Sonlight’s Holistic Training- Sonlight Homeschooling Weblog

On the lookout for extra than simply lecturers? Sonlight’s curriculum nurtures important character traits and encourages religious growth in your youngsters. Be taught what our prime ten curriculum objectives are, past lecturers.

Our fastidiously crafted curriculum integrates character growth and values-based studying to equip youngsters with the knowledge and Christian basis they’re going to want for the longer term. We associate with dad and mom in nurturing not simply vivid minds, however compassionate hearts and brave spirits—as a result of tomorrow’s leaders want each information and character to really change the world for the higher.

Evaluate Your Homeschooling Objectives with Outs

Sonlight grew out of the studying, examine, and hands-on expertise of John and Sarita Holzmann as they educated their 4 youngsters. It has additionally grown (and continues to develop) from the suggestions and enter we obtain from our clients— homeschoolers such as you!

We share the highest objectives we’ve got had in thoughts as we’ve got developed—and as we proceed to develop—Sonlight Curriculum to be able to consider Sonlight in mild of your objectives.

Possibly you’ll undertake a few of our objectives. Possibly you’ll intentionally reject some. Both manner, you can be higher ready to make sensible selections about homeschooling and whether or not or not Sonlight Curriculum is an applicable selection for you.

Listed here are our prime objectives:

1. Educate College students to Search God & His Kingdom First

We consider that is the first objective Jesus set earlier than all of us who declare to be His disciples. “Search first His [God’s] kingdom and His righteousness.” (Matthew 6:33)

Going past lecturers means reminding Sonlighters to maintain God on the heart of their lives and the world round them. When confronted with challenges of any variety, we wish college students to hunt God’s knowledge and His coronary heart. We need to preserve that objective in entrance of ourselves and our college students…always.

2. Create a Learner’s Coronary heart in College students

What good does it do to fill youngsters’s minds with all method of knowledge in the event that they by no means learn to be taught, or in the event that they by no means purchase a heartfelt want for schooling?

We wish our children to develop up with the identical perspective and conviction Solomon had: “[Wisdom] is extra worthwhile than silver and yields higher returns than gold. She is extra treasured than rubies; nothing you want can examine along with her.” (Proverbs 3:13-15)

When college students need to be taught, nothing will cease them from reaching their objective. But when educating our kids is solely our objective for our kids, we’ve got to marvel: Will they proceed to coach themselves after “college” is finished?

Contemplate the usual “social research” method to tradition. As a substitute of getting college students be taught first about issues with which they’re already acquainted (our “group”), Sonlight takes nearly precisely the alternative tack. We start by exposing college students to what’s totally different and unfamiliar.

That manner, you and your college students benefit from the shock issue, the delight issue, the flexibility to see, hear, and expertise issues they would not count on. That is a part of the journey of schooling.

Now, after they’ve grow to be aware of the unfamiliar, we reintroduce college students to their very own tradition. Now they’ll examine, distinction, and see all of it in an even bigger mild.

3. Elevate Youngsters with a Godly Coronary heart for the World

God’s plans are for all peoples. And we by no means need to neglect what’s foremost in God’s coronary heart. Thus, we’re unwilling to focus solely, and even primarily, on the West and western historical past.

What most children cannot think about is that anybody lives in another way than they do. Most do not know that there’s a large world round them stuffed with individuals who have utterly totally different experiences from their very own.

So, as I’ve simply famous, we start exposing college students to world cultures and world historical past in Preschool and Kindergarten. And even after we examine American historical past, we focus not solely on the stuff of which commonplace histories are made—the political heroes, the battles, and enormous social actions. We focus, too, on the smaller, extra personal-scale social and cultural points as nicely.

We additionally do what we are able to to assist college students perceive historical past because it appears to be like from the attitude of people who find themselves exterior the halls of energy and who, for social or cultural causes, simply see issues in another way than we ourselves and “our personal” individuals have all the time been taught to view them.

4. Encourage College students to Honor Christ Boldly—in Speech & Conduct

We consider that the Christian religion will not be merely supposed to grant us everlasting private consolation; it’s meant to vary the way in which we dwell and, by us, to change the world round us.

That is why, from the earliest years, we embrace supplies that assist youngsters memorize Scripture and perceive what the Bible is all about.

However the legacy of God’s individuals extends far past the Scriptures. It continues to the current day. And we understand that, with a view to emphasize this superb legacy of God’s individuals by the ages, we should present youngsters with a historic and biographical view of the world.

We wish youngsters to search out true heroes—individuals whose lives they’ll emulate, individuals whose lives they need to emulate.

We wish them to learn biographies that not solely inform them in regards to the good deeds that others have finished and the sensible habits these individuals have developed, however that assist them see these individuals as they actually have been: individuals whom God used regardless of their shortcomings.

We wish youngsters to sense the joy and problem of following Jesus in large and little issues—not solely at house, at church, and in household relations, but additionally within the worlds of labor and of cultural growth.

We wish youngsters, by their studying, to see, know, perceive, and be prepared to make the sacrifices that they might be referred to as upon to make if they’re to satisfy God’s functions of their lives.

5. Practice Youngsters to Grow to be Ambassadors for Christ

Most curricula (particularly Christian curricula) appear to focus fully on “message” content material— what we have to know and consider in order that college students will shortly acknowledge and reject (flip away from—or run away from) no matter is fake.

