Se7en + 1 Have Been Boxed Again, Thank-You Sonlight…

It’s been quiet over here, what can I say… we have been boxed and there are a number of people over here immersed in books. As most of you know, we are avid Sonlighters and from time to time we get boxed, which means we have read through our stash of Sonlight books and order the next level up…

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Now I am not the best at ordering school books, trying to co-ordinate eight kids and their accumulated reads is pretty much mission impossible. Every year I delay the inevitable order as long as I possibly can. A couple of weeks back our kids declared a mutiny and began school… they were right of course, summer appears to have come to an end. Little did they know that I had placed their order. We astonished the delivery men with shouts of joy as their school books arrived. The books were piled in the corner… until the father person got home… to share the heady joy!!! But then we had guests for dinner and …

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After they went home our kids just couldn’t wait another moment…

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Our teens dived in – don’t tell me kids don’t love school!!!

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Someone I know stayed up way after 1am reading her way through her brother’s history Encyclopaedia.

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And the books stayed neat and piled on the dresser for about a whole ten minutes… while the packaging was rolled up to make our Sonlight snail…

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And much as I love our Instructor’s Guides I really don’t enjoy filling those files…

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But there is no holding back a Sonlight veteran and with a flurry of pages… my kids had their files in shape and good to go in minutes…

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And our crate-shelf that has been filled with just library books for the past couple of weeks is back to being our current school shelf… each child has a crate with their current school reads in there. And our days are now called school days. To an outsider our school days look pretty much like our days of summer… we gather round the table for breakfast, read together for a while, work on a project together and then the kids drift off and work on their own projects… we gather again for lunch and read a whole lot more. Perhaps the biggest difference between our school and non-school days is that for 36 weeks of the year we read Sonlight books and the other weeks of the year we read just about every book we can find in the library.

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Now I always forget to get something – did I mention I am galactically bad at ordering our books without losing my mind… well one child is missing a history book, we should get by. But another was elated to discover that he did not get his language arts instructor’s guide… I am pretty stranded without it. He is thrilled, it means he gets to read through his pile of books without care in the world… I might have liked him to do a little more application. But lets face it, it is not nearly as bad as the year I forgot all their Instructor’s Guides!!! And since we are back in school, it is probably time to share a couple of homeschool posts… over the next few weeks…

24 Replies to “Se7en + 1 Have Been Boxed Again, Thank-You Sonlight…”

  1. How fun!! What new cores are you working with this year? I know my oldest daughter would love that visual history of the modern world, Churchill and basically any book dealing with WWII. She went to London without me when she was 12 and was the only one of her school group who wanted to tour churchills war rooms. Luckily one of the teachers indulged her and just the two of them went. I always enjoy your posts!

  2. We absolutely LOVE Sonlight – my kids go crazy over the books as well. We took a couple months break while we were moving, but we are back into it on Monday. Not sure who is more excited about the readers – them or me!

  3. Hi Dana… Oh how lovely to hear from you!!! I started typing this comment and got to hood #4 and realised this could be a whole post – but who wants to know what each of my kids are doing!!! My oldest three have had a learning explosion and are all off and studying new and wonderful things… and they have just added Sonlight cores to their daily rhythm. The Core you are asking about is Modern History… Hood#1 is doing Core300 and we are all immersed in the fabulous reference books… it is going to be an amazing year. Hood #2 is doing core100 and there are tons of new books that I have been reading on the quiet. My kids have no idea how lucky they are to have such amazing books for school. So lovely to hear from you and hope you have a great weekend nearly there!!!

  4. Oh Jennifer, I know exactly what you mean, luckily there is a schedule or we would try and read everything in the first week. As our kids get older they read more and more independently… I have to read all their books on the side… this “getting an education” of the homeschool mom is very time consuming, not to mention fantastic!!! Hope you have a great day!!!

  5. Hi, we can relate to the excitement that we all had when our curriculum arrived, you’d swear I had ordered the best toys in the world 🙂 . We aren’t doing Sonlight , we are doing Konos but can completely relate to the nerves when placing the bulk order to make sure we have ordered everything…..

  6. Oh Cat, don’t be in awe… parenting in general is about survival… I am just as in awe of mom’s who get their kids to school in the morning – I know I just could NOT do it!!! I cannot fathom lunches packed and actual shoes on their feet and by a certain time every single day… I salute you!!! And I have a feeling that the “grass is always greener…” Hope you are all having a fun weekend!!!

  7. Hay Cindy, Good to hear from you… No wonder folks think home-school kids are crazy. Our Sonlight books are literally our families treasures. The one thing that nobody will part with ever… Hope you are having a great weekend!!!

