Many families have been thrown into this beautiful world of homeschooling over the last year. Many, against their will… yet a good amount of families has been loving their experience and realized the beauty in homeschooling. Today I want to tell you more about The Good And The Beautiful, an incredible homeschooling curriculum we have been using across 4 grades with our 3 children, and feel head over heels with the second we received it!
Our family started homeschooling when we decided to travel the world full-time. I had always said that I’d be the last mom to home school. No patience, three kids, where to even start, my kids needed structure, another person to respect, social life, and all of the extras public schools offer – P.E., arts, music, theater, etc. But really, inside of me, I could see myself strangling my kids, unable to control my lack of patience, and being a terrible all-around teacher.
Of course, homeschooling was our only option to travel around the planet full-time and we made the big jump a few months before COVID was even an acronym! We thought we could do it for 18 months and that even if we failed miserably, our kids were still young enough to catch right back up at school upon the end of our trip.
One week in, and I knew this was our new normal. We loved homeschooling! No, I never will be a patient saint and I am sure many parents are better teachers than we are. We are now finishing our second year of homeschooling and I could never imagine life any other way.
We have grown to be incredibly close to our children, our bond evolving in ways I did not know possible. We ALL learn so much during the hours we spent learning together. I can honestly say that there isn’t a day we go to bed without having learned something new.
My only regret? Not starting earlier. Our newfound sense of freedom is giving us the gift of time! But I do believe that stumbling upon The Good And The Beautiful early into our homeschooling journey has played a key role in our success!
I am very passionate about The Good And The Beautiful and can’t tell you how many friends have come by for an afternoon snack around our homeschooling curriculum! 🙂 I can sit there for hours, chanting the beauty of it, because the name couldn’t have been better chosen – it truly is a Good and Beautiful homeschooling curriculum, and the best there is, in my opinion. I highly recommend getting at least the Math and Language Arts curriculum for each kids. You can then supplement with other topics, but at the very least, get the foundational Math and Language Arts!
Let’s look at some of the things we love about The Good And The Beautiful:
1- Free Language Arts Assessments
One beautiful thing about homeschooling is the opportunity that each child has to learn at his / her own pace. The hard part is figuring out where they stand on day 1 of homeschooling.
The Good And The Beautiful takes the guessing out of the game. Head over to the Level Assessment to understand where to place your child from Kindergarten to 9th grade. I love that The Good And The Beautiful uses “levels” instead of “grades.” If anything, I have found the Language Arts curriculum to teach a little above public school grade level and you are able to place your child exactly where they belong, thanks to the level assessment.
2- No Parent Prep Time!!
I hear of moms prepping their lessons for the week each Sunday, making monthly and yearly lesson plans. I respect their work and am very impressed with their dedication and the investment of time they make in their homeschooling journey. I simply don’t have the time, nor desire, to plan our lessons and The Good And The Beautiful does all of the hard work for me.
All I have to do, as the educator, is show up. Every morning, I discover a new lesson with each child and we work our way through an easy-to-understand and organized set up.
What I love about The Good And The Beautiful is that each level allows the child to work more independently than the year before. While my first grader’s math is pretty hands-on and she needs me to navigate the entire lesson, my third grader’s day starts with me reading through some material and explaining concepts for him before he moves onto independent practice, while my fourth grader starts the day discovering a new concept, step-by-step with beautiful illustrations and I jump in towards the end of the lesson to check and deepen her understanding.
But the bottom line is that no prep is required for the teaching parent(s). Simply open up to the next lesson, follow the prompts, teach and learn with your child.
3- Four Days A Week
Having grown up in France where elementary students only have four days of school year week, I do miss a bit of the extra playtime I enjoyed as a kid for my children. There is so much to be learned outside of text books and The Good And The Beautiful understands that perfectly.
The curriculum is designed to teach four days a week. If you start at the beginning of the school year and teach four days a week, following the school calendar, you will be done together with your local school’s schedule. Use the extra day to go out and play and maybe get the Drawing or Nature Notebook. Or use that extra day to go on field trips. We love our ASTC science museum membership for example, and spend lots of time outdoors playing with other homeschooling families. Your nature lover will love the Birdwatching Notebook, while the handsy one will stay busy with the Creative Arts & Crafts book.
4- Gentle And Beautiful
Just as its name indicates, The Good And The Beautiful curriculum is gentle and aesthetically beautiful. I have no better word to explain how beautiful the materials are.
As you work your way through the lessons, you will find them calming. There are no aggressive colors or characters. The children are exposed to enriching art and wholesome words. They are not talked to like babies… the words are grand and rich, getting the kids used to a higher standard, yet explained in a way that a child will understand and remember.
All stories and excerpts are wholesome and show high character and behavior. In fact, if you are looking for good books for your child to read, check out this incredible resource: The Good And The Beautiful’s book list! All books on this list have been vetted for high moral and character and are safe for your children to read. The owner of The Good And The Beautiful believes that what your children read impacts their behaviors, which makes a lot of sense. She has put an incredible amount of work in vetting books that are safe for them to read. The search list even allows you to search for books by title, which I have found helpful in several occasions.
5- Engaging And Fun Homeschooling Content
The Math curriculum uses beautiful illustrations, as well as manipulatives to teach the children important concepts. It uses storytelling to immerse them and help them connect with the lessons. I am always impressed at the amount of beauty surrounding each and every single lesson.
And then come the interactive activities. Forget taunting white pages filled with columns of black subtractions and long divisions. Instead, be ready to play daily games with your children. The Good And The Beautiful math programs come with original board games with stunning boards and manipulatives. Getting the kids to “feel” math by turning it into concrete activities is the best way to teach them. After the second or third grade, kids are ready to move into more abstract math. By that time, however, they have been able to physically and visually understand the important basic concepts thanks to The Good And The Beautiful!
The Language Arts curriculum also comes in a package full of everything you will need for each level – from shared readers to independent readers, mini-books to phonics cards, and more. I love that the curriculum includes lots of geography, and content that the kids love learning about. Do not expect lesson after lesson of grammatical rules and boring word lists… there is a gentle and engaging way to teach children and The Good And The Beautiful absolutely nailed it.
The children learn for the love of learning. They are eager to discover and develop their knowledge, even in topics they never liked at school! Sometimes, it is as easy as tracing your phonics words in sugar to get your child excited to learn! Did you know you can write on glass with a dry erase marker or even write your words on windows? The creativity of the curriculum is endless and the children genuinely look forward for what might come in the next lesson.
6- Christian Homeschool Curriculum
Our family is non-practicing Catholic, yet I love the bits and pieces of Christianity included in the curriculum. The Good And The Beautiful is embedded in a non-denominational belief and it is infused with just the right amount of religious talks, all holding the child to higher character and incredible values.
Just this morning, my third grader and I learned about symbols in literature. The lesson looked at two scriptures and taught us the importance of symbols in text, using two biblical texts that were appropriate to all religions.
7- Family-Style History, Science, And Electives
If you are looking to teach your children more than Math and Language Arts, The Good And The Beautiful offers over 90 products, including increadible elective resources.
We have worked our way through History, for example, which focuses on the actual stories, rather than teaching facts, dates, and names. By telling the stories and playing an original board game together, we were all able to better retain the information.
The electives are all taught family-style, which means that you can teach all of your children at once. You will not be bouncing from Kindergarten Science to fourth-grade science. Instead, sit with all of your children, present and discuss the material, and have each child complete grade-appropriate work. For your older 7th and 8th-grade children, you can generally purchase an extension pack that goes into more detail on each topic.
8- Free Resources
One of The Good And The Beautiful’s missions is to make the highest-quality homeschooling curriculum available to all students, at the lowest cost possible. To be honest with you, I am always stunned at the quality of the printed products and manipulatives you receive for the price.
But Jenny Philips, the founder of The Good And The Beautiful, goes one step further, and releases much of her curriculum for free on PDF! You will find here the entire year of K-to-8 Marine Biology curriculum, as well as free K-to-5 Language Arts for download!! Yes, that is the entire year of Language Arts for grades Kindergarten to level 5 (which is a 5th to 6th grade curriculum!)
Starting in August 2021, the brand new math curriculum will be available to download for free for K to 5 as well.
Check out this page for all of The Good And The Beautiful’s free homeschooling resources!
9- Improved Math Curriculum – Simply Good And Beautiful Math
I love seeing The Good And The Beautiful improve and re-design its entire curriculum based on students’ and parents’ feedback. I can’t imagine the amount of work required and find it very noble to see them question their work and improve on already-beautiful resources.
Parents have been wanting an easier way to teach several children at once. A method that would allow older kids to learn a little more independently. Starting in August 2021, children K to 5 will be learning from the Simply Good And Beautiful Math curriculum.
That new Math curriculum will be free to download and below $50 for print and will include online video lessons for levels 4 and 5, allowing parents of multiples to spend more time with the younger kids and a little less with their older children. I am beyond excited to try out that new Math program in the Fall and find the sample videos absolutely beautiful. My kids have already watched all of the sneak-peek videos and can’t wait for the new year to start!
10- Just Plain Out Smart!
Remember your mom teaching you those math and grammatical rules that she’d learned from her mom and helped you a great way? The kinds of tricks you teacher never told you about and that gave you an extra edge?
Well, The Good And The Beautiful teaches you all of the tricks! They want the children smarter and better equipped for the world out there. I love seeing some of my “math secrets” spelled out in the curriculum and worked on until they become second nature to the children.
I am absolutely impressed with how smart the curriculum is. The Good And The Beautiful is not there to check the public school boxes. The curriculum has a genuine interest in teaching the children. It gives them the tools they need to understand the concepts and be successful. It want to help the children be smarter, faster, and turn their successes into a love for learning.
The Good And The Beautiful – Best Homeschooling Curriculum
We have tried several curriculum over the years and none came remotely close to the quality of education delivered by The Good And The Beautiful!
I am absolutely passionate for homeschooling and see first-hand the good that it has had for our family, and only wish the same experience for all homeschooling families out there. I honestly believe that it is the best homeschooling curriculum – one that allows the entire family to learn together in a positive environment, making the children love learning, waking up an inner curiosity and bringing unity to the family unit.
If you have any questions at all, I can clearly talk about The Good And The Beautiful all day long 🙂 so please feel free to reach out anytime and ask any question you might have!
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