The good and the beautiful was a curriculum I stumbled upon on Instagram many years ago.
It was so beautiful that I had to try it. Was the beauty of the curriculum worth the hype?
This post will cover the pros and cons of this curriculum without bringing in a religious perspective into it.
*please note this post was written before TGTB updated their language arts and offered math. See an in-depth comparison of level 1 Language Arts and AAR.
I will be creating a review of the math and update this post in the coming month.
The updated Level 1 Language Arts offered many improvements
My back story of using the good and the beautiful (TGTB)
I purchased level 2 for my grade 2 daughter a couple of years back. At the time didn’t know how advanced it was and we struggled. Looking back, we should have used level 1 and I highly recommend that you take the placement test.
I tried something else the year after, and this year I’m using the Good and the Beautiful pre-k (with my preschooler), Level 1 language arts (with my grade 2) and Level 3 language arts (with my grade 4). I also picked up the typing books and level K primer, as well as musical multiplication.
The pros of the good and the beautiful language arts
- Very open and go, no pre-planning needed
- In-depth and complete language arts program
- Very beautiful
- Includes geography and art picture study
- Each level is at least, if not more advanced, than grade level. This is a bonus if you’re taking the homeschooling year-by-year.
- Generally in-expensive
- Free language arts pdfs are available
- Emphasis on having good moral character and high quality literature
- Offers readers with each language arts level (which look beautiful and offer that classic feeling like you’ve stepped back in time)
Cons of the Good and the Beautiful Language Arts
- Some people find the lessons too long. I feel that in general, we often don’t do as much as is recommended. I listen to my child’s attention span that day.
- The curriculum can feel a bit too traditional. This depends on your homeschooling philosophy, we’re very Charlotte Mason inspired with a lot of copywork or dictation. Others really enjoy this aspect.
- Spelling lists are used for teaching spelling. Some kids do really well with this, others don’t. We adapt the spelling and also use Spelling You See.
- Emphasis on disliking twaddle literature. There are many instances when twaddle literature is discussed and discouraged. How you feel about twaddle (books that are for fun with no character building or good morals in the story line) is entirely dependent on your home.
- Not secular. If you’re wishing for a secular resource, there’s a lot of tweaking needed should you wish to use it. I’m personally a non-religious homeschooler but I have no problems using resources that are faith based or with mentions of God.
- Quite advanced, however if you take the placement test this should be ok. A lot of students place in a level below their grade.
- Some people aren’t looking to add geography or art picture studies into their language arts. I feel like the price is really great, and you can honestly skip certain lessons if you need to.
- If you don’t live in the U.S shipping is very costly.
In general, I find the Good and the Beautiful to be a very appealing and complete high quality curriculum.
I’ve really enjoyed their old fashioned looking readers and now they offer a whole library of high quality books. They’re started introducing fun language arts games that I’m looking forward to trying one day.
Personally, we don’t only use TGTB for language arts, I’m a very eclectic homeschooler. I pull in from many different curriculum and I also add in CM, Waldorf and Brave Writer into our homeschool days. That being said, I’ve really enjoyed using TGTB even if I have to tweak it to our families viewpoints.
Our preschooler is really enjoying the pre-k, although again, I think she needs more time before she’s ready for it. I plan on using the level k primer at the beginning of kindergarten and continuing with the level K. Our family never completes a full level in 1 year because it’s such a comprehensive program. I’m ok with that though!
The musical multiplication was ok, but my grade 4 wasn’t hugely keen on it. I haven’t tried their other math levels yet. The typing lessons seem good, my grade 2 daughter has enjoyed them, although it’s still a little hard for her.
We are using the Pre-K books for home preschool of our 5-year-old and or 3-year-old. I like the pictures very much and I like the simplicity of the lessons. I often skip portions that will take longer to explain to the children. So, most of our work has focused on tracing letters, practicing sounds and letter names. And I am looking forward to the K Primer before our 5-year-old begins school this year. I will probably run this Pre-K for our 3-year-old and 1-year-old next year when both are 4 and 2. But I found that the activities were not enjoyable unless I had a starting activity that was more interactive and fun. so we have a human anatomy workbook with activities that get them excited for practice and learning and talking together and listening. After starting that activity book they’ve become more excited to finish the day of lessons with some tracing and looking at the pictures and so on. I did not find that the Pre-K program was very religious in content. but we have been using an illustrated Bible stories to read some of that content outside of The Good and Beautiful. It is not likely we will be using this program for additional homeschooling. But I am interested in a few additional science programs that they have in the curriculum that I may purchase as summer break material or something to supplement classes depending on what public school creates for us.
Do not buy physical products from TGTB! We are using TGTB for Language Arts for my 4th graders this year, and although we like the curriculum, I will NEVER purchase anything from them again. I bought the spiral-bound workbooks for Language Arts, and they started falling apart after just a couple of weeks. The pages were coming out of the bindings and it was a mess. Unfortunately, rather than stand by their products, TGTB only refunded me $5 to have the books rebound. What a pain! We’ll probably use the curriculum again for 5th grade, and we’ll definitely use their great book list for book recommendations, but they’ve lost me as a paying customer.
I’m sorry that was your experience. Here in Canada it’s still been cheaper to pay for the shipping than local printing. It’s been 2 years since ordering physical products from TGTB but ours were really well printed and bound.
Hello! Thank you for sharing your experience. Would you be willing to briefly share how you tweaked the curriculum to fit your family’s views? Did you re-write or omit parts? Did you have to spend time explaining how it presented views different than your personal views?
We are also non-religious homeschoolers, and I really feel like everything except the religious components would be a great fit for us. Would love to hear more specifically how you handled the adjustments.
Thanks!
Hello Michelle,
I just bought the newer language arts versions and I don’t need to tweak very much to be honest since writing this blog post. I find as the levels go up for language arts, it will have more mention of God or the odd art history painting to look at that’s more religious, but a lot of art throughout history does so it doesn’t bother me to teach. The kids extended family is very Roman Catholic, so we do allow our kids to learn some aspects of religion so they understand others beliefs, but I don’t see it in this curriculum the way it was when I tried to ‘tweak’ Language lessons for a living education which was way more Christian. Hope that helps!