I quit!

I have never quit a curriculum before but I am now.

Sonlight Language Arts and Readers for First Grade you are just not working for us and because we homeschool and have the freedom to do what we want, I am going to put you back on the shelf and make life soooo much easier for myself and Courtney. Adios!

My problem with Sonlight is that they had a book that we read, but everyday, they would put in about 10 new words that Courtney didn't know.  I was going through every Sunday night and preparing all these new words for the week. I had about 30-40 new words per week!  I would then teach them all to her Monday and review them all week long, I thought then she would know them and know the meanings when we got to them in her stories.  This was working, but taking too much time and it wasn't fun.  I could teach her the words as we go, but I thought that would break the story up too much.  What would you think yip, yap, nab, gab, quip, dibs would mean if you got to them??

Like you can see, these weren't words you used every day either.  She could easily read the words, but I think it was too much. Too many odd meanings, too many words, too many rules to remember on how to spell them (such as "hill" having two l's, sometimes she gets her b's and d's backwards). I was getting frustrated because she wasn't learning all of this. The stories were also very odd and sometimes I had to think about what they were trying to say, Courtney wasn't understanding them at all.

Plan B:  We are going to continue to work hard on Phonics (which I was doing in addition to reading!) and work on those words more.  Then for reading, we are just going to take books off our own bookshelf and read them! I am going to read to her some (which I didn't have time for earlier, but she was always begging me to do) and then we are just going to find the Level 1 readers and the simple Dora books and start reading  those.  We are even going to visit the library about once a week and get new books.  If we see words we don't know, we will talk about them and probably practice writing them.  She knows enough phonics that she can sound out MANY words, so I think this will work great.

I think this is a much better plan that Courtney and I will enjoy more.  As I was told by a fellow homeschooling mom, kindergarten is about reading and making sure they understand what they read, not about having spelling lists and making sure they know every word in the story.  That is exactly what I needed to hear! We start our new plan today!