our schedule. We help you schedule your homeschool with a well-planned, day-by-day schedule, created to make your homeschool day run smoothly. Sonlight is an excellent choice for homeschool families with multiple children as our program includes these essential components:
Literature-based learning that allows for multiple ages to gather around and read aloud together.
“Couch Subjects" and “Table Subjects” that allow you to clearly delineate which subjects can be tackled as a family and which ones need an individualized approach.
Hands-on, creative supporting resources that are appropriate for a variety of ages.
Learn more about how Sonlight makes homeschooling multiple ages a breeze in this video.
Take a look at the Sonlight catalog. It has helps for combining children along with detailed package descriptions to help you make the best choices. For even more help and advice homeschooling multiple children, please contact our Advisors.
Did you know a winning school year starts in the summer? Summer is a time for rest, vacation, adventure, exploration, and also for planning and gearing up for the new school year. If we approach the summer months with strategic intention, we can lay the groundwork for a more successful school year.
There are five simple summer actions to set your homeschool on a successful trajectory.
1. Review Math and Reading
Throughout the summer, I continue to work on math facts and reading to keep those skills fresh. Although we don't work on these everyday, I make sure that there is enough review throughout the summer that we don’t have to start the school year re-learning everything.
Making math and reading fun throughout the summer will increase your child’s excitement and willingness to review. That's why I recommend playing games, exploring math in real life, and investing in bonus resources like MathTacular! and Summer Readers.
2. Clean Out and Reorganize
If this is your first year homeschooling, your summer to-do list for sure needs to include creating a space for learning and storing school supplies and books.
If you are a returning homeschooler, take time during the summer to clean out, file, and throw away old papers. There is nothing worse than starting a new school year with old student papers and last year’s curriculum still scattered about.
Re-organize your home library and take inventory of your curriculum to make sure you have all you need. If you're using an older program with a younger sibling, consider what consumables you may need. Go through all of your school supplies and remove any broken crayons or dried-up glue.
Declutter closets, shelves, and tables. Reorganize any learning activities and supplements. Newbies and old-timers alike need to make room for new curriculum.
3. Prep Your Curriculum
I learned this tip the hard way. My very first year homeschooling, I did not cut out, print, or prep anything ahead of time. It was a disaster!
If you have anything that needs cutting out, like Sonlight’s Sound Cards for example, or anything that needs to be copied ahead of time, like some of the TOPS science books, do it during the summer to avoid frustration during the school year. To avoid feeling overwhelmed by the planning and preparation, break it up into small jobs over the summer months. Don’t feel like you must get it all done in one sitting.
4. Invest in Yourself
Use the time during the summer to teach yourself. Consider it your own professional development or teacher in-service:
Writing out a schedule or routine for the new year will be immensely helpful by creating a vision and keeping you focused. Think through each child’s needs and the subjects they will be learning. Create a plan that will benefit everyone’s activities and produce a low-stress environment.
By taking advantage of our summers we can set up our family up for a successful school year. Have fun this summer and make memories, but don’t forget to look ahead every once in a while along the way.
Great books are foundational to learning for all ages. Finding a book that has also been made into a movie can take reading to a whole new level in your homeschool. This list of favorite kids books that have also been made into movies is a great way to kick off summer learning.
The Best Reading Lists For All Ages
This summer, we put together lists of favorite books personally recommended by Sonlight homeschool families. Because good books are the foundation of everything we do at Sonlight, we were thrilled to see so many amazing titles, and favorites of homeschoolers everywhere, all in one place.
While compiling these comprehensive catalogs, we noticed that many of these compelling books were also made into wonderful movies or TV/streaming series! Reading a good book, and then watching the movie together as a family, is a great way to inspire reading, discussion, and relationships in your homeschool.
