Hi, I'm Jenny Phillips. I'm excited to walk you through The Good and the Beautiful
Level 2 Language Arts course today. We offer this beautiful, inexpensive physical course
to purchase, but you can also download the entire course for free at goodandbeautiful.com.
There is meaning and power that comes into learning when a course is connected to God,
family, nature, beautiful art, and strong moral values. This course connects all of these things
as it combines the following subjects into one easy-to-teach, no prep time course: phonics,
reading, spelling, writing, grammar and punctuation, literature, art, poetry, and
geography. The Level 2 course set comes with three components: the 368 page full-color course book,
the Reading Booster C Cards, and the Reading Booster C Book Set. The Reading Booster C Book
Set includes two full-length chapter books Wesley and the Wolves and Molly and the Falcon. Okay,
I'm going to explain how the Reading Booster C Cards and Book Set work and then we'll dive into
the course book. The Reading Booster C Cards have 64 card stock pages and two sticker sheets. Each
card focuses on a certain phonics principle or a group of sight words. The course directs you to
work on Booster Cards with your child for about eight to twelve minutes before most lessons.
You can usually practice one to three cards in eight to twelve minutes. Once a card is mastered,
have the child select a sticker from the back of the Booster Cards and place it on the mastered
circle at the bottom of the card. Review cards are placed intermittently throughout the set of cards.
These beautiful and fun Reading Booster Cards also tell you when to read the Reading Booster C Books.
The chapters in each of these books correlate directly with each card. For example, at the
bottom of card 43 it says with the child, "Read chapter 10 of the Reading Booster C Book Molly and
the Falcon". Each chapter gives a student repeated practice with the phonics principles they have
just learned. The Booster C Books are designed for the parent and the student to read together.
This symbol shows a section for the parent or teacher to read. Then this symbol shows a section
for the student to read. This approach allows a student to have breaks from reading and thus
be able to read for a longer period of time. In addition, this approach allows the books to dive
into more complex and interesting plots. Our pilot children absolutely loved reading these books.
In addition to giving targeted phonic practice, these books are also designed to share inspiring
messages and help children love literature that is well written and full of beautiful imagery.
All right, let's look at the course book. The lessons in the course book are carefully designed
to reduce teaching time, yet to be academically robust, exceeding national standards. Each
lesson also includes a practice section that the student completes independently.
Let's move to the course book lessons. The course book is divided into three units with
40 lessons each. There is a review at the end of each unit. In Lesson 32, the child practices
reading words with "ey" which he or she has already learned in the Reading Booster Cards.
Do you see the number target symbol in this lesson? The child should have mastered
Reading Booster Cards through this number before starting the lesson. Your child learns the phonics
principles through the Booster Cards before reviewing and further practicing those principles
in the course book. Some children may need to occasionally pause lessons to work more
on the Reading Booster Cards. You can move through the Booster Cards as quickly as desired. Children
often learn to read words faster than they can learn to write or spell those words,
and the reading shouldn't be slowed down by writing, spelling, or grammar. This program
allows children to excel while reading at their own pace, not at the pace of other subjects such
as spelling. If a child finishes the Reading Booster C cards before completing the course,
the child can use the extra time to increase reading skills by reading books that are one to
two levels higher than his or her personal reading level. Alright, I'll quickly walk you through this
example lesson. The first thing Lesson 32 has you do is practice Reading Booster Cards with
the child for 8 to 12 minutes. Then the lesson has you say words aloud to the child, and the child
spells them. These words contain principles such as silent e, ing, and ay, that are mastered during
the unit and throughout the course. Then you are prompted to dictate a sentence to the child. This
means that you say a sentence aloud. The child writes the sentence on the next page. No need
for extra paper or whiteboard. We have included space for sentence dictation right in the lesson.
The sentence practices concepts that are mastered throughout the course,
but it also gives the child practice with starting and ending sentences correctly,
having proper spacing between words, not using random capital letters in words, and so on.
You then play a simple but fun butterfly game with the child to practice reading words with ey.
Then the child completes the independent practice section.
At the end of most lessons, the student is prompted to read a book of choice for at
least 20 minutes. This can be done any time of the day or evening. Let's take a look at Lesson 73.
After practicing the Reading Booster Cards, the course instructs you to practice the unit spelling
words together followed by sentence dictation, which the child writes at the bottom of the page.
Both spelling words and sentence dictation contain principles that are mastered in the course.
Next, the child quickly reads a chart of words to review a phonics principle recently learned.
You then do an interactive, fun activity to learn about root words. This activity
also integrates logic, phonics, and geography, like many other lessons in the course. For the
independent practice section of this lesson, the child practices a spelling rule and listens to an
audio narration which is quickly accessible on our free Good and Beautiful Homeschooling app. These
art appreciation audio narrations are one of the things that pilot children and parents loved about
this course. The child listens to the narration while looking at the painting in the course book.
Through these narrations, the child learns how to study a painting and how to write about it
using model language. Creating wonderful writers doesn't come from worksheets. It's a whole heart
and mind approach that takes years of exposing the child to beautiful language and effective writing
instruction that pushes the child to think, to dig deeper, and to learn what makes writing beautiful.
I was determined, as were other creators of this course, to create writing assignments that would
not make children melt down but instead would get them excited and confident about writing,
even for reluctant writers. I have to say that I do believe that we have achieved this and
it was exciting to see how much our pilot children loved these writing exercises. For this creative
writing corner, the child has the help of a sentence framework to create the beginning of a
story based on the setting scene in the painting. The child uses his or her imagination to fill in
the blanks in the story and then to finish the rest of the paragraph. This exercise is not
overwhelming but gets them to fill in descriptive words, use imagination, and to write. We use the
same approach for essays throughout the course. The child writes many essays on how to make a bed,
which is a process essay, and what they like about school, which is an opinion essay.
They also do fun creative writing corners where they fill out character charts and create poetry
through guided poetry activities. The child also completes oral narration activities
in which the child writes summaries, fictional stories, and a personal narrative. So let's
quickly look at a lesson that uses the Letter Tiles app. In Lesson 77, before doing a page
of reading, the child uses the Letter Tiles app to practice words you are studying in this unit
such as silent e. Let's take a look at one last lesson. After practicing Reading Booster Cards
and Books in Lesson 85, the child practices spelling words that are review from Level One.
This course effectively uses both a mastery and a spiral approach with some key material
being mastered before moving on but with other concepts being built upon step by
step. Concepts are reviewed not only from unit to unit but from course level to course level.
The child then practices words with spelling concepts being learned in the unit. In addition to
doing a map activity and another spelling activity that integrates the lesson's fun theme, you and
the child then watch a beautiful art book and then have a short book response discussion. Books like
these can be found quickly on our free Good and Beautiful Homeschooling app and are used to teach
geography or art principles 10 times throughout the course. At the end of the Lesson 85, the
child completes a homophone practice section and then an art project inspired by the artists they
studied in the lesson. Art projects are included only occasionally in the course to give the child
basic exposure and practice with drawing and painting. For some of these art projects there
are videos on the Homeschooling app that give step-by-step instructions. I'll end the video
with a look at some other pages in the course book. Be sure to notice the nature journal reading
comprehension sections which were hands down the pilot children's favorite sections in the course.
It is always amazing when children get so excited about nature and reading and learning.