Homeschool History Curriculum

Sonlight

Pros

Sonlight is a complete program that uses real books instead of textbooks. Everything is scheduled out for you on a daily basis  so you can enjoy the fun part of homeschooling…interacting with your kids instead of spending lots of time pre-reading and prepping. You have a choice between a 4 or 5 day program too.

The History books they choose are read in a chronological order along with a nonfiction book that chronicles the history. So you read about the American Revolution in addition to reading a historical fiction book with a  great story that helps you remember the history.

Then you can mark things on a map to learn geography from the books that you are reading. For the American Revolution, you would be marking all the historical cities and towns on the East coast.

The writing assignments/dictation  are pulled from the time period that you are studying and the books you are reading. You are given a summary of each chapter, questions,  vocabulary,  geography, cultural relevance issues etc-all the in the instructors notes.

Lastly, you can choose a science that relates to the same time period so history and science overlap too.

Cons

We have used Sonlight for 6+ years and I’m so thankful a friend recommended it our first year of homeschooling. My boys love to read and have so many great memories of reading together as a family. And they test well on standardized tests for those of you who are curious.

Other History Programs

Veritas Press

Strategies for Using ALEKs Math

1. The initial assessment takes about ½ hour. If your student get frustrated, just have them answer that they “haven’t learned that concept” yet. Or have them take the assessment over a 2-3 day period in smaller chunks. The program will save everything and pick up where your child left off.

2. The student can ask for an explanation of a concept while working on ALEKs, have them print out the explanation page and keep a notebook to study from. For High School level student, these notes should be copied or summarized into a notebook to be used for later study.

3. I personally, let my student use the measurement conversion table on the assessments. I have chosen to do this because I don’t want them to spend their time memorizing this information when it is readily available as an adult.

4. When you need a hard-copy work sample-go to the the top bar and click on “worksheet”. This will generate a worksheet with several different types of problems similar to what your student has been working on. An answer key will also be generated for you the next time they log into ALEKs.

5. When deciding how much to have your student complete each day…take the number of concepts they need to learn (look at the pie chart after the assessment is complete) and divide this be the number of school weeks you have left in the school year. My son does all of his review on Fridays. And he usually has to complete about 3 items each day. This will vary for each child.

6. Plan on your student “losing” some of what they learned after each assessment. 5 steps forward, 2 steps back. This is expected and normal so tell them ahead of time that they won’t pass everything on the first try.