I’m excited to share our The Good and the Beautiful review with you today because after four years of using this curriculum, we’re moving on.
The TGATB curriculum was recommended to us a few times when we were new homeschoolers – my husband went to private school and I graduated from public school, so homeschooling was completely foreign to us at then.
Before trying TGATB, I purchased early learning, preschool, and kindergarten workbooks and activities at Costco, Amazon, and various bookstores but about half way through the year, I found that I wanted more structure in our routine.
I thought I’d be able to manage with these educational materials and some intentional scheduling but quickly realized that creating interesting lesson plans proved to be harder than I thought – especially with a very active second child now!
This homeschool curriculum looked like a great opportunity to establish a more organized (and less redundant) learning schedule.
Keep reading to learn:
- about our experience with the Good and the Beautiful
- how advanced is TGATB
- is the Good and the Beautiful grade level
- the Good and Beautiful controversy (is it Mormon and should Christians use it)
- Math, Language Arts, Science, and Kindergarten reviews
- TGATB cost plus is it worth it
- the Good and the Beautiful free resources: book list, YouTube, and audio books
- how to do a placement test
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and I could earn a commission if you make a purchase using them. This comes at no additional cost to you and all opinions expressed are my own.
The Good and the Beautiful Review: Unsponsored Homeschool Mom’s Real Opinion
Beginning your homeschooling journey can be overwhelming.
There is so much to learn and UNLEARN in the process!
If you need to plan around a busy schedule that includes working from home (with kids!), managing your home, cooking from scratch, and multiple children’s extracurricular activities, a boxed curriculum with a well-thought-out course plan can make things so much easier.
The Good and the Beautiful Curriculum Options
TGATB currently offers the following courses:
- Language Arts
- Handwriting
- Math
- History
- Science & Health
- Electives
I’ll talk more about each one below.
Is the Good and the Beautiful grade level?
Yes, TGATB offers fundamentals like Language Arts and Math according to grade levels.
Language Arts
The Good and the Beautiful offers Language Arts courses for:
- Preschool
- Kindergarten Prep
- Level K
- Level 1
- Level 2
- Level 3
- Level 4
- Level 5
- Level 6
- Level 7
- Level 8
- High School 1
- High School 2
- High School 3
- High School Honors
We completed Levels K, 1, and 2 as well as half of the Preschool program before switching curriculums this year.
Handwriting
Handwriting courses are available for preschool-level children (ages 2.5 to 5 years old), Kindergarten, and Levels 1 through 7.
Levels are based on Grade ranges – for instance, Level 2 is meant for Second and Third Grade, while Level 7 could be used for Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grade students.
My girls completed the preschool through level 3 handwriting workbooks and actually enjoyed the exercises in them.
Math
Math courses are available for Kindergarten as well as levels 1 through 7.
My oldest really enjoyed Math K because of the Math Box and games it included but that enjoyment wasn’t the same for either Math 1 or 2 because we didn’t purchase the Math Boxes (due to high shipping costs to Canada).
Since the Math 2 Box includes American money, I found it more economical to just buy the Learning Resource Canadian currency kit. For the fraction dice, I bought dry-erase dice and filled them in myself. For the stars, I got tiny stickers from the dollar store and we matched the colors that the curriculum called for during these activities.
History
The Good and The Beautiful offers family-style history lessons for students in Grades K through 8.
The History Year 1 Course has options to add on a Story Book, Time Line Book, Time Tunnel Review Cards as well as specific Student Explorer Books for Grades 3-6 and Grades 7–8 and an Activity Book for Grades K-2 available.
Science & Health
TGATB offers science courses for preschool-aged children up to Grade 8.
At this time, their current course list includes:
Little Heart and Hands Science (Preschool to 2nd Grade)
- Wind and Waves
- Bones and Stones
- Sparks and Stars
- Nests and Burrows
- Fields and Flowers
We really enjoyed the Fields and Flowers unit – it’s a simple introductory science course that’s aimed at Preschool to 2nd Grade. It’s not rigorous at all and is more of a story based learning opportunity.
Both of my girls enjoyed listening to me read the stories and watching the videos that went with it.