Christians usually justify this instructional focus by referring to the U.S. Secret Service’s technique of getting ready anti-counterfeit brokers. New brokers are made so aware of honest-to-goodness $20, $50, and $100 payments that they can acknowledge counterfeit payments instantly.

We consider this analogy is sweet…to a degree.

Curiously, nevertheless, Scripture makes use of extra “lively” language than that of anti-counterfeit brokers. The Apostle Paul speaks of ambassadors and troopers for Christ. And ambassadors and troopers do not merely establish the enemy or establish what’s alien, then flip or run away. They interact the enemy; they work together with no matter will not be a part of “their very own”.

And so, ambassadors should not solely be intimately aware of their approved message. They have to additionally know their viewers. They have to know what their viewers thinks, believes, and values. They have to know the locations the place their viewers’s psychological, emotional, and religious defenses are sturdy…and the place they’re weak.

Utilizing the Biblical army analogy, troopers for Christ have to be taught not solely to acknowledge who the enemy is (what is fake), however they have to be taught to find the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the enemy, what methods the enemy will use, and what methods they might use in opposition to the enemy. Troopers should additionally purchase a minimal quantity of (at the very least simulated) fight expertise earlier than going into the fray.

6. Educate College students Tips on how to Pay attention Nicely to Others

The Greek thinker Epictetus mentioned, “We have now two ears and one mouth in order that we are able to pay attention twice as a lot as we communicate.” These of us, particularly those that want to be efficient communicators for Christ, ought to do rather more listening than speaking…

It is sensible. The act of listening communicates powerfully to a different individual that “I care.” In spite of everything, who would you consider actually cared for you and to whom would you pay attention: somebody who listens intently to what you must say earlier than giving a gracious and considerate reply, or somebody who launches right into a ready monologue designed to “set you straight”?

We use two autos to show college students to pay attention. First, we’ve got them pay attention whereas Mother or Dad reads.

Research have proven, and we’ve got seen it confirmed again and again: youngsters whose dad and mom learn to them often and at size are much more able to listening and understanding what they hear than are youngsters whose dad and mom learn to them however little.

Sonlight Learn-Aloud Classics will entice you and your youngsters to learn collectively…usually, and at nice size. And your youngsters will be taught to pay attention.

There’s a second means by which we train college students to pay attention. And it has a barely totally different function. We search to convey totally different sides to an argument.

Many individuals—each youngsters and adults—are afraid of what “the opposition” could say. Our minds grow to be so stuffed with fear about our doable incapacity to answer appropriately that we by no means hear what the opposite individual has to say.

So most of us are much more comfy remaining unaware of different individuals’s claims than to first grow to be aware of what they must say, after which to search out high quality solutions or, presumably, to confess they’ve some extent we had by no means thought of earlier than.

Sonlight refuses to bow to this worry or laziness.

7. Hold Christ on the Heart, With out Ignoring Different Views on Religion

In different phrases, within the supportive setting of their dad and mom’ house, with the assistance of their dad and mom, Sonlight teaches college students the instruments, methods, information, and abilities of godly mental warfare.

We wish college students to be satisfied, by expertise, that there are reliable solutions to questions coming from “the opposite aspect”. Even after they do not occur to know the solutions, they needn’t run in worry.

There is no such thing as a have to worry as a result of the reality— God’s fact—will prevail. He who’s in us really is larger than he who’s on the earth (cf. 1 John 4:4). And He who’s by our aspect actually will give us the precise phrases to say when the time comes (cf. Matthew 10:18-20). College students come to know this not simply of their heads, as an article of religion, however of their hearts, by expertise.

8. Encourage College students to Fulfill the Work of True Students

Via the books we’ve got chosen and thru our teacher’s guides, Sonlight Curriculum seeks to “stroll its speak” and display true scholarship.

Some individuals could query the worth of high quality scholarship. We consider it has a direct and beneficial influence on an individual’s ambassadorship. The one who has “finished his homework” is in a much better place than he who has to not talk successfully and winsomely with an individual who’s coming from a really totally different perspective.

9. Assist College students Develop a Love for Literature & Hearts of Motion

We who proceed to develop the Sonlight Curriculum cannot think about a faster, simpler, extra satisfying solution to achieve knowledge and information than to learn nice books. We consider high quality literature, whether or not written by Christians or non-Christians, ought to trigger us to look the Scriptures to learn the way Jesus would reply in related circumstances.

And as we search these solutions and take into consideration these topics, we put together ourselves for the longer term after we will discover ourselves very a lot concerned in conditions just like these we have examine.

10. Elevate “Culturally Literate” College students

In his bestselling work, Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. exhibits there’s a sure fundamental set of background info each individual should know with a view to get alongside in a tradition, not to mention to affect that tradition.

An individual should concentrate on the important thing historic occasions, the numerous individuals, actions, teams, and concepts which have formed the tradition.

Sonlight seeks to assist its college students transfer far past the fundamentals. We need to increase worldchangers: individuals who will make a distinction— for good.

And so we place a premium upon cultural literacy.

That is why you will discover so many well-known books (a few of which, particularly within the older years, are un-Christian) in our curriculum.

We consider our kids have to be made conscious of those books and their content material in order that they’ve a foundational base of data and, extra importantly, in order that they are going to be ready to answer these cultural influences in a robust and Godly style.