I took part, as a former Sonlight user and emeritus creator of the group, in a lovely Zoom conversation yesterday with some of the ladies from the New Sonlight Curriculum Users UK group on facebook.
The first home educator I ever met in person recommended Sonlight to me, and we ordered our first curriculum package (K for Kindergarten, as it was then) in 1999/ 2000.
Sonlight is an American Christian programme and, as such, I might not have picked it for my first choice, had I been non-religious as I am now. Having said that, I am so very glad that I did. With the exception of a very few titles that are written from a very conservative and/ or evangelical perspective, we enjoyed every one. In fact, we laughed, cried and passionately loved our Sonlight books. The highlight of our home education years was ‘Unboxing Day’, when the package from Sonlight Curriculum arrived.
When I took a turn towards Judaism, however, some of the books did begin to present as problematically skewed to Christianity, for obvious reasons.
Having wrestled over many years with my dual heritage, I would have liked to include more specifically Jewish titles, but I do not in any way regret the years of wonderful Sonlight books.
One of the things we learned along the way was that, as a literature-based curriculum, it was possible to read and discuss each title from our own perspective and frame of reference. Unlike many other American, Christian curriculum options, Sonlight is not scripted, although it does offer suggestions for questions and discussion.
Would I still recommend Sonlight to new home educators? Yes, I think I would, although I might steer secular home educators, or those home educating from another religious perspective, toward Sonlight’s secular programme Bookshark, which from what I can see, is the same selection of books, minus the specifically religious ones and, although I haven’t seen the Teacher’s Guides (or are they called Instructors’ Guides these days?) I would imagine that the questions, notes and suggested discussion prompts are more neutral than Sonlight’s (although again, I would emphasise that Sonlight is really quite impressively intelligently worded and constructed considering it is a religious curriculum).
Last night’s group Zoom will hopefully be repeated, perhaps on a regular basis for the benefit of new home educators as well as us ‘oldies’, so if you are interested in using Sonlight please do join the fb group!
Little Bears Home Education 