Story behind WHY we switched from Build Your Library & Torchlight to Sonlight Homeschool Curriculum

I LOVE all 3 of these literature-based homeschool curriculum companies! We are currently using Sonlight, and in this video I detail the events that led to this switch.
#sonlight
Sonlight Referral Link ($10 off orders over $100, first time customers only):
www.sonlight.com/?awraf=17F10...
My Book Channel (Angie Henderson): / @bookmama26
Build Your Library: buildyourlibrary.com/
Torchlight: torchlightcurriculum.com/torc...
Sonlight: sonlight.com
Equipment used:
Camera: amzn.to/3uCA4gd
Editing Software: Adobe Premiere Pro
Small tripod: amzn.to/3wIVSYX
Ring light: amzn.to/3fw7vga
Music: KZbin Free Library
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Hi! I’m Angie, my kids ages are 8, 6, 4, and 4. On this channel I enjoy sharing my serious love for all things homeschool! You can expect videos on homeschool curriculum (flip-throughs, and reviews), book hauls, and any tips and tricks I have picked up over the past 4 years. Excited to have you following along!!
NOTE: Some of the links above may be affiliate links. If you purchase through the link that I have provided, I may receive a small commission. There will not be an additional charge to you, I appreciate your support!
Where to find me!
EMAIL [e-mail]
GOODREADS / angie
INSTAGRAM / angiesciencemama

[@ProjectHappyHome]

As a secular homeschooler, we started our first year with Bookshark and the handholding was the BEST. Honestly, even though we’ve been eclectic mishmosh and BYL users for the past 5 years, I still look at Bookshark longingly every now and again. With littles running around at the same time, a fully scripted program is such a relief. Always good to hear your perspective!

[@sciencemama]

Hi Tanya! Thank you for the support. I just can't go without the handholding right now, hopefully someday :)

[@LeniGirly]

I have the tendency of buying curriculums because I watch videos and fall in love with them and shortly realize I don’t have time to do all these curriculums I keep buying. I love teaching my son but I have to keep the schooling short with him because he prefers to play all day. I recently got Spelling You See because I loved the idea but it ended up not working out with my son. Homeschooling is amazing but not too amazing on our bank account. 🤣

[@SevenInAll]

Loved hearing your thought process! I really appreciate the open-and-go nature for Sonlight very much! In any curriculum, I love being able to just pick it up and run with it, rather than having to do a lot of planning and prep.

[@sciencemama]

Love watching your Sonlight videos - its fun to get a look at some of the upper levels :)

[@BandanaBookmom]

I have loved hearing how Sonlight has worked for your family. I have twin boys that are 3 and a 4 year old daughter as well and we are definitely going to start Sonlight when the twins are a bit older so they can all be at the same level together for HBL! 💕 For now I’m starting my daughter with some Abeka and Masterbooks to just get into the flow of teaching at home!

[@sciencemama]

Sounds like a wonderful plan!

[@deldilla9307]

You seem like a sweet person! I enjoyed this video. I looked into Sonlight a bit and love pulling from their booklists. I have friends that use Sonlight and love it. Answers in Genesis has a stand-alone apologetics Bible curriculum that looks interesting.

[@papuakacie]

I resonate with all of this!

[@HomeLifeWithLove]

We started Sonlight about a month or so ago. We love it so far. I used Sonlight in the past for book ideas, so now we have duplicates from ordering the Sonlight full package. lol Fortunately, we only have a few duplicates. My husband was on board with Sonlight’s cost just to make my life easier. Yay for awesome husbands!! Sonlight does suggest pre-reading their books due to heavy subject matter.

[@sciencemama]

Yes, hooray for supportive husbands :) Haha, I have duplicate books too!

[@FireflyComics]

We love Sonlight HBL and science. I did it one year and tried something else last year but now we are back to Sonlight. Their readers are fantastic too! My kids love experiments but I don’t have the bandwidth for all of sonlights so we use Mel science too! We also use a different LA. Overall, it’s a great, thorough curriculum.