Top Children's Books Also Made Into Entertaining Movies:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a classic American book for children which was first published in 1938. Mr. Popper is a humble house painter who is sent the gift of a male penguin from the great Admiral Drake. The arrival of a second, female penguin means the house is soon alive with 12 penguins! Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a fun and enchanting story for children and parents and can be found in Sonlight's History / Bible / Literature B program.
Nim lives on a remote island in the middle of the ocean, with her father, an iguana named Fred, a sea lion called Selkie, and a turtle named Chica. Wonderful and free, Nim loves her life. But when her father disappears while our sailing and disaster threatens her home and friends, Nim must be braver than she's ever been before.
Katniss Everdeen is a sixteen-year-old girl, strong and an expert in hunting for food to feed her family after the death of her father. In an annual lottery, her younger sister, Prim, is chosen to be a "tribute" and compete in The Hunger Games. Despite the extreme danger and injustice of it all, Katniss volunteers to go instead.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit living a quiet, comfortable life, never traveling further than the area around his hobbit hole. This changes when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of 13 dwarves, come to his home to whisk him away on an important, adventurous journey to "there and back again".
The Fellowship of the Ring, is the first volume in this trilogy. At the core of the story is the fateful power of the One Ring. A magnificent tale of adventure, members of the Fellowship of the Ring are plunged into a perilous quest that sets the stage for an important clash between the powers of good and evil.
These wannabe heroes may look like Bad Guys—after all, there is a wolf, piranha, snake, and shark—but these animals known for their rottenness are committed to doing good deeds, often with hysterical consequences. This cheerily illustrated and cheekily funny book was featured in Sonlight's 2020 Elementary Boys Summer Reading package.
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, four siblings, step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia. Narnia is under the power of the White Witch, eternally frozen. When it seems like hope is lost, the Great Lion, Aslan, returns and brings a great change and a great sacrifice.
Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about how books can feed our souls, no matter how dark our circumstances. Set in 1939 Nazi Germany, a young Liesel Meminger is a foster girl near Munich. She survives by stealing when she finds something she can’t resist—books. She shares these stolen books with neighbors during bombing raids and with the Jewish man hiding in her basement.
Lucky for Sophie, the BFG is a sweet and bumbling giant. But when Sophie hears that the other, more threatening giants are heading off to England to kidnap more children, she and the BFG are going to stop them once and for all.
The timeless story of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte, the wise and maternal spider who saves him. This book has touched hearts for more than 50 years. You can find it in Sonlight's History / Bible / Literature B and B+C program.
The story of a mouse, a rat, and a girl who embark on a journey that leads them into a terrible dungeon, up to a beautiful castle, and, eventually, into each other's lives. A kind of fairy tale that shows anyone can be a hero, and that there is darkness and light in all of us.
A perilous journey of courage, adventure, and survival for a small band of rabbits seeking the safety of Watership Down. The characters and the culture they share are engaging and meaningful for readers of all ages.
A group of children with extraordinary gifts and talents are recruited by the mysterious Mr. Benedict. Their goal? To infiltrate an evil institute run by his reprehensible twin brother.
Make Movie Night Fun And Educational For The Whole Family
There are many benefits to watching movies together as a family. Here are just a few:
Movies can help introduce new ideas. Seeing it on the screen can be a wonderful way to expose your child to new ideas, places, and characters. Movies can also help kids learn about different values and cultures.
It's relaxing and fun! Watching a movie together is an easy way to relax with your child. There's virtually no prep and it allows you to simply enjoy some time together.
Make movie night a special, fun, memory-making activity (and add in a little learning too) with our list of favorite children's books made into movies!
From this list, what movies have you seen?
We'd love to hear which you liked better—the book or the movie? And share any additional books made into movies we may have missed that you'd like to see added to this list!
Whether you read the book before or after watching the movie, Sonlight has hundreds of titles your home library needs! Request a print catalog to dive more deeply into what Sonlight can offer your family.
The homeschool police do not come if you skip something in the IG. Use it as you need it!”
