Friday, March 24, 2017

The Sonlight Question

If you've ever considered the historical-literature based Sonlight Curriculum, now is the time to act.

I am looking into it RIGHT NOW for my daughter's ninth grade year, since her return to public school has knocked most of the self-motivation and intrinsic joy in learning out of her and I'm thinking of pulling her out immediately before the damage continues. Her GPA is a 3.17 and she just brought home a report card with a D in English, having gotten an F on her past three essays (which she didn't bother to write because she didn't think she would do well on them).

I'm looking now at repeating her ninth grade year, given that she just turned 15 on March 10th, and saying that her birthday is the start of her school year. I would love to do Oak Meadow because it would give her a transcript and a high school diploma but it is incredibly expensive at $2000 a course.

At the end of last year, Natalie told me that the Renaissance & Reformation Main Lesson Block was her favorite because of all of the historical fiction. So I think Sonlight is a reasonable option. I'm looking at


This comes to $1328.63 and from now until March 29th they have an offer where you pay just 25% as a down payment and pay off the rest in installments over twelve months. This is a great time to jump ahead and get next year's curriculum! Or, if you are like me, change curriculum options and give Sonlight a shot.

They recommend Rosetta Stone for foreign language (she's already taking German) and our public library has it for free. We also have the Craft Studio at the university, the activities that my homeschool co-op already does (including Structured Word Inquiry on Friday mornings and Farm Day on Wednesdays), plus the many community resources for enrichment that come from living in a college town.

Honestly, I don't really care what she learns as long as she is organized, self-motivated, enthusiastic, well-rounded, and gets to know herself as a learner as well as how to work well in a community with others. That does NOT appear to be the result of her public school experience, even though our local high school is rated highly. She did skip a grade when she was younger and I'm wondering if she just started high school too immature (I had her start first grade late, as Waldorf does, and a later school jumped her a grade to put her where they thought she should be). I wish I had listened to my gut and given her a "gap year" before high school instead of trying to figure out in March how to deal with this!!!!

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