[@sciencemama]

Agreed! Love Sonlight HBL as well as Science :)

[@KatsGrimm]

We don't use a literature based curriculum, but I love their reading lists! I use those to build our read alouds for the year and independent readers for my oldest.

[@Honeyoc]

What curriculum do you use?

[@jessriffel]

My kids are similar ages - my oldest is 7.5 and we just started BYL level 1 2 months ago. I found a large gap between levels 0 and 1 and we had to wait a year after finishing level 0 to start level 1. We are loving level 1 currently, but I really appreciate your perspective. I really love the book choices from BYL the most, but wish the curriculum included more discussion questions and handholding. Thank you for sharing! Sonlight sounds like a great option as well!

[@stephaniekonchar3775]

Im having the exact issue. I"m about to finish up level 0 of BYL and have level 1 ready to go. I'm noticing that there's now way my kids are ready for level 1. Now, what to do? I was eyeballing SL K Level with American History just to dabble around for a year

[@jessriffel]

Try fishtank units? - we did the winter wonderland unit and LOVED it. We also used a Canadian picture book curriculum called Come Sit by Me and added our own longer read alouds. Then we did BYL prehistory unit (very light version because it’s advanced) and then they were loving it so we continued into level 1. My kids are currently 7.5 and 6.

[@stephaniekonchar3775]

@@jessriffel I'll check that out, thanks!

[@TheTaradactyl7399]

@@stephaniekonchar3775 A lot of people do the BYL or Blossom and Root prehistory unit and stretch it out, but Fishtank and Core Knowledge is also great!

[@annebaiel]

Hi Angie! I was wondering what the impetus was for y'all's switch to Sonlight! From all of your update videos, it seems to be meeting your current needs really well. Because of your enthusiasm, I've since checked their booklists--and Bookshark's--and pulled what will work for our (nonreligious) family to have back-up read-alouds. We tried TL, too, but it really didn't work for us. Also tried Blossom & Root--it was great for my oldest for preschool, but for various reasons we just couldn't make kinder work; first grade was also a bust. Now we're following BYL Level 1, albeit VERY loosely, and I'm pulling in Story of the World so it's a bit of mess right now. I really love the freedom homeschooling gives--we can do what works best for us and change it up when something stops working. Thank you for your down-to-earth honesty in your update videos. It's very refreshing. --Anne

[@sciencemama]

Ahh, thank you so much for the support! It sounds like you will have a great year ... BYL and SOTW will be wonderful :)

[@laurenj.5312]

We plan on using BYL level 0 in the fall. I was hoping that it will be a smooth transition between another lit program that caught my attention years ago.

[@sciencemama]

BYL is a wonderful program, I 'm sure you will enjoy it!

[@lorriel9629]

Great video 🤗

[@whatbringscorinajoy2724]

Oh I loved Sonlight it was just too much for me to manage with 6 kiddos. Now we just read aloud for fun.

[@sciencemama]

Love it!

[@nancydurham8054]

We are using BYL0 in the fall. What level of sonlight would come next?

[@sciencemama]

It probably depends how old your kids are ... We loved HBL-K and started that when my kids were 6 and 7.5. We skipped A because of the similar content but if my kids would have been younger I probably would have don't A, then K, then B.

[@roseylove1543]

What is the difference between BYL, Torchlight, and Sonlight? Is Sonlight the only one where you can buy the books outright? Also, is it more open and go?

[@sciencemama]

Hi, yes Sonlight is the only program that comes with the books! As for open and go, I would say they are all pretty similar.

[@mearly3680]

I heard that one of these curricula was very good about giving parents heads up in the manual when books might contain content that would be challenging in some form or another. Is this Sonlight or am I thinking of something else?

[@sha-toinaswint2152]

Yes, Sonlight absolutely does that in their guides.

[@sciencemama]

Yes that is Sonlight!

