Thank you for your video! I am doing Dart with my daughter for the first time. She is absolutely loving it…I think Brave Writer is right up her alley as far as learning she loves. We are a Sonlight family so it’s so encouraging to know that you continue to incorporate Brave Writer with Sonlight as your kids get older. Maybe you already have videos on this, but as your kids get older are they more independent with Brave Writer or is it something you still need to do alongside them? Also, is the partnership writing needed to go along with Dart?
No, Brave Writer has always been pretty parent-intensive for me. But, I really enjoy the conversations so that is nice. We did not do partnership writing with the Dart. They have adjusted the age ranges from when I first used the writing programs, and I believe they have updated the programs as well. We used partnership writing with my 5th/6th graders, and then what used to be called faltering ownership with 7th/8th. Then help for high school was freshman/sophomore year as needed. I always look at the Sonlight writing projects and see which ones I like, and which ones I want to drop, and then I will fill in with Brave Writer resources. As we have gotten to the high school years, my kids have done significantly less with Brave Writer because the high school english courses from Sonlight are so robust, and they have other creative writing projects they want to spend time on.
I always end up at least buying many of the books on the Brave Writer lists, but I realized this year that I could make a whole year of guides out of my leftovers from past years, so my kids are mostly using the books as summer readers since Sonlight didn’t have summer reader packs this year. I can’t resist good book recommendations. I do think the single guide price jump is pretty extreme. I didn’t really think twice about $9.99-$12.99, but $19.99 feels like something I really need to consider before I just buy them.
I agree! The price jump was unexpected for me, and really made me think about whether or not I wanted to do all of the guides. We will see how the year goes on. I didn't think about using Brave Writer book choices for summer readers - that is a great idea!
My two oldest are using Sonlight 100 next year and I was overwhelmed looking at all the writing that was expected. I stopped using Sonlight’s language arts a few years back and I think I’ll keep them using what I replaced it with.
It is an enormous amount of writing. I actually know a lot of people will split up level 100 and have it count as two years because of all of the reading/writing that it involves. We don't do that, but I definitely don't mind dropping books or papers and changing things around. We have some different writing projects we work on throughout the year anyway and so I have to adjust the work we are doing in those months. Primarily it is NaNoWriMo prep in October, and then writing in November, and in December my kids write and produce a Christmas play. So I am always adjusting. But, I do love that Sonlight has so much content I can pick and choose what makes sense for us. What did you replace the language arts with?
@@Townsendhouse1 We have replaced it with BJU English 2nd - 6th. BJU Grammar and Writing 7-12th. I like how it alternates each chapter between grammar and writing in the younger grades and connects grammar with good writing in the upper grades.
@@Grace_Filled_Homeschoolawesome! Do you use their video curriculum or books only? My oldest has been doing their Spanish curriculum the past couple of years, and this year we are also adding Chemistry, all video based.
@@Townsendhouse1 I teach it myself. I don’t buy the assessments until high school to keep the cost down. I use the chapter reviews to make sure they are learning what I’ve taught. I am interested in their Spanish online next year. For science I plan to do the Apologia Biology Sonlight offers for 9th grade.
Thank you for your video! I am doing Dart with my daughter for the first time. She is absolutely loving it…I think Brave Writer is right up her alley as far as learning she loves. We are a Sonlight family so it’s so encouraging to know that you continue to incorporate Brave Writer with Sonlight as your kids get older. Maybe you already have videos on this, but as your kids get older are they more independent with Brave Writer or is it something you still need to do alongside them? Also, is the partnership writing needed to go along with Dart?
No, Brave Writer has always been pretty parent-intensive for me. But, I really enjoy the conversations so that is nice. We did not do partnership writing with the Dart. They have adjusted the age ranges from when I first used the writing programs, and I believe they have updated the programs as well. We used partnership writing with my 5th/6th graders, and then what used to be called faltering ownership with 7th/8th. Then help for high school was freshman/sophomore year as needed. I always look at the Sonlight writing projects and see which ones I like, and which ones I want to drop, and then I will fill in with Brave Writer resources. As we have gotten to the high school years, my kids have done significantly less with Brave Writer because the high school english courses from Sonlight are so robust, and they have other creative writing projects they want to spend time on.
@@Townsendhouse1 thank you for the insight. I appreciate it.
I always end up at least buying many of the books on the Brave Writer lists, but I realized this year that I could make a whole year of guides out of my leftovers from past years, so my kids are mostly using the books as summer readers since Sonlight didn’t have summer reader packs this year. I can’t resist good book recommendations. I do think the single guide price jump is pretty extreme. I didn’t really think twice about $9.99-$12.99, but $19.99 feels like something I really need to consider before I just buy them.
I agree! The price jump was unexpected for me, and really made me think about whether or not I wanted to do all of the guides. We will see how the year goes on.
I didn't think about using Brave Writer book choices for summer readers - that is a great idea!
My two oldest are using Sonlight 100 next year and I was overwhelmed looking at all the writing that was expected. I stopped using Sonlight’s language arts a few years back and I think I’ll keep them using what I replaced it with.
It is an enormous amount of writing. I actually know a lot of people will split up level 100 and have it count as two years because of all of the reading/writing that it involves. We don't do that, but I definitely don't mind dropping books or papers and changing things around.
We have some different writing projects we work on throughout the year anyway and so I have to adjust the work we are doing in those months. Primarily it is NaNoWriMo prep in October, and then writing in November, and in December my kids write and produce a Christmas play. So I am always adjusting. But, I do love that Sonlight has so much content I can pick and choose what makes sense for us.
What did you replace the language arts with?
@@Townsendhouse1 We have replaced it with BJU English 2nd - 6th. BJU Grammar and Writing 7-12th. I like how it alternates each chapter between grammar and writing in the younger grades and connects grammar with good writing in the upper grades.
@@Grace_Filled_Homeschoolawesome! Do you use their video curriculum or books only? My oldest has been doing their Spanish curriculum the past couple of years, and this year we are also adding Chemistry, all video based.
@@Townsendhouse1 I teach it myself. I don’t buy the assessments until high school to keep the cost down. I use the chapter reviews to make sure they are learning what I’ve taught.
I am interested in their Spanish online next year. For science I plan to do the Apologia Biology Sonlight offers for 9th grade.