Physical Science
- Weather and Water (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Space Science (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Chemistry (Grades 5-8)
- Wonders of Energy (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Motion and Simple Machines (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
Life and Earth Science
- Ecosystems (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Birds (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Mammals (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Arthropods (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Geology (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Botany (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Marine Biology (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fish (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Paleontology (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Kingdoms and Classifications (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
Health and Safety
- Health and the Human Mind (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Health and the Physical Body (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
- Maturation & Sexual Reproduction (Grades 3-8)
- Safety (Grades 3-6, Grades 7-8)
To complete the science courses above listed for Grades 3 and up, each student will need his or her own Student Journal.
Journals are based on two age groups – Grades 3-6 and Grades 7-8.
So, for example, if you have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old, you’ll need two separate journals of different levels – one Grade 3-6 Student Journal and one Grade 7-8 Student Journal!
There are also add-ons available in the forms of Read-Aloud Books Packs and Extension Unit Studies based on age range (for instance, Grades 7-8).
Electives
TGATB offers several fun electives for homeschoolers:
- Birdwatching (Grades 3-8)*
- Creative Writing (Grades 3-8)
- Nature (Grades 3-8)
- Creative Arts & Crafts (Grades K-6)
- Typing (Grades 2-8)
- Drawing (Grades K-5)
More Homeschooling Organization Tips:
- Why You Need a Morning Basket Routine for Your Homeschool
- Our Easy Peasy Kindergarten Homeschool Schedule
- How to Set Up the Perfect Homeschool Room (Big or Small!)
How advanced is The Good and the Beautiful?
Honestly, I would say it’s a little advanced – maybe a year ahead of what’s taught in schools.
In comparison to our public and private schooled friends and family here in BC, my oldest is reading at what would be considered a Grade 5 reading level (she’s entering Grade 3 this year).
Math is also more advanced. By the end of Grade 2, my oldest homeschooler understands addition, subtraction, and basic multiplication while other children her age will begin multiplication this year.
This was true for Grades 1 and K as well.
That said, it’s not a race or competition for who knows more by which time – mastery of skills rather than quickly covering the most material in the shortest time should always be the goal.
How long are the lessons?
To give you an idea of how long it takes us to get through a lesson, I’ll break it down by our full school day.
During Kindergarten, we would hang out at the kitchen table and do schoolwork for a total of around an hour and 40 minutes every morning – that includes a 20-minute break between two Language Arts lessons and two Math lessons.
So at one hour and 20 minutes of school time, that works out to about 20 minutes per lesson (80 minutes / 4 lessons = 20 minutes).
Twice a week, we’d do Science during M’s Kindergarten year and this added on another 15 minutes.
We purchased our TGATB course package in the middle of March this year but my goal was to complete our Level K package by the end of June regardless of our start date.
Since there are 120 lessons in both Language Arts and Math, that meant breaking it down to 60 days and doing six day school weeks – M really enjoyed the TGATB Kindergarten program though and always asked for “one more” lesson so it worked out for us.
When we moved onto Grade 1, our schedule changed to a 5 day school week and in Grade 2, our “course work” schedule again to a 5 and sometimes 4 day school week (since the girls had two days of extracurriculars plus events and field trips with our co-op).
Here’s how we’re planning our homeschool schedule for two kids this year.
During Grade 1 and 2, the amount of time we’d spend working on this curriculum went up significantly some days because the work was often met with resistance.
Shorter lessons would be done in our 20 to 30 minutes while lessons my daughter didn’t enjoy would take over an hour. Since she resented the work, it was often done poorly as well (handwriting and the process of creative writing, for instance).
Can Christians use The Good and the Beautiful? Is it Mormon?
The Good and the Beautiful describes itself as taking a “general Christian worldview” and focuses on “high moral character and basic Bible principles such as gratitude, honesty, prayer, and kindness”.
TGATB’s website states that they have reviewers and users from the following denominations:
“Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Catholic, Baptist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mennonite, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nazarene, Methodist, Non-Denominational, and Seventh Day Adventists”.
The Good, the Beautiful, and the Controversy
The Good and the Beautiful controversy comes down to the fact that the course creator, Jenny Phillips, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Some parents feel that this influences the curriculum while others feel that it does in fact remain doctrinally neutral.
Looking back on our own experience with the Language Arts, Math, and Science curriculums, we did not personally come across any specific doctrine but I can see how some themes could reflect a mormon perspective.
For those that want to dive deeper into this, Elizabeth from Foundation Worldview does an outstanding job of breaking down some basic LDS beliefs as well as how these themes subtly appear in the TGATB curriculum in this video.
