Bellumswife77
- Reviewed on Thursday, January 3, 2013
- Grades Used: Kinder II-6th
- Dates used: 2006-2013
I am the parent to 7 children and can't say enough how blessed I have been by Christian Light. I haven't used all of their curriculum for each grade, but I have used some of each grade. Currently I am teaching Kindergarten II to my 5 and 7 year olds. I love it and so do they. My five year old is on grade level and my 7 year old has a learning disability. The curriculum is so easy to teach that my 6th grader can take over teaching it when neccesary.
There are many Kinder Programs out there, and my family begins with R&S preschool between 3-5. I find that the math is a little too simple with Kinder II but the extra writing practice is wonderful. We use R&S Arithmetic 1 and CLE Kinder II for Kindergarten and feel free to take things as fast or slow as we need to
After starting out homeschooling with Christian Light I moved away to more "exciting" programs over the years but keep coming back to CLE. It's Christ Centered, easy to use, affordable and has excellent academic results.
I really love to second Sunrise Editions and look forward to using CLE again in the future.
I was homeschooled myself and used their Home Ec curriculum which I have reviewed many times!
We are currently using 6th grade Social Studies and will move on to Learning to Read and 1st grade Reading and Language Arts. We love CLE Bible and switched to their Elementary School Curriculum for Bible this year.
A few years ago we felt bogged down with CLE Language Arts in grade 4. It includes Grammar, Handwriting and Spelling with Writing which is amazing. We didn't persevere and I regret that. If I had it to do over I would have dropped non essential curriculum and concentrate on that, Arithmetic and Bible.
As my children grow older in our large family I have come to realize that concentrating on Reading, Language Arts and Writing g with Religion is most important. Everything else can and will come along in due time but these are most important.
|
jwjrenslow
- Reviewed on Wednesday, January 2, 2013
- Grades Used: 1st-7th
- Dates used: 2009-2012
My family LOVES CLE. We have used their curriculum for the last 4 years for Math, Language and Reading. I started my middle son on CLE in 1st grade and my oldest started in 4th and is now in 7th. The curriculum is very comprehensive and practical. It uses the spiral method for each subject and does a great job giving plenty of review for new and old lessons.
The Learning to Read program is an excellent Phonics program and did a great job with my 2nd son learning how to read. I intend to use it again with my youngest next fall.
I like that the lessons/quizzes and tests are easy to grade. I also really like that the worktexts are very inexpensive compared to other textbook curriculum but just as advanced as Saxon or A Beka. Yes, the worktexts are consumable but at less than $35/yr/student that is reasonable.
We have used their science and history for 1st and 4th grade. While very comprehensive and thorough I did not continue using them simply because it was hard for my boys to have workbooks for all subject so we mixed it up and went with SOS to give them a little more interaction. The Sunlight versions are better than the non-Sunlight and to my knowledge the science does not have the Sunlight from 4th up - which makes it a lot more difficult to grade and does not have easy breaks in the lessons like the Sunlight version does.
I highly recommend CLE for 8th grade and under and am very pleased to have a curriculum that I don't have to "teach" but offers excellent support for grading. I do recommend the teachers manual because of the additional tests, but it is not necessary for older grades if you have an answer key.
|
dieselpickupshop
- Reviewed on Friday, October 5, 2012
- Grades Used: Kindergarten
- Dates used: 2012
I began using CLE's Kindergarten II this fall with my 5-year-old son. I didn't intend to homeschool, but after he started his third year of private preschool it became clear that, despite a late summer birthday near the cutoff date for our state, redshirting him was a mistake. So my plan became to homeschool for kindergarten and then enter him in private school next year as a 1st grader. But we are both enjoying CLE so much, we may just continue to homeschool!
When I first ordered the materials I thought, "Eh, just more educational workbooks like the kind you can buy at Walmart." But they were here and my son was asking to try them so we did. What a difference! CLE's Kindergarten II is very carefully laid out, sequencially organized, thoughtfully put together. Not flashy but also definitely created by people who know what they are doing. I am a licensed substitute teacher and am thoroughly impressed with the scope and sequence of CLE, the pace at which it moves, the depth that it covers.
There are 30 lessons total, each one containing material from a Workbook as well as its accompanying Activity Book. However, we don't do both the Workbook and Activity Book every day. My son gets restless after about 30 minutes, which is usually how much time it takes to complete one or the other, so we are just going in order that way. So a week would look like this: Mon--Workbook 1 lesson 1, Tue--Activity Book 1 lesson 1, Wed--Workbook 1 lesson 2, Thu--Activity Book 1 lesson 2, Fri--Workbook 1 lesson 3, Sat--Activity Book 1 lesson 3. It takes about a month to get through a Workbook and Activity Book set, and there are six of each, so I am anticipating this curriculum will last about six months.
So easy, so complete! You will not regret this!
|
noelle
- Reviewed on Wednesday, May 30, 2012
- Grades Used: Kindergarten II
- Dates used: Currently using
My daughter has just started the Kindergarten II program from CLE. We are about 5 lessons in and I have of course looked ahead to the future lessons and all I can say is "wow." This is perfect for her. Initially I was looking into full year kindergarten programs that had all the subjects (like science, social studies, etc) and I was a little concerned that this would be too easy of a program to really teach her much and prepare her for first grade but I am happily surprised to see how thorough it is. It is just the right amount of work for her age (takes about 20- 30 mins a day, depending on how much extra coloring she wants to do) and it is fine tuning the skills she learned in pre-k, especially handwriting. Every lesson so far comes with a cut and paste type of activity, which I also let her color when she finishes. She loves Kindergarten and even makes me do lessons with her on the weekends!!
I also ordered their learning to read program and the materials look fabulous. Being a teacher by trade (I used to teach in ps before staying home with my kids) I was looking for very highly qualified homeschool programs to use with my children and I have to say I believe I have found that with CLE. I love the academic quality I have seen as well as the Christian morals and character traits built in to every lesson.
We will be a CLE family for many years to come :)
|
|
