The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course Review
The Number One Piece of Advice I Would Give to a New Homeschool Mom of a Preschooler. . .
DO NOT purchase one single piece of curriculum until you research different homeschooling styles. There are so many differing methods. to educate your preschooler: Traditional, Waldorf, Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Classical, Unschooling or a mix of multiple styles.
Choose the method that is the most realistic for your budget, time and family personality. There are some methods that will be very appealing but would be difficult to implement practically.
I bought the first decent piece of curriculum I could find because I simply had no idea that there were different ways to approach education that were different from traditional public school.
The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course
We used The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course book for our first official year of homeschooling. This course is a traditional, Christian curriculum. However, it isn’t spiritually deep or specific to any one Christian denomination so that it is age appropriate and acceptable for all Christian believers.
It has small hints of Charlotte Mason’s methods as it includes art and poetry in a few of the lessons. The curriculum uses worksheets, games, music, movement and simple crafts to teach all the basics your preschooler needs to know.
This course is open and go, meaning all of the instructions are clearly laid out on each lesson page. You open to the lesson and start reading aloud to your child from the script and work through the activities together. The lessons are less than 20 minutes each so they do not take up much time.
You can purchase a physical copy of the course or a printable PDF download. Personally, I purchased the PDF download thinking it might save me money if I used it for each child instead of purchasing a new course book for each preschool year. Looking back, it would have been easier to purchase the physical course book and would have saved me the price of colored ink and the hassle of printing.
The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course teaches:
The Alphabet (in alphabetical order)
Counting (Numbers 1-10)
Body Parts
Rhyming
Reading (Beginning with simple CVC words such as ox, cat, dog, mom, etc.)
Colors and Shapes
Money (Pennies and Dimes)
How to Hold a Pencil Properly and fine motor skills for writing
Cutting with Scissors practice
The course is really comprehensive and covers all of the basics of preschool very well. I will share with you a bit about my preschooler and our family so that you know what lens I am reviewing this course through.
About my preschool student and family life. . .
Our first year of homeschooling is officially complete. My oldest daughter was four years old when we began her preschool year. She turned five in the middle of fall, meaning that she would be considered an “older student” in her grade compared to other preschoolers if she were to go to public school.
This information is important because it shows where she is at developmentally as a preschooler. A child with a birthday right before your state’s cutoff date for starting school is very different from a child whose birthday happens right after the cutoff date. That is almost one year’s worth of developmental difference and at this age, it matters and will affect how your child processes information.
I am a full-time, stay-at-home mom of three children. At the beginning of the school year, my oldest daughter was 4, my middle daughter was almost 2 and my youngest son was 3 months old. We are a Christian family but do not hold to any denomination. We read the Bible and do the best we can to live according to God’s word.
What We Loved About The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course
As a first time homeschool mom, I liked how comprehensive the course was. I was afraid of “missing something” and this covered all that I believed a preschooler should know.
As an open and go curriculum it was very easy to use. All I needed to do was grab the course book, open to our daily lesson, collect the items needed for that lesson lined out at the top of the page, read the notes for the homeschool parent in blue to myself and read aloud the black script to my child as we worked through the lesson together.
The lessons were short. This perfect for a preschooler who hasn’t undergone any formal learning beforehand. A little everyday teaches your child all they need to know by the end of the course.
The songs and videos. The Good and The Beautiful has a FREE YouTube channel called The Good and The Beautiful Kids with all of the videos your preschooler needs. This channel is great whether you decide to use this curriculum or not. The videos are not overstimulating or addictive which I really appreciated. Learning by song and movement worked so well for learning the alphabet!
I love the early learning songs, the alphabet sounds songs and the alphabet movement songs best. There are also color songs, nursery rhymes, poems, bedtime songs, narrated stories and so much more. It’s a great free resource.
The Alphabet Pages. My daughter loved the alphabet pages and coloring, painting or cutting out pieces of paper to glue to them. She loved seeing her decorated letter page displayed on our whiteboard.
The Practice Sheets. My preschooler loved working on the practice sheets when she wanted to keep going after a lesson. These worksheet activities were fun for her and allowed her to work independently after each lesson.
The End-of-Unit Assessments. This allowed me to see what we needed to review and reinforce more before moving on.
