We will be starting our third school year with Sonlight Curriculum next month and I thought it might be helpful for anyone who is new to Sonlight to see how I organize everything for the year. (Which by the way, if you're planning to buy Sonlight for the first time, here's my rewards code: BZ20321238. When you register for a new Sonlight account and use my Rewards ID code, I will be awarded points for your first order and you will receive a $5 discount on your first order of $50 or more.)
My organization system for our curriculum is pretty simple. In the picture below you can see our school bookshelf. The bottom shelf is what we use for our Sonlight and I have it organized by category. Sonlight provides color coded stickers for each Core and that's what you see on the bottom spine of each of the books. Read Alouds are grouped together, as are Science, History, etc. It's easy to pull the books off the shelf for the week and I just pile them up near my teaching chair so that they are within easy reach.
Carlee completed her first year of Sonlight this past spring.
She is wearing my cap from Kindergarten graduation as well as the dress my mom made me. So special!
She is wearing my cap from Kindergarten graduation as well as the dress my mom made me. So special!
For my teaching notebook this is how I organize it. I like to use a 1/2" binder to keep 3 weeks' worth of lesson plans in and I keep the rest in the big binder that comes with our Core. To help me stay on track, I printed off a month at a glance lesson plan. I have each week of Sonlight noted on the side and the only other thing I keep track of are the math lessons.
Next I have the actual lesson plans from Sonlight. This year I thought it would be a good idea to cut out all of the timeline stickers and paper clip them to each week. That way they are ready to go.
I don't always work in the order given. Okay, rarely, should I say, did I this past year. For us it worked out better to do several chunks of read alouds (or perhaps another subject) and to keep up with the other daily lessons and then to save science for our last day of school each week. I just check each box off as we get it completed.
I should also mention that for the past couple of years it has worked for us to do all of our school Monday-Thursday and leave Friday as a catch up day. It might need to be a day to get a math lesson done or a day for me to go grocery shopping or to go to other appointments. It also allows me to *try* to redeem the house since it has a tendency to fall apart by Thursday. I hope to be able to do this schedule again this year but I have a feeling we'll need Fridays to catch up on school work for sure. With a new baby we just might need that extra day.
I then just follow the sequence listed in the lesson plans and have Language Arts next (for both grades)...
And Science completes the week.
I also feel that it's very important for our children to be memorizing throughout the year. They memorize numerous verses for our church's AWANA program, but I like them to memorize poetry as well. Children have an amazing capacity to memorize (much more than me!) and I want to capitalize on that and give them good solid poetry to memorize.
I print a list of poems for each of them (they are the same for each child) and they just read them daily on their own. I have chosen one for each month. Some will be memorized in a shorter amount of time than that and some may take that long since this year they have a few longer ones.
Next I have the actual lesson plans from Sonlight. This year I thought it would be a good idea to cut out all of the timeline stickers and paper clip them to each week. That way they are ready to go.
I don't always work in the order given. Okay, rarely, should I say, did I this past year. For us it worked out better to do several chunks of read alouds (or perhaps another subject) and to keep up with the other daily lessons and then to save science for our last day of school each week. I just check each box off as we get it completed.
I should also mention that for the past couple of years it has worked for us to do all of our school Monday-Thursday and leave Friday as a catch up day. It might need to be a day to get a math lesson done or a day for me to go grocery shopping or to go to other appointments. It also allows me to *try* to redeem the house since it has a tendency to fall apart by Thursday. I hope to be able to do this schedule again this year but I have a feeling we'll need Fridays to catch up on school work for sure. With a new baby we just might need that extra day.
I then just follow the sequence listed in the lesson plans and have Language Arts next (for both grades)...
And Science completes the week.
I also feel that it's very important for our children to be memorizing throughout the year. They memorize numerous verses for our church's AWANA program, but I like them to memorize poetry as well. Children have an amazing capacity to memorize (much more than me!) and I want to capitalize on that and give them good solid poetry to memorize.
I print a list of poems for each of them (they are the same for each child) and they just read them daily on their own. I have chosen one for each month. Some will be memorized in a shorter amount of time than that and some may take that long since this year they have a few longer ones.
I guess that's about it when it comes to organizing our Sonlight. It's pretty basic, mostly because Sonlight is already so well laid out. However, I thought some of these things might be helpful for anyone starting off with Sonlight this year.Let me know if you have any questions!
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