Sonlight Blog Party --- Choosing Curriculum

Welcome to my second installment of the Sonlight's 25th Anniversary celebration.  Today's fun topic is how to choose curriculum.  As always you can read how others have chosen their curriculum or even why they chose Sonlight on the Sonlight Blog.

Choosing what tools to help you educate your kiddos can be tricky.  How I got started was determining what my educational style was.  Once I knew HOW I wanted to teach, figuring out what to teach was fairly easy.  the funny thing was I always knew I wanted lots of books in our home, LOTS!  I wanted my kiddos to have my love for reading.  I also knew that I needed something to aid my visual learners with their math.  The funny thing is, as much as I curicculum shop, our history and math purchases always remain the same.  Sonlight is our history core and Math-U-See is our go to for math.  Science and some language arts do get tweaked as needed to meet. The needs of each individual child.

So how did I choose Sonlight?  I actually chose Sonlight about two years before we even started homeschooling.  I always suspected I would need to homeschool, especially my visiual artistic son, John Robert.  When he was four I found Sonlight and fell in love with the books. The Charlotte Mason educational philosophy was one that I wasn't familiar with, but my love of books was drawing me to that style naturally. I didn't want my kiddos bored to death with dry textbooks the way that I was in school. I wanted them to love reading and being read to.  For us, Sonlight's history and book selection has been the perfect fit.

Why did I share all of that?  I want to show that choosing what to use to educate your child is a very personal thing.  The process starts off with using what the parents like and is slowly adjusted, re-adjusted, and tweaked to meet the needs of each child as they advance in their educational career.  The curriculum choices can be overwhelming, so the parents need to start off with some things to help them in the process.  Have a goal, what do YOU want your child to learn?  Know your child's learning style and be ready to teach them in the way that helps them learn the most.  Finally, give them books, lots of books to encourage active thinking on their own.

 Using that three step process our family returns to Sonlight year after year, for four years now.  I've actually just ordered our books for next year. We love our Sonlight books because they meet the needs of our family.  Choosing curriculum can be tricky.  I'm so thankful for Sonlight and their products helping me to meet my goals for educating my family.  We've been on this journey for four years now, and thanks to Sonlight, the kiddos and I don't want to stop!