A Sonlight Blessing

We continue to be blessed by the home schooling community. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Sonlight Curriculum, our long-time favorite core curriculum. We've used Sonlight since Elizabeth entered first grade, and it's been the basis of our home education program ever since. And for years I have planned to have Elizabeth study the Church History portion of Sonlight 200 along with the Sonlight 530 British Lit program for her senior year. So when I purchased Sonlight 200 for her freshman literature program, I saved the Church History for this year, so I already have it on hand. But without funds for purchasing new books this fall, I was rather stuck.

I collected all the Brit Lit books I found listed in the catalog for Sonlight 530 and checked the library for the ones I didn't have on my overflowing bookshelves. There was only one that the San Diego County Library System and I didn't have between us which a dear reader of this blog kindly ordered from Sonlight for me. So Elizabeth will be reading these books this year:

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Beowulf (translated by Seamus Heaney, of course)
The Canterbury Quintet (General Prologue and Four Tales) by Chaucer
Dubliners by James Joyce
Emma by Jane Austen
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Great Divorce by CS Lewis
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Hamlet by Shakespeare (we'll read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with it)
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (blech! blech! gag! gag!)
Paradise Lost by John Milton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (we love the film Finding Neverland)
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Right Ho, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Secret Sharer and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad (I vastly prefer Heart of Darkness)
A Severe Mercy by VanAuken
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

But I didn't have the Instructor's Guide for Sonlight 530, so I was stuck. Did I let her start reading the books (I found the schedule for the first three weeks on the website) without all those wonderfully helpful and illuminating notes, or should we wait until we have the IG, doubling her Church History in the meantime and then switching off to Brit Lit until we are caught up? We decided on the latter. But it's been very hard to wait.

Until yesterday afternoon.

I received an e-mail from Sonlight stating that a forum user who wishes to remain anonymous sent us two gift certificates that will precisely cover the cost of the Brit Lit 530 Instructor's Guide! I placed the order this afternoon -- I would have placed it earlier except that Sonlight's ordering system has been down since last night, so I e-mailed in my order and received a confirmatory phone call within three hours. Yay!

Another dear friend (we attended graduate school together) called me today to let me know that she was purchasing the new MLA Handbook (7th edition) for me to use with my upcoming MLA course at Brave Writer. I will be able to pick it up tomorrow at the local Barnes and Noble which is simply perfect as I have set aside Saturday to work on the class.

I am soooooo blessed with friends and family who are so willing to help us through this valley of under-employment. (See this post for more blessings!) I've usually been on the "giving end" and am now learning how to gratefully receive. It's such a relief (and a little humbling) to have our needs filled by others, and I am so incredibly thankful for the Family of God and to our Lord who is teaching me so much during this difficult time. As I sign my e-mails, Soli Deo Gloria!