About Me
- Joyce Howerton
- We have lived in Romania for 16 years now. We have 6 kids. The top photo of our family is the day we met the twins, just before their 4th birthday. We were granted custody of them on their 5th birthday.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Homeschoolers
I am thinking of making a curriculum switch. Any homeschoolers out there feel free to give me some input. I am using a mixture right now simply because I received a lot of free stuff but I am not happy with what I am doing. It takes a lot of planning and work. I have been looking at a Sonlight catalog and so far am impressed with what they have to offer. They have a lot of reading which I like and it is all planned out for you which I like. I think the biggest draw back is the price but education is expensive. So, I guess I would just like to hear from someone who uses Sonlight or has heard about it and can recommend it. I always start planning for next school year around this time because I have to get it ordered so it gets to my parents before they come in the spring. I would greatly appreciate any input.
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We knew parents in S. Korea using this curriculum and weren't very impressed with the result. On the positive side there was much less work for the mom. On the negative side, the curriculum does little to develop higher level thinking skills. The only students we thought that it worked well for were unusually self-motivated ones. The kind of kid who looks up info in the encyclopedia for fun.
This is the curriculum my mom used.It was actually developed for missionary kids and ex-patriot kids in the 1800's so this school has a over 100 years of experience in helping mom's abroad. All the lessons are planned for you and at a certain level the lesson manuals are written to the student, which teaches them to study on their own. There's also a reuse program so that you can reuse old materials with younger kids
http://www.calvertschool.org/home-school/
It's a really balanced curriculum that is very strong on teaching kids to write. The downside, unless something's changed is that there is no Bible --so you have to supplement that, and my mom said that when she was finishing up with this curriculum that they were starting to introduce evolutionary elements. Obviously many would object to this. I think that there is a positive twist to it, in the sense that it gives you an opportunity to teach your kids that not everything they read and hear is true and it gives you an opportunity to teach them how to deal with lies presented as truth, but again you'd probably have to supplement with some anti-evolutionary material. This curriculum is probably what we'll use although that is still quite a ways in the future yet. : )
Oops my memory failed me. I just read on line that Calvert developed their program in 1907, not the 1800s. Still that's a lot of time to perfect it. :)
You might find the Carnival of Homeschooling helpful in finding what curriculum other homeschool families use.
Good luck.
Joyce,
Sonlight is absolutely fantastic (of course, I'm crazy biased [smile]).
I grew up as one of the guinea pigs for Sonlight, and it's only been improved since then. As for moms who use it, I'm not one. First, because I'm not female, and second, because I'm still waiting for my kids to arrive. But Sonlight is the best.
In fact, they guarantee it. So, you should at least give it a shot (since it's completely risk-free).
If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask. I probably won't have the answers, but there are ways to get in touch with people who do. [smile]
Sonlight is not for everyone, but you should consider it.
~Luke
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