Hi, Tammy and welcome. Ditto what Gina said about SL and the Planning book and dvd here on SCM. Well, I’ve used Sonlight and it did not work out for us. But I do still use their booklist, mostly for readers. I did not like several things about them. I did not care for some of the book choices or how they were scheduled. My son did not do well with the language arts activity sheets. Some of their science books were Usborne and included millions of years and evolution, as the author believes in an old earth.
There is more on the SL topic on this SCM forum, including here:
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/talk-me-out-of-sonlightplease
I just went through my planning book and dvd and I was so overwhelmed because I wanted to plan too much, really. And I have so many books now that it is hard to decide which ones to use! So I called a dear friend of mine who is a hs mom using CM methods and she helped me relax and not plan out quite so much. She helped me to decide which books to use this term for science and how to do our bedtime readings. So then I planned week 1 only and although the planning book helped me to think out the big picture and how to get there, I think I am better off planning the details of each week only one week at a time.
For example, my ds7 read Greg’s Microscope for science today (on the Sonlight reader list), and now we are changing science for this week to include a day or two to use our microscope and look at the same things Greg in the story looked at…plus whatever else the kids find. That got me excited about science again, too. It is so cold outside this week, that there will be no nature walk. So my friend told me to put up a bird feeder and let nature come to us for our nature notebook. That will have to be next week after I get the bird feeder set up though.
In my opinion, the way to merge Sonlight with CM is to use their catalog for some of the book selections that fit your family. Plan your big picture and year, but don’t over plan. Provide lots of good books and things.