[@CarolinaOats]

I saw you are using Saxon for math but didn’t the sonlight come with a math curriculum? I’m so confused on what to buy. This is my first year homeschooling and so stressed out.

[@sciencemama]

Hi, homeschooling can be a little overwhelming the first year!! As for math curriculum - yes, the math would come with an All Subjects Package from Sonlight. But, we typically just get the HBL or History, Bible, Literature program from Sonlight. So, I order my math separately.

[@hayleyam28]

To add to what was said - you can also customize your full package by picking the math you want. The all-subject package price is with Math-U-See, but they have other ones you can sub it out with, including Saxon. They also have 3 different handwriting program options.

[@kristyplatt6233]

I love curriculum, especially literature-based curriculum. I bought BYL as a supplemental curriculum when my son was 10, and tried to pre-read all of the books. My son is a voracious reader, and so he got ahead of me and came to me in tears one day. The one book that I hadn't pre-read had a very dark theme and he was embarrassed to even talk about it. I now buy all of my curriculum a year ahead to make sure that doesn't happen again. I enjoy watching Emily Cook's KZbin channel and many of her book choices are stellar. I do remember that in one of her videos she mentioned that her son was uncomfortable with the theme of one of her book selections. I wish that her beliefs and mine were more in line, there are entire years of her curriculum that just don't align for me. But, I think she is extremely talented and her commitment to reading and spreading the joy of reading to others is admirable.

[@KivStopMotions]

I started homeschooling a few years ago with only secular curriculum and switched about 2/3 years ago because of the propagandist content that I was finding, torchlight including. I’ve used Christian curriculum ever since and in my opinion it’s more whole and encompassing of educating a child not just in academics, but virtue, appreciation of beauty and truth. Sonlight has the best book lists, I absolutely love it.

[@sciencemama]

Hi, I'm glad you have found the perfect things for your family ... love your heart for beauty and truth :)

[@lauralovespaper552]

I really appreciated hearing this!!

[@ravenbird3014]

Thank you for this. I am having a hard time trying to find a history course that isn’t too biblical based but also not woke. I am uncomfortable with some of the Bible stories because I don’t feel like I can properly guide my child with it as I am technically secular. I’d rather have the Bible study separate with someone more familiar with it. Currently I am using the good and the beautiful history 1.

[@RockSimmer-gal4God]

We are yet to use a book based curriculum but we do use books for learning!!! We’ve been looking at book based learning curriculums tho. We’ve found Christian curriculum awesome but my kids are old enough to think things though. I’m starting to doing family bible study as growing up we didn’t do family bible study!!! We are enjoying nature studies at the moment and I have a 4 year old who loves horses so she asks tons!!!

[@Homeschooling.with.Ginger]

I gather you have an old earth viewpoint. What is your viewpoint on evolution? Sonlight does not promote evolution. They say they present both sides, but John himself said he picks the books that cater to one side. I’m just interested to know how you plan to navigate that.

[@sciencemama]

I still want to do more research but currently I think microevolution is true and easy to study in nature but not so much macroevolution. So, old earth and microevolution :)

[@chdao]

Does this mean you are using Sonlight math? If so, how do you like it compared to Singapore Primary?

[@sciencemama]

We use Saxon for math ... we've been through so many math programs but Saxon works well for my son and he says he likes it, so we are sticking with it :)

[@hayleyam28]

Sonlight doesn't have just one math curriculum that it sells and schedules in. They do sell math, but you do that separately from the History/Bible/Lit. They currently have 6 different math programs to choose from on their website (including Saxon and Singapore).

[@danahall1282]

Ok. I don't quite understand why you have trouble with science?

[@TheTaradactyl7399]

Most Christian currículum, unless they are Catholic, are Creationist. Not all Christians are creationists. Catholics accept evolution, old earth, etc as well as other denominations.

[@sundayandee]

Actually, if you believe in God, then you are a creationist. You may be an old earth, or young earth creationist, or believe Theistic evolution, but you still except God created it and set it in motion.