When we first began homeschooling, I had absolutely no idea where to begin. There was SO much information on the internet. Different methods for homeschooling, different curriculums, different kinds of curriculums. I felt lost and overwhelmed, so I asked one of the only other moms I knew who homeschooled for guidance. She gave me a lot of great information & advice about what worked for her family, which I would later come to find out didn’t work as well for our family, which is perfectly fine because it was still a learning experience.

Throughout that first year I learned more about homeschooling and I found a curriculum called The Good and The Beautiful, and immediately knew it was the one for our family for the lesson part of homeschooling. It is SO beautiful and makes learning so fun & interesting.

It is what is considered an “all in one” or “grab and go” curriculum in the homeschool world. That means that you, the homeschooling educator, would simply follow along with the book. Everything that you need is included, although occasionally there will be optional materials suggested to use to enhance the lessons even further. Minimal planning is involved, making it very stress free. I really enjoy that the hard part is done for me, in a way that is easy for me to teach. It really helped improve my confidence in homeschooling in knowing that I am fully capable of teaching my children, regardless of my background.

The younger children are very hands on with the parent or homeschool educator. As they grow older and obtain more knowledge & skills, the lessons become more independent, although you will still be needed as their guide and to answer any questions they have.

I also really enjoy what all is included, and how subjects are incorporated together so you aren’t teaching several subjects all day long. For Example, Ella’s 4th grade language arts included geography, art lessons, cooking lessons, creative writing, spelling, and more. She is loving learning about different countries and making the foods from that location. Her Gnocchi & Scottish Shortbread Cookies were big hits!

I wasn’t great with math in school, but this curriculum makes it very easy to follow along and helps you to refresh, and sometimes relearn the math lessons yourself. It also makes math fun for us. Ella’s 4th grade math includes video lessons to watch which I appreciate as a math-challeneged person. The younger grades includes directions for the parent/homeschool educator to follow for teaching the lesson.

The Good and the Beautiful offers free placement testing to figure out where your child is and where they are best fit to begin with this curriculum.

I also really enjoy the fact that you can either buy the curriculum, or download the PDF for free and print yourself. The library offers to print a number of free sheets per day, which would significantly reduce your cost. This is also a great option for moms who would like to test out the curriculum with their child before investing.

Since we have decided to stick with this curriculum, I chose to purchase one of every grade level for the main subjects, then photocopy a week’s worth of lessons at a time to work on with the girls. This way I am able to reuse this curriculum all the way through with all of the kids and not have to purchase everything new each year.

For science, I buy one master copy of the lesson plan, but I do buy individual workbooks for each child that is completely that class. I will be able to repeat the lessons with the younger kids later on and will only need to buy new workbooks in the future. We pick our units based on our family’s interests.

I incorporate local field trips into our lesson plans to go along with what we are learning. For Marine Biology we went to the Newport Aquarium. For our current subject, Botany, we will be going on field trips to the Krohn Conservatory & the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, as well as grow flowers from seeds, tend to our gardens in our yard, and add more plants. For Geology over the summer, we will be visiting Mammoth Caves. The freedom of homeschooling and having time to learn as a family is seriously the best.

History is the one subject that I do use a different curriculum for, although The Good and the Beautiful does offer it. I use Master books, Tuttle Twins, and a lot of YouTube videos. We also own a large selection of history books & textbooks.

As with science, we also incorporate field trips into our history lessons. In February we went to the Underground Railroad Museum for Black History Month.

There is a free app that goes along with The Good and The Beautiful that you will sometimes need for lessons. This will include songs, spelling, audio narratives, videos, reading boosters, and more.

There is a big re-sale market for this curriculum, so if you do not mark in your books, you will be able to re-sell for close to market value of your money back when you no longer need it.

If you live & homeschool in Ohio, The Good and the Beautiful is registered in the Ohio ACE Marketplace, and can be 100% reimbursed through this program. New applications are currently closed for the 23-24 school year though, unfortunately.

I am really glad that I was able to find this curriculum. It works really well for our family and my kids constantly tell me how fun they think this curriculum is. I love and advocate for using the old-fashioned pencil and paper method over a keyboard because I truly believe in the power of it.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov