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

Today we took a field trip to The Kids Discovery Factory in Batesville, Indiana. This is seriously the cutest little (and I mean REALLY little) town!!!

It is only $10 per family, unless you are currently receiving SNAP benefits- then your admission is free. I absolutely LOVE and appreciate that policy and it would be so beautiful if more placed offered that option to low-income families ❤.

It was SO cute & SO much fun! Inside it is full of different STEAM areas to play.

STEAM stands for

• SCIENCE
• TECHNOLOGY
• ENGINEERING
• ART
• MATH

The main room had a few building stations including tracks, pvc pipes, Legos, and miscellaneous wood building stations, the Amazing Air station, and a rocket launcher.

Inside of The Workshop was the Art Room. The staff puts out materials and a theme for inspiration with open invitation to create. Children are welcome to bring their creations home and provide bags to keep creations in.

The rocket launcher was a blast 😉🚀

This was a sensory style room and I loved it! Each of the frames on the wall were a different feeling. There were a lot of “light bright” type of activities. With the current solar eclipse theme going on, there was a space to try to make constellations on the light boards as well as glow in the dark stars.

Ella liked building with the small Legos. I really liked how they are contained.

Moses had a lot of fun with the moon sand area with the astronaut/moon landing theme.

The Amazing Air wall was also a lot of fun. The kids took turns laying down on the ground and having the scarves and loofahs hit them in the face. They thought it was really funny.

They really liked Tiny Town – a section of make believe and role play. They had fun cooking up meals in the pretend kitchen, shopping the grocery & farmers market, and playing in the mini house with the animals.

I loved this wall of career inspiration! It listed famous people from each field and a few facts about each. That gives kids a great opportunity to learn about a career they may have not heard of previously.

This heartbeat drum was really cool. It played the drum to your heartbeat so you could hear it out loud. It also told you how many beats a minute you were supposed to hear based on your age.

This room changes each month based on what theme is going on. For March the theme is Space. They had different stations set up to learn about outer space as well as solar eclipses with the 2024 Total Eclipse coming to our area!

The science project & art project this month were also about solar eclipses.

The big kids got some Solar Eclipse packets and glasses for free today as well that we get to bring back for a badge when we come back for the Solar Eclipse on April 8th!

This was such a great place for families of multiple age groups! There are areas for all ages and so much to do. And best of all, it’s totally affordable for big families!

Food and drinks are NOT permitted in the building so be sure to eat before coming. Batesville is very small and there are numerous places to eat within a 5 minute distance from the factory.

There is plenty of free parking in a parking lot as well as street parking.

I do wish that it was a little bit closer to our home, but it is a great special place to get to go once in a while. If you are in the area or just enjoy traveling the US and find yourself in Indiana, definitely check it out. It’s absolutely worth the drive & time!!

The woman working today did tell me about their expansion plans and I’m really excited to go back when this happens! They will be adding to the side yard for outdoor play, as well as finishing and adding to the other floors of the building as well for more play!

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov