In Depth The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Review

Having just completed the workbook, I find it is the best time to do a The Good and The Beautiful Preschool review.

This The Good and The Beautiful Preschool review will discuss:

• an overview of the curriculum,
• what a typical lesson looked like,
• what I liked,
• what I disliked,
• what we skipped,
• how my son responded,
• and my overall The Good and The Beautiful Preschool review

An Overview of The Good and The Beautiful Preschool

If you are unfamiliar with The Good and The Beautiful, it is a homeschool curriculum created by Jenny Phillips. According to their website, goodandbeautiful.com, Jenny Phillips first created the curriculum for her own family but it became popular when she offered her products as free downloads.

It has since grown into a large company offering faith-based curriculum that is steeped in literature and beautiful drawings.

The Preschool Course Book Set consists of 90 short lessons which use the spiral method of learning. The topics include letter recognition, letter sounds, counting to 10, colors, shapes, and art.

With the set comes games, practice sheets, and access to The Good and The Beautiful app for songs and videos. You can also find many of the videos on The Good and The Beautiful‘s YouTube channel.

What a Typical Preschool Lesson Looks Like

Each of the lessons were short, only taking my son about 10-15 minutes to complete. Of course, every child is different and it may take your child shorter or longer to complete the lesson.

At the top of the lesson, there was usually a box labeled, Optional Activities, with suggested mini review lessons if your child needed a bit more help before diving into the day’s lesson.

There is absolutely no prep work needed for each lesson, unless you count having to gather a few basic supplies like scissors or glue as prep work. You do not need to pre-read anything, as the “teacher’s guide” is included right on the course book page your child is doing.

As mentioned above, the curriculum uses the spiral method of teaching. Each lesson would incorporate a bit of review and a bit of something new.

At the end of a lesson, you may be prompted to play one of the games from the included activity folder.

What I Liked About The Good and The Beautiful Preschool

There are so many things to like about this curriculum. The price itself is affordable, running at just under $50 at the time I purchased it. Since the course book is so thoughtfully put together and it includes the activity folder, practice sheets, and songs, it was well worth the price.

Unlike many preschool activity books you can buy at the grocery store, this preschool book acts as a course. Each lesson builds on top of previous lessons, reviewing older material and learning new material.

I also like the quick lessons as my 4-year-old boy can get distracted easily and doesn’t sit still for long. Being a fan of letting kids be kids, I appreciated it even more. I did not feel bad taking 15 minutes away from his free-play time to do something more structured.

As mentioned above, the teacher’s manual is incorporated right onto the course book page. So really, there is no teacher’s manual. I consider this a win, especially for the preschool age.

The preschool book only has 90 lessons, with the idea that you will do the 30-day Kindergarten-Prep course once the preschool book is completed. This would make the 120-day school year complete.

We had a less-than-typical approach, as my son was enrolled in a private Christian preschool when I started implementing The Good and The Beautiful Preschool. We started the course book in February and ended in August. We will start Kindergarten-Prep at the beginning of his Pre-K school year.

Despite starting “late,” in the year, I appreciated there only being 90 lessons. We were able to take days off without a worry and we often only did school four days a week.

I really appreciated the faith-based approach to the coursebook as well. Jenny Phillips is a member of the Church of Later-Day Saints. While I am an Evangelical Christian, I loved seeing God mentioned in the coursebook.

I feel I need to mention that Jenny Phillips does not put anything resembling the specific doctrine of the Church of Later-Day Saints in the preschool course book. If you are not a member of the Church of Later-Day Saints, like myself, you shouldn’t run into anything conflicting in the course book. In fact, the book is hardly faith-based, mentioning God just a few times total.

Here is an example of how they mention God in the course book.

Another aspect of The Good and The Beautiful Preschool I really admired was the letter sound songs. My whole family seemed to like these songs, and, most importantly, they were helpful to teach letter sounds. I even had to brush up on some of them myself so I could help my son. Saying the sound for X is weird, am I right?

The majority of the games and activities in the activity folder were fun for us. They were short, less than 5-minute games. Often times, my son would want to play them over & over.

His favorite game by far was The Mouse House, which is the first game in the activity folder. Toward the end, it seemed there were more activities than games.

We also loved the letter pages in the Practice Sheets workbook. He would color or paint them or even glue objects onto them. He loved working with the glitter glue, of course.

Lastly, I absolutely loved the aesthetic of the curriculum. I do think many people gravitate toward The Good and The Beautiful because it truly is so beautiful. The artwork on each page actually motivated me to open up the book each day.

More importantly, my son loved looking at the pictures and would be excited to move on in the book to see what new drawings he would find.

What I Disliked About The Good and The Beautiful Preschool

There were only a few things that I disliked about this curriculum. One of the biggest was the repetition of some of the worksheets. The same worksheet would be used over and over throughout the workbook, just with new information. Here’s some photos showing what I mean.

This wouldn’t have bothered me so much if it didn’t bother my son. He would assume we already did the page and would lose motivation before I could tell him it was technically new information. I will also say, this didn’t happen often in the book. Most pages were unique.

Many people live by the spiral method of teaching. As this is my first year homeschooling, I haven’t completely made up my mind about. But if I went with my gut instinct, I’d say I prefer the mastery method over the spiral method.

Another small concern I had was how quickly my son was asked to read words without introducing blending. This wasn’t a huge deal, as I am not expecting him to be able to read CVC words right now so I didn’t force it.

What We Skipped in The Good and The Beautiful Preschool

I want to preference by saying that we only skipped parts of this course because my son already knew this information. I didn’t want to do busy work just for the sake of busy work.

For instance, my son already knew his colors and how to count to 10 so I skipped some of these activities, depending on his mood. If he needed a “win” we would go over what he had mastered but otherwise skipped “busy work.”

In the practice worksheets booklet, there are a lot of additional worksheets you can complete optionally. The first part of the book includes all of the letter sheets so we did all of those. The additional worksheets were only if you needed additional learning on a topic.

I will say, I was tempted to use the additional worksheets because they were so beautifully illustrated! Maybe we will use them in Kinder-Prep if I see he has forgotten some topics.

The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Review According to My Son

My son absolutely loved this course and asked to do school every day we were home. He loved the artwork and I really do think he loved learning. He would even be excited to tell his dad what he learned when his dad got home from work that day.

There were some times where my son lost motivation in the course, which I think is to be expected. Some days, he started out strong but then seemed bored at any repetition. Again, I think this is us preferring the mastery level of learning, but time will tell for sure.

Will I Use This Course for My Daughter?

Yes. The Good and The Beautiful Preschool was so fun for my son. My daughter, 2-years-old, even participated in some of the learning activities. She enjoyed coloring and gluing the letter pages and definitely enjoyed the games.

I plan to start this coursebook with her next fall, when she will be 3.5 years old. We will most likely go slow just like we did with my son so that she can do two years of preschool before starting Kindergarten at age five and a half.

If you think The Good and The Beautiful is good for your family, I highly recommend looking at the sample pages on the goodandbeautiful.com website. You should also checkout their YouTube Letter Sounds playlist.

Save This The Good and The Beautiful Preschool Review for Later

If you are in the market for a preschool course, make sure to save this The Good and The Beautiful Preschool review for your reference. Use the image below to pin this to your Pinterest profile or the social share icons at the top of the page to share this page. Every time you share, you help support my small family business. Thank you so much!

Please check out my other preschool curriculum picks!