So my journey with language arts and reading has been a rollercoaster with my son but his Minimalist Learning Plan we set up for this past summer and this fall has been wonderful. As has the addition of The Good & The Beautiful Level 1 Language Arts & Literature, and I’ve not even printed it out! GASP
Since this isn’t the first curriculum I’ve tried to use with him I didn’t even want to invest our own paper in ink into it when I didn’t have to. (After all I’m trying to watch our budget.) Jenny Phillips offers FREE PDF downloads of Levels 1-5 and I am so thankful for that. I have ours on our IPad. (It’s also downloaded on a kindle and my laptop but I find the iPad is working best for us.) I’m not so technical fancy to use a PDF writer on the screen so we use a good old spiral notebook. We call it “out Good & Beautiful Notebook”.
In the spiral notebook Pumpkin writes his spelling words and does his spelling quizzes. I jot down creative writing exercises that are included in the books that he narrates to me or I have him do his own writing exercises. At the end of the notebook, I will take his creative writing work and type them into a separate notebook. Super easy and super cost effective!

Because Pumpkin is in this weird middle place I didn’t want to skip Level 1 but I didn’t think he was fully ready for Level 2, plus I didn’t want him to miss out on all the beautiful. (Shhh, I wanted to do the beautiful with him too and didn’t want to wait till it was Cupcakes turn.) This curriculum is like all curriculum in one way, it’s our tool not our master, we are making it work best for us.
Well, since he is in that weird middle place and we are already doing something else that is working for him in regard to phonics we are not doing ALL the lessons. Instead I took some time over a few days and on my own lined piece of paper wrote down the page numbers of what I wanted him to cover. Each time we complete one of MY scheduled lessons I write the date for my records. It’s not fancy and as open and go if we were using the whole book but it’s just right for us.
So how is it going and how does he like it? He is enjoying it and I’m not getting the dragging of feet that I had from other language arts programs that I used in the past. (Those were good too, but this is such a better fit.) I think starting off with a level that is sort of easy for him is helping with that. I expect him to be finished with Level 1 shortly after the first of the year (because we year round that is when we start the new school year) and plan to buy the printed version of Level 2.
This curriculum really is Good & Beautiful! The art selections are lovely, literature selections are wonderful and its open and go with still plenty of room for us to build onto the lessons if we want to. For example, we like to spend more time with the art and poetry.
This post does NOT contain any affiliate links,
but like always I only share things that we love.
It’s the open and go that I think will really appeal to a lot of parents, and easy to teach even for us parents who cannot remember half of any of this stuff we are teaching or never learned ourselves. Oh, and the price point for even the paid for printed options is super competitive.
If you are roadschooling or homeschooling in a small space like I am, here are a few pros that you will really like.
- Open & Go, no teachers manual
- Internet not required
- Covers more then one subject
- Doesn’t take a lot of room or have a lot of little parts
We also happen to have The Good & The Beautiful Booklist that is wonderful for quickly choosing books that are of quality and good moral character for my children. Right now, between 11/8/2017-11/11/2017 you can also get this list here for FREE!
Don’t forget to take a peek at the History and Handwriting while you are getting your free booklist and taking a look at the Language Arts. My husband was thrilled with what he has seen in the History and wants us to wait to do those lessons with him. What attracts me to the handwriting is the mix of right and left brain work in each of the lessons and it’s not filled with a bunch of random twaddle.