The Good and The Beautiful.
I had plans of sharing this blog post at the beginning of the last school year to share what we did in our school year, and what we have loved for the past 2 of our 8 years of homeschooling. But here I am, at the middle to end of 2020 with the next school year looming on parents with the fear of COVID upon them. So many parents have been waiting for school districts to announce how the school year will go and upon the conclusion of moving forward, many families have decided to bring their kids home to homeschool.
Maybe this was the perfect God-ordained time to share this post about a curriuculum we have loved for many years and one I will most likely always trace back to.
And interesting enough, I find myself sharing this in the exact time that we are sending our children to the private school that my husband works at. After 8 years of homeschooling, we are walking into a new chapter of life and being flexible with what it will bring.
I have had so many friends with questions and asking guidance on what this homeschooling life looks like so I want to help however I can for everyone finding themselves in this new space.
This specific blog post is about the curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful which is what we used for the past 2 years and have thoroughly loved and I reccommend it to everyone.
Some of my favorite things about this curriculum are:
Little to none prep. You don’t have to set everything out and prep the night before. You can simply open your book in the morning and dive in.
Family style teaching. The science and history lessons can be taught to all ages at the same time. There are continuing parts of it that can be catered to specific ages but the bulk can be taught to a whole group of kids at different ages.
Older ages are self-directed. For example, in the kindergarten language arts book it will say: “Read this to your child.” and directs me on how to teach the younger kids. But for the older ages, my daughters 5th grade language arts book says, “Read this paragraph and then paraphrase it to your parent.” The older ages are more self-directed with the curriculum speaking directly to them and so my children learn a lot of responsibility and let me know when they need me.
Freedom. There is a lot of freedom within the curriculum to go deeper, add extra resources or simply doing what is in the pages to be enough.
Faith infused. If you want a more secular curriculum, I still think this is a great one. But if you purpose to have faith aspects woven into the pages and learning, you can find that in the curriculum and even just addressing that children should be reading books full of noble character and generosity and kindness. It teaches character development and integrity in everything it does.
We used it for a full 2 years and if we were homeschooling this year, I most definitely would use it again. Check out some of my other blog posts about homeschooling + unschooling to get more insight but I hope this is helpful. Please reach out if you have any questions and I will be sharing more homeschooling tips as the school year begins to help new homeschoolers as best I can. Praying for yall! This is such a blessing to be able to home educate your children. It won’t come without its challenges but you were made for this. You got this, mama!