Feeding Giants

The Good and The Beautiful

After months of thinking, researching curriculum, and mulling things over every which way, we finally took the jump and pulled our elementary kids OUT of online school. We are now using The Good and The Beautiful programs for Language Arts, Writing, Science, History, and Handwriting…and we could not be happier! We are just finishing up week 3, and already our days are happier and running much more smoothly.  Let me tell you about some of the best parts of this curriculum:

Books, books, and more books…

We went from this…textbooks (Have I mentioned that I haaaaaaaaattttttte “textbook literature”??!!) and workbooks with the same activities day after day:

To this…lots of library books about the topics we’re studying, games, historical novels, vintage-style readers, etc. – all GOOD and BEAUTIFUL literature that teach good values, aren’t dumbed-down, and have actual literary merit:

Mom’s box of stuff

LOVING the reading

some of our TGTB stuff

Bye-Bye to TOO MUCH screen time!

Connections Academy says that elementary kids should expect to spend 15-30% of their learning time online…we felt like it was more like 60-75% most days. Last year didn’t seem as bad, but there were some curriculum tweaks and different grade levels this year that changed things up. We were sent a lot of textbooks and workbooks, but most of the day’s work ended up on the computer screen. All that screen time was messing with their eyes, bodies, temperament…it was too much. And, it got really tedious and boring more days than not.

Now the kids are only on a computer for 20-30 minutes a day. They have 10-15 minutes of typing lessons, and sometimes an online video or game that goes along with what we’re learning off-line. That’s it!

Hands-on Learning…Together

One of our favorite things about The Good and The Beautiful is the “family style” history and science. Rather than every grade level doing something different, everybody learns together, adjusting assignments for the different levels. This is easier on me and makes teaching much more efficient, but it is also a lot of fun for the kids.

Right now we are learning about Ancient Egypt through the history curriculum,  reading both fiction and nonfiction books, doing projects, sampling food from Ancient Egypt, and…did I mention reading lots of books?  Tomorrow the kids will start working on oral reports about something that interests them about Ancient Egypt…and they are actually excited about it!

Flatbread waiting for honey

De-seeding a pomegranate

Eating like ancient Egyptians

In Science, we started with the Human Body unit. This week we learned about the skeletal and muscular systems. One of our projects was making a model of a spine with Honeycomb cereal “discs” and gummy Lifesaver “cartilage”.  The 4 year old also participated in this one…his spine looks like it might need a little surgery – its missing a few parts!

Making a spine model

The spine in the middle needs a chiropractor…

Nature Study

Inspired by the philosophies of Charlotte Mason, The Good and The Beautiful encourages a lot of time out in nature. We make a point to spend time every week outside, both investigating things that interest us in the moment, and doing specific assignments. One week the kids started out looking for signs of Fall in the city park and ended up investigating a spider with a missing leg crawl up and down a slide. It was actually pretty fascinating…the front leg (the other was the missing one) was longer than the rest and was used to feel things out before the spider went anywhere. I’d never watched one long enough to see that before!

Nature notebook in a tree

Fall collections

Examining the spider

7 legged spider

Individualized Math

Math is our only subject that isn’t from The Good and The Beautiful…but guess what? I used to be a teacher! And I actually like writing curriculum and making learning materials…I totally do that in my free time for fun! How handy!

I am thoroughly enjoying putting my experience to work and creating curriculum that fits exactly what my kids need. We are learning together, filling gaps, having fun, and individualizing their education like never before. This week, my 2nd grader (3rd grade math) and 4th grader both learned about factors and multiples. Instead of textbook pages, we played a game with chocolate chips to review before their test yesterday (which they both got 100% on!):

Peace….

Switching curriculum has been a great decision for both educational purposes and our family in general. I wish we would have done it sooner! While I am grateful for our time with Connections (especially for the AWESOME teachers with Wyoming Connections Academy!), this just feels better for us. The kids are really engaged in their learning. They are excited about what they are doing, even using free time to read up on their history or science topics, or do an extra project. I LOVE teaching the kids myself and feel like the curriculum we are using is pretty close to what I would have made on my own anyway. All in all, we are super happy with this change and are loving school right now!