Curriculum as a Tool
As a born-again Christian (with a former holiday Catholic past and a lot of catching up to do in God’s word), I began to have mixed feelings while using TGATB curriculum during our third year. Part of this experience may just come down to the fact that I’ve been growing in my faith during this season though.
Ultimately, my daughter’s lack of enthusiasm for the lessons combined with my own personal convictions led us to step away from TGATB this year.
That said, I don’t want to come across as shaming homeschoolers who do choose to use it.
I know several families who have turned to the free curriculum because finances are tight and I appreciate the fact that this company has made homeschooling more accessible to those who may not have otherwise had the means to invest in such resources.
At the end of the day, curriculum is merely a tool and not a replacement for spending time in God’s word.
Starting our day with a Bible study is a must in our homeschool and I recommend these resources for yours too.
For the other side of the coin in this debate, check out Jessica’s thoughts in this blog post – it’s a very funny read and includes so many of the thoughts I’ve had in the past on this issue.
If you’re wrestling with whether or not to use The Good and the Beautiful in your homeschool, I’d encourage you to pray for wisdom and reflect on God’s word as your final authority.
More Free Homeschool Resources to download:
- 52 Printable Alphabet Coloring Pages for Toddlers (English & Croatian PDF Downloads)
- European Flags Coloring Pages for Kids (with Country Names + Coloring Guide)
How much does TGATB cost? Is it worth it?
At the time of writing this, TGATB offers free PDF course sets for Language Arts and Math on their website.
Physical workbooks and course sets range from $20.99 to $123.96 USD per item.
We enjoyed the Kindergarten curriculum and appreciate the path it led us on as we embarked on our homeschooling journey but as of Grade 2, we started to notice some gaps that need to be filled and a loss of joy in learning.
My daughter just wasn’t excited about school the way she used to be so this year, we reviewed some curriculum options together and made a lot of changes.
Some areas we’ll be particularly focused on improving this year are:
- math mastery
- spelling
- creative writing.
What We liked About The Good and the Beautiful
Let’s be honest, there is not denying how lovely this curriculum is – the artwork, soft color choices, and positive messages throughout make it extremely appealing for kids and parents alike.
Language Arts Pros
One of my favorite parts of the curriculum is the reading program – the simple books from the Reading Booster A Books set are easy for brand new readers to get started and help children to build confidence in their new ability.
I’ve already started teaching my four year old how to read with these simple books.
Check out our 100 Book Reading Challenge for Kids!
The Language Arts Booster Cards and Course Readers and also wonderful for solidifying phonics and and understanding of vowel digraphs.
Other things I loved were the done for you narration and open and go lesson format – there really wasn’t any prep work in getting started for the day and my calendar simply consisted of simple notes like LA (91) and Math (87) when I was scheduling lesson plans on our calendar from the course books!
Math Pros
This curriculum presents mathematics in such a gentle and beautiful way that it takes the intimidation out of working with numbers – math is actually my daughter’s favorite subject!
Off the top of my head, some things I really appreciated are the way that the text teaches tricks for memorizing doubles problems, working with number families, and understanding some of the reasons behind why we do things a certain way in mathematics rather than just having kids memorize a bunch of facts.
Another thing I really liked about both the Language Arts and Math programs were the unit reviews. These give parents an opportunity to check in with their kids and see if they actually understand the concepts that were presented.
If your child’s understanding isn’t strong enough, you can make a note of the areas that are lacking and schedule in more review time to solidify information.
What We Didn’t Like About The Good and the Beautiful
The thing I found missing from this curriculum was the ability to spark creativity and encourage my daughter to start creating on her own.
Language Arts Cons
Beginning around Grade 2, paragraph writing exercises are often dull and uninspiring. Here’s a writing exercise from Grade 3 Lesson 111 where students are called to write a letter to Albert König.
My daughter dreads these types of exercises and we often ended up doing the assignment verbally and thus, skipping out on the extra writing practice.
As a whole, I really wish I would have done better in the handwriting area and set higher expectations earlier on. Because at the end of the day, it’s up to us as the parents to fix what’s not working when we notice there’s a problem.
This year, we’ll be doing catch up to improve our handwriting as we begin cursive too.
We’ll also be catching up on spelling. As much as the TGATB Letter Tiles app was fun for my daughter and boosted her confidence in learning to spell new words using consonant and vowel digraphs, that spelling practice just didn’t stick.
I think there’s more value in handwriting words when it comes to memorizing how to spell them.
