Why Sonlight?

Sonlight is literature based so its a lot of reading with suggested supporting activities and not as many worksheets as other curriculums. They have a pretty good compilation of reasons to use SL on their website.

These are my reasons:
1) They had preschool options when I was first looking, which were difficult to come by with other large curriculum providers. Also, the preschool packages are relaxed, no curriculum, just recommended reading. So, that’s how we started and its been working out, so why change it?

2) The packages with instructors guides! They have done all the work for you. While a lot of people choose to supplement and move things around, this momma is gonna be pretty happy not to have to do very much planning on a day to day or week to week basis. Just follow the directions!

3) The investment: Since it’s literature based, you are actually investing in books that you will either keep on your shelves or be able to resell easily. Not just textbooks, consumables, and non-mainstream volumes that are only sold through the curriculum provider. So, even if we decide not to continue with SL in later years, we will still have spent our money on materials that for the most part haven’t lost their value.

4) Recommendations and Hand-me-Downs: Since I bought the first preschool package (P3/4), I’ve had multiple people give/sell me random pieces/books/materials for the next years. As I’ve been collecting the pieces in small increments, it doesn’t seem so expensive (and when I get them discounted, that’s even better). It’s also been good to discuss strategies and how other people used the curriculums with their families.

I’ve found it very difficult to “sample” curriculums. There isn’t an easy way to try a semester to see how it works. There may be something out there that would be better for my family, but its so hard to discover it. Sonlight does offer a money back guarantee, which I suppose was one of the reasons I was tempted to try them first.