  8. Thank you for sharing! This is the post I’ve been looking for. 🙂 So, is Hood #1 doing Core 300 and SL Psychology too? My #1 isn’t interested in it, but maybe one of ours will be…or maybe I will just have to get the book for me. Looking forward to more homeschool posts. Lillian P.S. you should have mail soon.

  9. Hi there Lilian, Yes he is doing Core300W and Psychology…Psychology is a lot of work, but fascinating and he is going to fly through it. I think I may write a post about what everyone is doing – it was the most asked question, after I wrote this post… and then you can see how I scatter the college courses into their high school curriculum… and thank you so much for the email, we are watching the mailbox!!! Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend.

  10. I would love a post about what everyone is doing! Give lots of details, please! One math question: has your Singapore/ Miquon combination worked well for all your kids, whether math is easy for them or a real struggle to understand? Thanks!

  11. Happy times! I am also wondering how you specifically keep their worksheets/schedules/workbooks together for daily work? Do you use a smaller binder per child? In your other posts about organizing for a year of SL you mentioned popping goodies into their “file”. I was wondering if you use an actual file folder for them each week, a binder, or pockets in your three notebooks? Thank you for every post — you have been such an encouragement to us!

  12. Oh! And do you purchase new IGs and activity sheets every year, even for the cores, language arts and sciences you already have?

  13. Oh Lillian… Math… math… math… sigh… my gang love to hate math!!! When they are doing it and concentrating and getting it done they love it… but to get them there is a little bit of a challenge. They do on the most part find it easy and tend to breeze through, so I don’t stress too much about it. When they need it for something, then they learn it. I will add what they do for math into the post… Thanks for asking, the more questions you ask the better the post will be!!! Have a great week!!!

  14. Hi Lecia, We do buy new cores for our kids each year… If I had just one or two kids I would probably re-use them… but with eight, we upgrade and buy any fresh books each time… We use the IG pages to tick off and leave notes and so on… kind of a “proof of work done” should we ever be asked for school records. Otherwise they each have a huge file with the years work in them and then they have a small binder for a couple of weeks work and any extra notes and things. I am going to write a post for Lillian about what each of our kids is doing for school and hopefully this will clear up some of your questions…. Meanwhile feel free to ask away, I love answering questions!!! Thanks so much for stopping by and your kind words. Hope you have a great week ahead!!!

  15. Thank you se7en. We have not done core 300 but I may have to go and get some of those books. I have done core 100 a few years ago, but will be doing it once again next year! Have a lovely week!

  16. Hay Luke, Thank you… You have to know that we absolutely love Sonlight, totally the best day/week of the year is the year we get flooded with new school books!!! Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a fabulous week!!!

  17. Hay Dana, There were quite a few new books in core 100… and they are fabulous, nearly all of them I put aside to read myself on the quiet!!! I tell you not much school is getting done as I read my way through all these books!!! You have a good week too!!!

  18. Love, love, love your blog!!! It’s so wonderful to see how your days go and so inspirational. I was wondering how you handle the kids trying to read ALL the books before you start. I know my kids start reading some of the books that are scheduled and I wonder how you handled this? I know, I know…what a horrible “problem” to have, right??

  19. Oh Emm, Thank you so much, so glad to hear that you enjoy your visit over here… Hmmm good question!!! We have very specific school bookshelves… and my kids are only allowed to dig and delve in the years below them… and the better they read, the further they are along the school journey and the larger the number of shelves that are available for them to read their way through. That being said, once my kids are reading they read every single reader/read-aloud on the first day scheduled. It would never occur to my kids to read a book a chapter a day… in a sitting is the only way!!! Otherwise I swamp them with books and at least one evening is spent in the library choosing new books for the week… and everyone reads everyone else’s books… so se7enty books a week and they pretty much read all their own and everyone below them in ages books too… Their is a reading hierarchy going on over here that I had never thought of before!!! Great question, and wish you all the best on your home-school journey.

  20. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question! If you don’t mind I have one more…You mention you let the kids read the whole book in one day that is scheduled for a chapter a day. What to you do with the rest of the days that are scheduled for that book? ie…most of the books are scheduled over two weeks so what do you do for that two weeks? Thanks!

  21. Hi Emm, again… So happy to answer your questions… they do get to read their book on the day, but they cannot start the next book in the schedule until it is scheduled and until they have done some sort of project associated with the book: created a newspaper page about it, or baked something they saw in the book or made something or played something, I am very relaxed about “book reports” I don’t mind what shape or form they take, they can even just tell me about the book if they like. Usually they love the books enough to wander off and do something without me actually asking them too. I know, it sounds a little mean to make them wait, but for my kids that are fluent readers, there are so many bazillions of books to read and they do read at least a book a day, everyday… the fatter the better. Which is why I am so glad we live only a block or two from the library… hope that helps, have a fun weekend!!!

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