2020 threw some serious curveballs. No one was exempt from the chaos and drama of the year. We all had to make major adjustments on how we lived our daily lives. The biggest adjustment for parents was definitely schooling. When things shut down in March, I don’t think anyone expected it to still be the major topic of discussion come fall. Yet, the “2 weeks to flatten the curve” concept stretched on and on and on, and it became clear that the 2020-2021 school year was going to be severely impacted as well.

Right off the bat, I’m talking like mid-May, I decided we’d just homeschool in the fall. Because schools would definitely be back to normal by January (🙃 famous last words, right). Initially, I planned to hit up teacherspayteachers.com and piece together some loose curriculum for Brixton and try to follow along with the TEKs of 1st grade so he wasn’t too far off base when he went back. I soon realized that the chances of him going back in 1st grade at all were slim. I knew I needed to find a whole curriculum to cover at least math and language arts.

Enter: The Good and The Beautiful

I was admittedly hesitant to use this because I wanted a secular curriculum. If you are absolutely set on secular, this is not for you. However, the non-secular components (in math and language arts, at least) are easy enough to either edit out or omit completely. Most mentions of God I’ve been able to replace with the universe, or by simply skipping over that word/sentence. The beauty of the curriculum makes up for the occasional mention for me.

We also used Song School Spanish, Handwriting Without Tears, and resources from Karen Jones on TPT. I pulled from TPT for morning work, as well. The Moffatt Girls Comprehension Checks, Sight Word worksheets, and other various worksheets depending on what needed focus.

Math

disclaimer: we used the “old” math. TGATB is releasing an updated math line in the Fall of 2021. This review is based off the original line.

We used the super convenient math level assessment tool to land on level 1 for math. Included in the math unit is course book part 1 and 2, math 1-2 activity box, and planner. All can be downloaded as a PDF, they are no longer selling the printed copies.

From the first page, it was love. The lessons are easy to follow and teach and there are beautiful illustrations interspersed throughout. We loved the manipulatives included with each unit and the hands-on components were really great for Brixton who is the definition of a kinesthetic learner. However, the sheer number of moving parts was overwhelming from day 1 and we ended up foregoing a lot of the “extras”.

Overview

Level 1 is split up into 2 parts of 2 sections each. We made it through part 1 before breaking for Christmas and New Year’s. It was 65 lessons that were all addition and subtraction based. TGATB is a spiral based curriculum, which means you touch on a subject once and then come back to it over and over throughout the duration. A lot of the first section was review and we really flew through it. Once we got into the second section (mid-October) we were getting into more new material. It never felt like true work though, because of the spiral based learning style. Once a concept was introduced, it was quickly explained, and then, before it got too cumbersome and overwhelming, the lesson was over.
Some of the concepts we covered included time, calendar, number lines, even/odd, money, fact families, graphing, shapes, and doubles. (This list is not exhaustive)

Lesson

Each lesson starts with a “daily dose” which includes 4-5 tasks. We modified it to fit us and only focused on the date, one more/one less, and the review concept, when included. Since I printed our activity box out from the PDF file, I didn’t have the place value chart so we have introduced place value in other ways. It also included a separate planner, that we honestly didn’t use too much. I liked the concept of it, but it just never flowed well for us and we work calendar use into our routine in other ways.

The lesson then follows. It’s typically 1-3 pages, although the math line should be significantly shorter. Followed by a student worksheet and an optional bonus activity. The lesson length actually didn’t bother us much. It is very parent involved, though, and teaching time would really add up if you were teaching multiple kids. Overall, the lesson and worksheets seemed like just enough to introduce/reinforce a concept, provide an independent practice opportunity, and then end before it became overwhelming to the child.

Negatives

The issue that I, and many others it seems, have is the sheer volume of moving parts. I love the extras that keep it engaging and allowed Brixton to move around while still learning. But it was a lot. Gathering materials some days had me ready to throw in the towel and skip whole lessons just for ease. Once I did get everything together and we started the lesson, actually incorporating everything often seemed a little disjointed. A lot of times we straight up skipped the recommended games because the rules changed each time and it was just too much work to figure it out. I’m really excited to see how the new levels will streamline the lessons!

Conclusion: We’ll stick with it!

I had already purchased part 2 of level 1 when they announced the discontinuation of the current math curriculum. I knew we would want to continue with this since we already had the activity box, so I purchased level 2 for Brixton and level K for Colston to start once he finishes primer. Even with all the moving parts that seem overwhelming at times, I can’t find a reason to search out something different. The flow of the program and the price are too good to pass up.