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

Online Reading Library

Lightsail for Homeschoolers

Homeschool Review Crew 

Do you make weekly library runs?  Was the pandemic hard on you for getting new books to read?  It was for us and we really missed having library books to read.  Do you use an online reading library?  We never loved that option from our library as you had to wait to check them out.  Not that we don’t have a ton of books in our house, because we do, but we wanted more variety.  In a way to combat this, we were thrilled to receive a year subscription to LightSail for Homeschoolers.  

Lightsail for Homeschoolers offers a way for your child to read books without a library and also work on building up their skills.  Skills being worked on are Fluency, Reading, Writing, and Vocabulary.  They offer four different options to their program.  Premium is the way to go in our opinion but we’ll chat about all the options below. 

About the Program 

LightSail for Homeschoolers is designed for homeschoolers.  It caters to all ages from kindergarten through 12th grade.  While it’s a reading program it really focuses on literacy and reading comprehension through four pillars.  Those four pillars are reading, writing, fluency, and vocabulary.  

This program works to help your child overcome any reading difficulty whether it be ADHD, dyslexia, or just easily being distracted while reading.  Struggling readers are going to love this program as it tailors to them to help them unlock the magic and power of reading. 

Parental Thoughts

Within your parent portal, there are ways that you can block or require your approval for different things.  There are different sections that are actually labeled that you can choose from to block or make it so they have to have your approval. 

These sections are Ableism, Creationism/Young Earth, Criminal Behavior, Death, and Divorce.  So if one of these areas are areas that you don’t want your child exposed to you can easily mark it to be blocked or require approval.  You can also make all of the classics require approval before your child can read them.   

I thought this was an interesting feature as this wasn’t something I had thought about before letting the library be opened for my children. It’s also something that I think is very much related to how old my child is.  So while I don’t mark approval required on my oldest I definitely would be using that feature for my younger children. 

Accounts

Each child gets their own account.  I was able to sign up five children for the program so we could see the variety that is offered by age.  Younger children get access to a different set of books. 

The parent has their own account as well that they can access what the child has been doing and how they are progressing as well as put restrictions on what content their child can access.  You can also make assignments or suggest books, etc. 

Within the parent account, you get to choose what content they have access to as well.  I don’t just mean they get to use this program or that program but what actual content is available.  It is a faith-based curriculum and you can choose what aspects or religions are available.  Do you want Catholic content?  Do you want Islamic?  It’s really neat that you can choose that.  

Okay, let’s talk startup. 

First, you create accounts for your kids. 

Next they sign in on their own.  They’re greeted by a welcome video. 

After the welcome video, they take a quiz or placement test of sorts.  

That quiz gives them their Lexile Score so they can see how much they’ve improved.  Once you’re through that you can view the chart to see where you compare or simply start clicking away in the library. 

There are so many resources!  There are over 12,000 books to read and over 1500 audiobooks to listen to.  Really, you can find something for everyone here!

Programs

I wanted to take a quick moment to tell you that you get access to a few programs that sell the whole thing to me without using anything else. 

These programs are the World Book.  You get access to the World Book Encyclopedia, atlases, maps, and timelines.  This is really just so much information packed into a tiny area that you will never run out of things to study and do even if it’s the only part you use. 

Other programs are the World Book Kids and World Book Early Learning for your younger age groups.  This is amazing.  I didn’t even know it existed and yet we’ve spent the majority of our time in there with my younger ones. 

If you want to offer your child the world this would be it.  It lets you go anywhere in the world through the 360 program which lets you see anything. I think this is great to go with other studies you’re doing. 

Oh, and a fun thing for over summer would be the Unit Studies!

Reading

We’ve discussed how reading is used in the program.  You read!  But more than that there are reading badges, reading goals, reading assignments, reading milestones, book clubs, Lexile growth, and so much more.  You can view your reading history and soon a booklist will be added as well. 

There is so much more than just reading books.  

Comprehension is worked on through Cloze Exercises which test their knowledge of what they’ve read.  The exercises give you Power Text.  You click on them and they have you choose a word to describe the text you’ve read. These can be redone and they work on vocabulary because if you choose the wrong word it will give you a definition for the one you chose. 

Writing

You get to write your own books.  My kids are not super strong writers.  It’s not that they hate writing but they don’t want to do a lot of writing. If one word will cover an answer why should they write sentences?  

This is different in that you can write your own journal, write your own book, take notes, etc.  A cool feature is that you can read the books written by your siblings or family as well.  

Vocabulary is done through the Cloze exercises.  You can redo those as well which is nice.  But in addition to that you’ve got spelling tests, you can take that are based on your Lexile Level.  We didn’t do a lot with vocab on its own out of the reading program. 

The other area is fluency. This is where they read the story out loud and record it so that it can then be evaluated by the parent for fluency.  We really didn’t use this because most of my kids are great with fluency and my younger student isn’t at the point that I would do this yet.  

Our Thoughts

There is so much here!  So very very much to explore and use I can’t even begin to tell about it all.  I hope you will just try it out for yourself so you can delve into the depths too. 

If you read my brief chat about programs you’ll see that there is just so so much to talk about that I can’t cover it all.  I love it!  Really this program is amazing and I can see us using it forever.  I’d like to add my preschooler to the program.  I didn’t at the beginning because I didn’t think it was for pre-readers but I think he would do amazing with the World Book Early learners program. 

My kids are loving this.  I am loving this.  I want my own account as a student so I can run in and do the books too on my own without looking over my kids’ shoulders.  But that’s another thing I love, they can do the majority of this without my help.  I have had to step in a time or two with navigating through the program, but never to answer questions about the content.

A great thing I’m looking forward to are the Jewish resources within the program for when we’re celebrating Hanukkah soon!  I can’t wait to add all that enrichment. 

I hope you try this program and I know we’re going to be continuing our subscription once the year is over and I’m going to be adding extra student accounts to our setup as well.  We received five slots but with a dozen kiddos and ten of them age level for the program, I think we’re going to have to double our accounts on this online reading library! 

Use the free trial. 

That’s an order. 

You’ll love it as much as we do I guarantee it!

I really think every student can find areas of this program that will work amazingly well for them. I have some kids with dyslexia.  I’ve got kiddos with ADHD.  And I’ve simply got kids who struggle with reading or don’t like reading.  The ones who do the best are the ones who love to read and just are devouring as much as they can as quickly as they can.  But everyone is benefitting from this program and I really think it would benefit all homeschoolers.  

So check it out and let me know what you think too.  

Learn More

Ready to learn more about the online reading library that LightSail for Homeschoolers has to offer?  You can find out what all of the reviewers thought by going to the Main Blog Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog and reading what they thought.  

LightSail for Homeschoolers can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.