There are many different ways that homeschool families organize science units from The Good
and the Beautiful. Today I'm going to show you a few options to help you decide what will work best
for your family. I'm Maggie Felch, vice president of curriculum development. The Good and the
Beautiful science units are designed for children in grades K through 8, and includes topics such as
meteorology, space, the human body, safety, and many more. The units are taught family-style, designed
for teaching a variety of ages at once and include nature activities, fun experiments using common
household items, and read aloud book options. Many units include videos providing stunning footage
and an in-depth look at concepts taught in the units. Each unit also has extensions for grades
seven and eight, allowing your older children to dig a little deeper into each subject. The
science units can be completed in any order that fits your family's interests and needs. Children
get excited about studying science when they get to choose the next unit. Most families can
complete three to four units in one school year doing science twice a week. You can visit our
website goodandbeautiful.com to see all the science units we offer and view extensive
sample pages. Visit The Good and the Beautiful YouTube Science Channel to view the wonderful
videos that accompany our science units and to find tips and tricks to help you teach science
in your home. When you order a science unit, you will receive an unbound shrink-wrapped unit like
this. You will also receive a free PDF download of the unit, allowing you to print off as many
extra activity pages as you need for all of your children. The units are printed on high-quality
glossy paper in full-color and filled with beautiful artwork and incredible photography.
By design our science units are loose-leaf and are not bound. It works best for the pages to
come with unbound, clean edges. This is because each unit includes vocabulary terms that you cut
out, mini-books to assemble, and other items that are not used in a bound format. So what should
you do with your unit after you open it? You can organize it any way you want, but today I want to
show you three great options. First let's look at the file folder system. This is actually the way
that Jenny Phillips, the creator of The Good and the Beautiful, likes to organize her science units.
Each lesson, with all the vocabulary words, many books, and activity pages for that lesson, is put
into it's own hanging folder. When it's time to teach science, you only need to grab the hanging
folder for that lesson and you're ready to go. Everything you need is already inside. Another
bonus to the system is that you will likely have extra room in your file folder for your children's
science notebooks or supplies for experiments. With this method, it may take 20 to 40 minutes
to prepare the unit before you start and then there's no other preparation for the whole unit,
other than gathering any supplies needed for the experiments. This method, however, does take extra
room to store if you're keeping science units for future use. Another popular way to organize the
units is using a three-ring binder. In this method, the unit can either be three-hole punched and put
in a binder or you can slide the pages into page protectors, like in this binder. In this particular
binder, the science unit was hole punched and we used folders with pockets to divide each lesson.
You can see that in this system the vocabulary words, and any mini-books or activities, can be
stored in the pocket at the beginning of each lesson. Like the hanging folders, everything you
need for each lesson is kept together. A tip for this method; make sure to purchase folders with
deep pockets so your items don't slide out. In this binder we used page protectors instead of
hole punching and the vocabulary words and other activities can slide right into the
page protector with the lesson pages. This is how I personally organized my science units and it's
a great way to store the units, if you plan to use them again in the future. I also put the binder in
one of these bins, with all the materials I'll need for the science unit. It's so nice having
everything handy in one little bin for science days. The last method I want to show you today is
the spiral binding method. After removing all the worksheets, booklets, and pages that need to be cut,
many families like to spiral bind the remaining pages. You can get your unit spiral bound at almost
any office store very inexpensively. If wanted, you can also purchase a spiral binder online and
find your own units at home. The benefit of spiral binding is that the unit is much more compact than
other options so if you're short on space, this could be a great option for you. You could also
bind all the mini-books together into one book for easy storage. You can store the vocabulary
words separately in a zipper pouch, pencil case, or even a Ziploc bag is a great size for them. All of
these components can fit easily into a magazine holder or small bin. I hope this gives you some
inspiration on how to organize your science units and gets you excited to teach more science in your
home. If you want to try our science program to see if it's a fit for your family you can download our
beautiful Marine Biology unit for free on goodandbeautiful.com. Don't forget to subscribe
to The Good and the Beautiful Science YouTube Channel for more tips, tricks, and inspiration
for teaching science. Comment below and let us know how you organize your science units.