One of the beauties of homeschooling is learning together as a family.
As our children get older, I’m always looking for ways to gather everyone around the table to learn a common subject together.
History continues to be a great source of interest and unity in our homeschool. Every afternoon, we mix our ages and stages to enjoy a beautiful blend of stories, facts, maps, and watercolors.
(Just so you know, I received Sonlight 100 in exchange for a series of blog posts that contain my honest opinion. This is one way that I can help provide for our family while sharing helpful information with you!)
Good news! Sonlight D/E + Sonlight 100 pair well together.
With Sonlight, elementary students and junior high students can study the same historical time period, while being challenged appropriately.
This past year, I taught Sonlight 100 to my 7th grader and Sonlight D to my 4th and 1st graders.
We didn’t intend for things to work out as well as they did. We were just plugging along with our beloved Sonlight D studies of Early American History when we received a wonderful opportunity for Vivienne – our 7th grader – to begin Sonlight 100. I knew she needed more of a challenge, but I didn’t want to send her off into another historical time period or topic. Sonlight 100 was the perfect solution to our puzzle.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
“The abundance of sea-fish are almost beyond believing.” – New Englander 1630 from The Landmark History of the American People Volume 1
Viv tackled the Sonlight 100 curriculum while the rest of us – the 4th and 1st grader – continued to work through Sonlight D.
The beauty occurred when we realized that Viv’s Sonlight 100 history correlated perfectly with Sonlight D.
In the mornings, Viv read the Sonlight 100 assignments by herself – digging more deeply into the historical time period – and then joined us in the afternoon for tea, snacks, Sonlight D history and read-alouds.
Often, I would read the day’s selection aloud and all of the children would watercolor a scene in their art books from the reading – whether it was a prayerful George Washington, New England fish, or Sacajawea’s sweet papoose, Pompey.
While they worked, Viv would talk about her Sonlight 100 reading. Most of the time, she contributed quirky and lesser-known facts, which added interest to our studies and enriched our understanding of the era like, “Did you know that Benedict Arnold was fascinated by shoes?” and “Once, James Madison lost his hat and wouldn’t leave his room for two days until someone got him a big, fur hat he could wear.”
I LOVED that we could still share our history reading together and I plan to continue this plan next year.
Sonlight 100 spans early and modern history, so you can partner it with Sonlight D, Sonlight E, or Sonlight D/E.
(In our case, because Viv didn’t begin Sonlight 100 until mid-year, she’ll be completing the curriculum in the fall of 2018. It just so happens that when she picks it up again, she’ll be very close to the time-period of Sonlight E, Modern American History, that my 5th and 2nd grader will be exploring.)
