Sonlight Week 35

Wow, it is all most here. We have been working so hard and we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Week 35 brought us....well, a mixture of things such as finishing Wild Places, The Apple and the Arrow, more reading about space. We read ahead on a few things so we can have a super easy last week. We have the last few reading lessons left, a few more pages in Explode the Code, and reading about Newton.

I went to a yard sale this past weekend. They are so rare and even though we are leaving, I couldn't help myself. I scored a game called Make It and Break It Extreme. Was I happy! It is a building game that uses logic skills. You use the blocks to create the pictures on the cards. We played this all week (without the timer).

Reflections on our year:
It has been a good year. I started Sonlight Core A with some worries. I was worried that the books were going to be too difficult for J. Some of the reading material would not be books that I would use for a kindergarten class if I had to pick them myself. This was good as it expanded our reading on multiple levels, J enjoyed every book that we read, some she asked to read again.

The language arts program was a tad to young for J so I supplemented with sight word readers and higher levels of Explode the Code. We finished book 1, 1 1/2, and 2. This program along with Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt was a good fit for J. She still enjoyed to do the little readers that came along with Sonlight as well as the letter pages.

We used Horizons Math and I was also worried about how fast the program worked. I supplemented some but found that I didn't have to do too much. J liked the lessons, working with the number lines for addition and subtraction. So, we will probably continue with this math program. If there was any area that I felt needed review, I would just focus on it.  It is light on the review, so I kept that up myself.

Two things I would change about Sonlight Core A would be the Science program, to some extent, and that I wish it was digital. J enjoyed reading The Children's Encyclopedia and couldn't believe that we read the entire book. But some of the experiments weren't what we expected and I guess I just wish we had more. Some of the items were also hard to find for us so we had to skip them altogether. But I have to remember that J is only in kindergarten so I can't expect too much for that age. As for being digital, I really think that this would be a great benefit to those who live overseas. As much as I cherish reading from an actual book (I will never want to totally replace that), digital only makes sense with suitcase restrictions and such.

Overall, we have loved this year of Sonlight and I hope to continue on our homeschooling adventure with the next core. My only concern being that we will spend the next year home, with access to libraries and I feel we should do some American studies while we have the chance. I haven't quite worked that out in my brain but if you have suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Thanks you for joining in our adventure of Core A. I hope to see you next school year.