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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Homeschooling life is so busy. We are constantly juggling each child’s schedule, trying to teach multiple ages AND find some way to do it all without feeling too overwhelmed. It is hard. That is why I love when I find a curriculum that works for multiple ages and you can tailor it to each child. It makes homeschooling much more manageable. I found LightSail for Homeschoolers to be an excellent option for our homeschool reading curriculum because it makes homeschooling easier. Their curriculum includes the areas of reading, writing, vocabulary, and fluency, and you can adjust it to the needs of the kids in your home. It has been a lot of fun using it in our homeschool.

As part of the Review Crew, I received a one-year Premium subscription to LightSail for Homeschoolers. We had access to over 12,000 books, 51,000+ encyclopedia articles, 150+ unit studies, and more.  Let me share more about this homeschool reading curriculum and how we used it in our homeschool.

Table of Contents

• LightSail for Homeschoolers
• Homeschool Reading Curriculum- What’s Included
  • Library
  • Inside Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, and Fluency Dashboards
• How We Used LightSail’s Homeschool Reading Curriculum
  • Power Texts
  • Authentic Writing
  • Unit Study
• Overall Thoughts of This Reading Curriculum
  • My Kids Thoughts

LightSail for Homeschoolers

LightSail for Homeschoolers is an adaptive homeschool reading curriculum. Their program is designed for ages 8-18 (grades 3-12). They do offer a Young Learners package, too, which is separate. With LightSail, you have a choice between LightSail Standard or Premium. The difference is the amount of content you receive.  You have far more content available with the Premium subscriptions.

As I mentioned, this is adaptive, which means your child completes an assessment, and the program determines their reading level. Then, as they use the curriculum, it adjusts your child’s material, making it harder or easier as needed.

A child’s reading level is measured using Lexile reading levels. This helps you see how your child is progressing in their reading over time. Periodically, you receive updated Lexile levels for your child.

The program focuses on reading, writing, vocabulary, and fluency, which helps with a well-rounded language arts program. Kids work on these areas to develop their reading and comprehension skills.

If this sounds intriguing, you can give it a try. LightSail offers a 7-Day Free Trial. This way, you can see if it is a good fit for your family. After that, if you decide to continue, you can pay monthly or pay for a yearly plan.

Oh, and by the way, the Homeschool Advisory Team manager, Vida Mercer, is a second-generation homeschooler. So, she understands what homeschooling is all about.

Homeschool Reading Curriculum- What’s Included

I will admit. This site can be very overwhelming! And honestly, I’ve had a hard time deciding what to share. LightSail offers so much. I will do my best to give you a quick overview.

First off, as a parent, you have complete control over each child’s reading. On the Parent Dashboard, you can decide the type of material you want your child reading, if you wish to restrict any content, and so much more. So everything is in your control. Plus, you can monitor your child’s progress on your home screen each time you log in. So it is all right there for you to see.

Now, the big question.

What is inside this homeschool reading curriculum?

You will be amazed at all the resources you have available. Plus, more features will be coming soon.

Library

First off, you have the Library. Inside the Library tab, you have:

• Books
• Audiobooks
• World Book Encyclopedia
• Biography Center
• Unit Studies
• Sports Encyclopedia
• 360 images
• Videos
• Augmented Reality
• Livestreams

Within each of these categories, you will find so much content to use in your homeschool. There are 10,000+ books with the Premium subscription.  Plus, so many other educational materials to enhance learning.  

Inside Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, and Fluency Dashboards

Inside each of these sections, you will find assignments, goals, and progress. For parents, you can find children’s progress and assign work. For children, this is where they can open assignments and track their progress.

Here is a look inside reading. Both dashboards are very similar.

With LightSail, children have thousands of books to choose from. They can select classics, biographies, and from multiple genres. There is so much to choose from.

However, you can assign your kids must do a Power Text periodically. Power Texts are the heart of your homeschool reading curriculum. These books are a selection of books that are at your child’s reading level. It helps your child work on and improve their reading skills.

While children read, they do cloze exercises (fill in missing words), answer multiple-choice questions, and more. All of this helps build your child’s reading skills. In addition, it helps with vocabulary and comprehension.

After reading a book, kids can explore more through related books, videos, encyclopedia articles, etc. Thus, it takes learning even further and builds on the topics discussed in the book.

Also, kids can do authentic writing assignments on a book. Authentic writing allows kids to work on real-life writing projects. For instance, they might write a letter, a personal narrative, a blog, or a Ted Talk whichever makes sense for the book they read.

Vocabulary work is also integrated into this homeschool reading curriculum. Kids work on vocabulary through cloze exercises, clicking on words while reading to have them defined, or vocabulary or spelling lists.

For younger kids, it is always good to check on their fluency. With LightSail, kids can record themselves reading, so you can check on how fluent your child can read.

With LightSail, you have so many ways to help improve your child’s reading skills.