What We Didn’t Love About The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course
I often felt like I was talking down to my child. Some of the script of the lessons felt too childish for my daughter. She would sometimes give me a side glance because she’s not used to hearing me talk to her that way.
This could also be because she is an “older” preschooler based on where her birthday falls in the school year. Imagine someone talking to your child in an exaggreated baby voice like they don’t understand what you’re saying.
The “pretend” portions of lessons. This goes off of my first point. Usually at the beginning of the lesson there is an act of imagination or pretend play to introduce an activity or idea.
For example, in Lesson 2 the script reads, “Let’s imagine that we are having a picnic on the grassy hillside. The sky is blue, and there are fluffy clouds. Let’s pretend we are eating. (You and the child pretend you are eating.)”
This may work with a group of children all doing this activity at the same time. However, my daughter would just look at me like I was silly. She participated like a good sport but I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. So, I started skipping this portion of the lessons when it was included or paraphrased it in a different way to introduce the activity.
The games (folder activities). This is personal to my child so I wouldn’t consider it a negative point for everyone. The games were too easy for her and she didn’t need the extra practice to learn her letters and numbers.
She preferred to spend more time working on art projects instead, which was fine since she was learning “the main things” well. However, I think the games would be great for a student who needed some extra reinforcement.
Learning ABC’s in alphabetical order. This seems to make sense and is the traditional way of learning the alphabet. However, when b and d, m and n, p and q are introduced closely together, they can be confusing, and your preschooler may have trouble with mixing the letters up.
The Montessori method of teaching the alphabet does not teach in alphabetical order to avoid this confusion. For example: m, s, a, and t would be taught in a series together instead of a, b, c and d. I feel like this is easier and less confusing for a child.
However, with enough practice The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course still worked. I just noticed that we needed more work teaching similar letters close together.
Worksheet based. This course relies heavily on bookwork to teach preschool concepts. It’s not necessarily a bad thing just not what my family prefers to use all of the time.
I purchased some Montessori sandpaper letters and sandpaper numbers. These worked much better for learning the alphabet, especially for letters that were really similar. I will note again that The Good and The Beautiful free alphabet songs and movement videos were very helpful.
Will we use The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course Book for our other children?
We will not be using The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course again. However, we will use the alphabet pages, songs and videos and practice pages if the child is interested. Just not the course book.
I will instead, teach the alphabet and numbers with the Montessori method for preschool. As for the other subjects covered, I feel confident to teach them though art and the natural encounters of daily life and don’t necessarily think I need a curriculum for that again.
During this school year, I’ve learned that our family’s homeschooling style will be the Charlotte Mason method for formal school years of K-12. We love read-alouds, nature study, and the arts so this method is perfect for us. I will develop a Kindergarten plan using Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and the ideas from Ambleside Online Year 0 (K).
Books I read that changed my preschool homeschool approach:
The Wild + Free Family by Ainsley Arment
Modern Miss Mason by Leah Boden
For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer MacCaulay
Home Education by Charlotte Mason
Teaching Montessori In the Home: The Preschool Years by Elizabeth G. Hainstock
What else did we do for preschool?
Apart from The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Curriculum we also included:
Bible Stories
The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sarah Lloyd Jones
Living Picture Books (From various Charlotte Mason book lists online)
Poetry & Nursery Rhymes
A Child’s Book of Poems illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa
A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Complete Book of The Flower Faeries by Cicely Mary Barker
The Real Mother Goose
Hymns and Folk Songs
Nature Study
State Field Guides and a Nature notebook to draw what she observed
Art (a lot of art supplies to make whatever her creative mind wanted to)
Who would I recommend The Good and the Beautiful Preschool Course Book to?
Even though our family won’t be using this entire curriculum again, I DO think it would work for some families.
If you are a homeschool mom who wants to make sure you don’t miss anything, works full time or has very little time homeschool your child then this curriculum will absolutely do the job and teach your child what they need to know!
Once again, I highly recommend researching different homeschool styles before purchasing anything for your first preschool homeschool year.
I hope that sharing my thoughts helped you decide if The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Course is right for your family.
Happy homeschooling!
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Other homeschool posts you might enjoy:
Free Charlotte Mason Homeschool Planner
Free Charlotte Mason Homeschool Daily Rhythm Cards
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My Homemaker Poetry Series: