Have you heard about The Good and the Beautiful Curriculum? Our family had a chance to work on The Good and the Beautiful curriculum review (three of their science courses), and we loved every minute of it! But before I get to our review, I want to tell you a little about the company.

The Good and the Beautiful offers Christian-based, non-denominational curriculum and much of it is FREE. The curriculum is created by homeschool mom, author, songwriter, and teacher, Jenny Phillips, along with her team of homeschool parents, reading specialists, teachers, grammarians, historians, editors, and writers.

The Good and the Beautiful curriculum:

Item: The Good and the Beautiful Curriculum Review
Rating: 5
Author: Jessica

Teaches advanced academics (The Good and the Beautiful curriculum does not follow Common Core standards – it goes above and beyond) while connecting children to God, high moral character, nature and human life. The curriculum focuses on basic Bible principles such as gratitude, honesty, prayer, and kindness. Parents can add in their own doctrinal beliefs as desired.
Makes homeschooling easier and less time consuming. The curriculum is carefully designed to be easy to follow and requires very little to no prep time. Their language arts and literature courses combine several subjects (reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, literature, geography, and art) and their science and history curricula are taught family style.
Makes homeschooling more affordable. The curriculum is free or extremely inexpensive compared to most homeschool courses. Levels 1-5 language arts and literature course sets are free downloads. To save you time and money, the company offers high-quality printed course sets for less than the average cost of having it printed on your own.

“I want to tell you the things I love about your curriculum:
     – I can just open and go.
     – Everything is explained clearly.
    – It is advanced academically.
     – I can trust that everything in it appropriate and uplifting.” ~ Michelle

Want to know more? You can learn what the Good and the Beautiful is all about by watching this video.

We had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure!) of reviewing THREE of their science courses.

Look how thick the courses are!

The Good And The Beautiful Curriculum Review – This unit studies course contains fun, interactive lessons. The course doesn’t require a lot of prep time and/or supplies. Lessons include:

Lesson 1: Introduction to Space

Lesson 2: Stars

Lesson 3: The Solar System and the Sun

Lesson 4: The Terrestrial Planets: Mercury and Venus

Lesson 5: The Terrestrial Planets: Earth and Mars

Lesson 6: The Moon and Its Phases

Lesson 7: Gravity and the Tides

Lesson 8: Asteroids, Comets, Meteors, and Meteoroids

Lesson 9: The Gas Giants: Jupiter and Saturn

Lesson 10: The Gas Giants: Uranus and Neptune

Lesson 11: The History of Astronomy

Lesson 12: Galileo

Lesson 13: Space Exploration: Part 1

Lesson 14: Space Exploration: Part 2

Lesson 15: Space Exploration: Part 3

Lesson 16: Constellations

Q: Does this unit support an old earth or a young earth theory?

A: The unit supports creationism from a general Christian viewpoint, but it does not point to an old earth or young earth theory, keeping that subject vague and allowing you to fill in the blanks with your own beliefs on this particular subject.

The Good And The Beautiful Curriculum Review – This unit studies course includes many hands-on activities and experiments that explore the properties of water, and it takes a detailed look at the changes water goes through as it passes around and through our world. Children learn how water is used to generate power and electricity.

Lesson 1: All About Water

Lesson 2: States of Water

Lesson 3: Evaporation, Condensation, and Precipitation

Lesson 4: The Water Cycle

Lesson 5: Bodies of Water

Lesson 6: Water Shapes the Earth

Lesson 7: Oceans, Currents, and Tides

Lesson 8: Icebergs and Glaciers

Lesson 9: Groundwater

Lesson 10: Water Power

Lesson 11: Clean Water

The Good And The Beautiful Curriculum Review – Packed with experiments and activities, this science course explores weather and atmosphere. This course is very hands-on and requires more supplies and more prep time than some of their other science units. Lessons include:

Lesson 1: The Creation of Weather

Lesson 2: Introduction to Seasons

Lesson 3: Why We Have Seasons

Lesson 4: The Earth’s Atmosphere

Lesson 5: What Is Weather?

Lesson 6: Measuring Weather

Lesson 7: What Is Air?

Lesson 8: Air Pressure

Lesson 9: Air Temperature

Lesson 10: Temperature Affects Air

Lesson 11: Wind

Lesson 12: What Are Clouds?

Lesson 13: Types of Clouds

Lesson 14: Rain

Lesson 15: Thunder and Lightning

Lesson 16: Snow, Hail, and Blizzards

Lesson 17: Severe Weather: Tornadoes

Lesson 18: Severe Weather: Hurricanes

Lesson 19: Forecasting Weather

Lesson 20 – Unit Conclusion

As you can see, each course has a varying number of lessons, and thus, each takes a different length of time to complete. It is recommended you do at least 2 science lessons a week. Each lesson is designed to take 40-60 minutes.

So, what did our family love about The Good And The Beautiful Curriculum courses?

They’re unit studies – we adore unit studies. I think most homeschoolers do.
The unit studies can be done “family style.” Designed for grades K-6. Each packet includes lesson extensions for grades 7+. (There is an older children symbol at the end of most lessons. There you can find ideas for guiding older children through more in-depth research and study.)
The content is faith-based and uplifting.
The lessons are GREAT – you learn a lot. For instance, the atmosphere of the earth is made up of the Exosphere, Thermosphere (the air is so thin here that only rockets can travel through it), the Mesosphere (as the coldest layer of the atmosphere, it destroys meteors that come toward the earth), the Stratosphere (this is where the ozone layer is) and the Troposphere (first layer which contains the air we breathe).
Many of the lessons involve hands-on experiments and teacher demonstrations. Water and Our World has lots of cool experiments such as a cohesion and surface tension experiment (the force that holds a liquid’s outer surface together), an adhesion experiment (how water molecules cling to other substances), and an experiment on how items dissolve in water. In the Meteorology Weather and Atmosphere course, kids set up a weather station and gather daily weather data.
The science units include activities for a science journal. I love combining language arts and science.
All science units include vocabulary words (see example below) to be placed on a science wall. I LOVE the vocabulary words – they’re educational, attractive, and on good quality paper. And again, this combines language arts and science – I love the combo.
Want to learn about art and science at the same time? Your kids can! Check out the last sample page below. Cool, huh?
All three courses have great pictures throughout (sample pages are below).
Some lessons incorporate science mini books – I like how interactive this is.
There is an overall supply list that shows supplies needed for all the lessons at a glance (a sample follows). That’s nice. For the Space Science course, I could tell right off the bat that I had everything I needed until lesson 5 (when we needed a red velvet cake mix to make Mars craters – BTW, that was a fun activity – the kids loved it!).
Also, I like that field trip ideas, read-aloud recommendations, etc. are included (example below).
You only need to purchase one copy of a course per family or group. Most of the pages are non-consumable – and you can print off any page you need more than one copy of.
The science units do not need to be taught in any particular order. They are designed so you can choose when you want to study each subject, and you can choose depending on your child’s interests. Have a kid obsessed with natural disasters – the weather course might be a perfect fit!
The info is up to date. As an example, the Space lesson was released in June 2017.

A supply list for The Good and the Beautiful Space Science Curriculum