How We Used LightSail’s Homeschool Reading Curriculum

With my overview of the program, I barely scratched the surface of all LightSail has to offer. It can be very overwhelming. However, LightSail has excellent videos that explain every part of the program. I would have been lost without these videos. You really need to take the time to go through them, though, to help you understand how to make the most of all these features.

Once I went through the video tutorials, I set accounts for my kids. For this review, my 9^th-grade daughter and 7^th-grade son used LightSail during reading time. Both did the beginning assessments to determine their reading level. This allowed the program to come up with a list of Power Text for them. I like that books are chosen according to a kid’s reading level and not by grade level. However, we ran into a bit of an issue with this, which I’ll explain shortly.

For my daughter, I scheduled her to do a Power Text every other book while my son had to choose a Power Text after two books of his choice. I liked I could play around with this and adjust it as I needed.

My kids like scrolling through and finding their own books. My son chose comics and more humorous stories. However, he did try reading some classics too.

My girl fell in love with all the classics. She is slowly devouring all the great classical works she can, especially gothic horror stories. Can you tell she’s a teen?!

I pretty much let my kiddos choose their own reading materials for daily reading and Power Texts. I like to give my kids free choice when it comes to their reading material.

While reading, my kiddos did the cloze exercises and multiple-choice questions. I have a record of how they did within my parent dashboard.

My kids worked on LightSail on their Chromebooks. I often accessed it through my iPad or Windows laptop. It worked on all these devices.

Power Texts

Since my daughter’s reading level is considered 12+ grade, most of her Power Texts are classic literature. With my son, his reading level is around a 9th-grade level (remember, he’s in 7^th grade), so he is also assigned mostly classic literature. This has been a challenge.

Even though my children can read high-level texts, it doesn’t mean they are age-appropriate. Eighteen and nineteenth-century British literature can be challenging for many people to read but especially a 12- and 14-year-old. My son’s Lexile reading level may be that of a high schooler, but maturity-wise he isn’t ready for Moby Dick or War and Peace. I had similar difficulty with my daughter too.

As my kids tackled the Power Texts, their reading level dropped some. Which I guess is showing that it is adapting to their ability to handle these higher-level texts.

However, I wish there were more options for my kiddos when it comes to the Power Texts. For instance, some of the classics they would enjoy and are age-appropriate, like Robin Hood and Tom Sawyer, are considered below their Power Text levels. So we are playing around with this to find out how to make it work for us.

Authentic Writing

I like the authentic writing option. My daughter decided to take this on after one of the books she read. When she was done, I received a notification. I was given some grading options, and I chose a rubric to quickly grade her assignment. If she didn’t do well on the assignment, I could have sent it back to her to fix. I will begin having my kids use this more. It is an excellent way of integrating reading and writing together.

Unit Study

At the beginning of October, I decided to use one of the Unit Studies in LightSail and adjust it for my son. I assigned my boy the All Things Spooky unit. He has a selection of books, videos, and World Book Encyclopedia readings to work on. He is having fun with this.

I plan to use more of the unit studies and create some of my own (which you can do with LightSail!). I can see creating units that are centered around history and science topics. It is an excellent feature!

I played around with LightSail myself. First, I read some books and looked through the 360 Images. Then, I decided to take a 360 tour of Venice, Italy. (Visiting Italy, specifically Venice, is a dream of mine.) After, I looked at the related content section and found a World Book Article on Venice to read. I was impressed with all of these features.  

Overall Thoughts of This Reading Curriculum

Overall I LOVE LightSail for Homeschoolers. It really can be used as a complete reading curriculum. With all the leveled reading books, unit studies, vocabulary work, and additional materials, your kids can work on and improve their reading skills.

With LightSail, you can control the materials your kids view, assign work, and track progress all on the Parent Dashboard. Plus, all of it is recorded, so you know everything your kids are doing within the program.

Plus, LightSail has excellent customer service. For example, one day, my daughter’s Student Dashboard was acting weird. It was only showing one thing on her Library Dashboard. So I reached out to the company through their site, and they resolved the issue quickly.

My Kids Thoughts

When it comes to my kiddos, they are split on the program. My daughter LOVES LightSail. She loves the large selection of books, and this is what she primarily focuses on. Though, she does like the authentic writing assignments. She feels they are more meaningful than other things she has used.

As for my son, he expected the library of books to be like…well, a library. So he was hoping to have books like Percy Jackson and other mainstream books to read. You can buy and add more mainstream books into the program, but it doesn’t come with it. So since he had this expectation, he wouldn’t really give the program 100%.

I also wonder if he was a little overwhelmed by all the choices. There really is a lot within the program. He seemed to enjoy the unit study, which focused on books, videos, and such in one location. So I think if I created more assignments for him, he’d like it more.

As I mentioned, there is a lot to LightSail for Homeschoolers. Many families reviewed this program. Click the banner below to find more reviews and discover more ways to use this homeschool reading curriculum in your home.

As always, Happy Homeschooling!