Ironically, something that TGATB’s math program did well was helping my daughter learn to correctly spell number names (i.e. eighteen for 18) – because we practiced writing them by hand.
Again, I could have made a better effort to encourage her to practice handwriting vocabulary words from Language Arts, so that’s on me for not addressing that issue at the time.
Another component of the Language Arts program that my daughter would resist was the Audio narrations – she found them boring and would often start talking over them! So, we’d restart again and again until we got through it.
Her resistance often left me doubting myself and before long, I found myself structuring days just to check the boxes to make sure we finished all 120 lessons by the end of the school year.
Math
Some of the word problems felt a little too heavy on the background details and while I do appreciate the course creator’s intention in making math problems story-based, it felt as though the storylines pulled focus away from the actual lessons at times.
Math lessons would take over an hour some days and honestly, as much as I don’t mind heavy parent involvement in my children’s learning materials, the type of involvement was too rigid and monotonous.
The Good and the Beautiful uses a spiral learning approach rather than mastery for math – something which we found lacked depth and caused a lot of frustration in our household.
The spiral method may work for some kids, but unfortunately it isn’t working for us any longer.
Clocks were another struggle – the lessons on reading an analog clock felt too spread out for us and by the time this subject came up again, my daughter had already forgotten what she had learned the last time we saw them (for us, playing games actually helped M more than anything).
I think more time could have been spent on mental math skills as well so that’s something I want to focus more on in the future.
What We’re Trying Instead of TGATB This Year
This year, our learning schedule looks a lot different and I’m excited for the challenge that homeschooling two kids will bring.
Our hope is to raise children who are well-rounded in character and academics, with a love of learning, growing wisdom, and likeness of Christ so I wanted to try new curriculum that reaches a balance between these goals.
Pre-K
For my Pre-K student, we’ll be trying Memoria’s Press’ 5-Day Junior Kindergarten curriculum. I really like the reading list and the variety of suggested activities that’s incorporated into each day of the week.
Reads alouds are one of the things we want to do more of this school year since both of the kids really enjoy them! I love the idea of incorporating picture books across all subjects whether we’re studying language arts, music, or math.
Since my youngest always wants to participate in different school subjects, I also picked up a copy of Preschool Math at Home from The Well-Trained Mind Press. I appreciate the fact that there’s a targeted math program just for her age group that we can do together while her older sister works independently on her own math assignments.
Grade 3
For my Grade 3 student, I’ll break down Language Arts into four separate categories.
- Writing – I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about IEW’s Structure & Style program and look forward to beginning Level A this fall along with the Bible heroes writing lesson add on.
- Reading – We’ll be reading the books from Structure & Style’s Level A book list as well as some other classic books for this age group (Charlotte’s Web, Black Beauty, etc.)
- Spelling – We’re starting fresh with spelling this year with the first level of All About Spelling.
- Handwriting – M is starting Memoria Press’ New American Cursive Penmanship course
For Math, we wanted a more mastery-based approach and will be trying out Math With Confidence as well the Facts That Stick book series.
The Good and the Beautiful Review: Final Thoughts
I hope that our TGATB review brought you some new insights and a different perspective on using this curriculum.
For the record, I don’t believe that a single product or educational resource has the power to convert a family to mormonism. The truth is, we’re surrounded every day by messages and influences that contradict a Christian worldview through media, entertainment, and even mainstream education – it’s not just a handful of curriculums that need to be weighed carefully.
As Christian parents, we’re called to use discernment in everything we do and to stay on guard no matter the source.
At the end of the day, curriculum is just a tool and you can omit the content you disagree with or, if you’re children are old enough, use it as an opportunity to have a conversation with them about the reasons why it doesn’t align with what the Bible says. Same goes for real world interactions!
Personally, I felt convicted to stop using TGATB for faith-based reasons in addition to academics. But that doesn’t mean every family will come to the same conclusion.
With prayer and discernment, it can still be a helpful tool for some families – especially those in need of a free curriculum during difficult financial times.
That said, TGATB didn’t spark the type of creativity and joy we longed for in our homeschool and my daughter came to resent the audio narrations, video books, and paragraph writing assignments by the end of our second grade year. I dreaded the length of math lessons, haha.
At the end of the day, no curriculum is perfect but God’s word always is true. As long as that remains our foundation, we can trust Him to guide us in choosing the right tools for our family’s needs in each season.
Happy homeschooling, friends!
– Nikki
Tips for Adding Music to Your Homeschool:
