The Good and the Beautiful — Local services in Lehi

This is our first year homeschooling due to stressful experience with distance learning in public school towards the end of last school year for my 8 year old boys. Initially, totally overwhelmed figuring out what curriculum to use of the hundreds of options, but a friend of a friend recommended TGTB Language Arts. After receiving that curriculum and seeing the ease of use and no prep involved, I looked at using the entire TGTB courses! (By the way, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this Language Arts!!!!)

We first tried Marine Biology for science as download was free- it was amazing! So many experiments and hands on work totally delighted my boys. So although it took a bit of work to properly teach this unit, it was well worth it! The lessons and vocabulary at times were somewhat difficult for my kids to understand as units are meant to be taught across a broad age group, but I was able to adapt them well enough. We decided to continue on with Safety, Human Body Pt.1, and are now on Space Unit and we are only halfway through our first school year! My kids are eating this up!

We then decided to try TGTB History 1, against our Language Arts recommender's advice (she said it was too "whitewashed"), but I was so pleased with Science and LA, I wanted to try it. If "whitewashing" means instilling the love of America and the Divine hand in establishing our country, and extolling the virtues of our Founding Fathers more than their vices, and learning about great civilizations from the past and their contributions to society to 8 year old boys, then I'm pretty content with this version of "whitewashing". As my kids get older and can think a bit more critically, we can add more of the controversy if needed, but History 1 lays out a great foundation of respect and sacrifice that went into our founding, as well as other leaders of various time periods throughout history.

We tried the math courses due to the unique nature of stories intertwined in the learning, thinking this may help my visual, hands on learners, but for two 8 year old ADHD boys, was a little too much and we've had to go elsewhere for math... though TGTB just came out with their announcement of a new math curriculum that is more streamlined and uses video. I continue to use their math more as a supplement, and have purchased the next level at the discounted price as my third child may benefit from this curriculum. We may come back to math later this year depending on its success in the public.

We also use the Handwriting books. We started at Level 1 six months ago and are already halfway through level 3 (where cursive starts). The boys love learning to write in cursive. They think it is like secret code writing! We initially used Handwriting Without Tears, but it wasn't as organized, simple, or clear as this course was. The boys can actually do this work independently, and for that I'm grateful.

We also used the Arts and crafts elective book. The projects in there are pretty simple, do require prep work, but the end products produce a variety of projects that my boys enjoyed putting together. The projects are visually appealing, colorful, and have every dimension.

As my confidence as a homeschool teacher has grown over this school year, I attribute this mostly to the ease and yes, beauty of this curriculum. I've branched out to use other teaching sources, and feel I have a grasp on what it means to homeschool now, but I credit this to The Good and Beautiful's structure and mission that allowed me to not feel like a failure as a teacher and mom. This curriculum may not be the answer to everyone's child, but it is a great place to at least start. I have decided to continue to homeschool next year as well and I have no doubt we will continue to use Good and Beautiful LA, history, and science-...

Absolutely do not recommend! For a company that prides itself on "the good and the beautiful" their customer service is ugly and terrible.

I ordered a summer reading pack that was supposed to come with a free book, I also ordered the entire rest of the series that goes with that book (along with 12 other items totaling almost $200). When my order was shipped the summer reading pack was apparently out of stock so it was removed from my order without my knowledge. So now I have the rest of the series without book one and my kids won't read the rest of the series without book 1 (anybody else's kids do that?!).

Customer service was absolutely unhelpful, basically saying tough luck, its your fault, buy the book if you want it. How exactly it is my fault that their ordering software automatically removes things that are out of stock without notifying customers is beyond me? Worst customer service experience EVER for a company that is supposedly known for its "Christian values". Email from customer service said I should have ordered book 1 along with the rest of the series (So then I would have 2 if I got the summer reading pack? Or would they still only ship me one? Or did they never intend to send the free book? I found that confusing).

Beware this "Christian company" (Mormon, actually) apparently only cares about your money and not your customer satisfaction. To order the $7 book I'm missing by itself would cost me $20 in shipping!? That's absolutely outrageous! (It's not even expedited shipping, it takes 2 weeks to arrive). I can't return the rest of the series because their return policy is an absolute joke, pretty much sounds like the only way you're getting a refund is if you refuse to accept the package and send it back BEFORE you open it, even then they can keep your items AND refuse to give you a refund if they decide items "arrived damaged".

As a bibliophilic homeschooling mom of 4, I'm always looking for wholesome books for my kiddos, but we are a one-income family & I can't justify spending my husband's hard-earned money on a "christian" company that doesn't practice the same values it preaches/teaches.

Please do your family a favor, heed the negative reviews. Don't give your family's hard earned money to these greedy people. There's seriously something shady going on here. I believe they're scamming unsuspecting customers that are too nice to speak up and complain.

Update 06/10/25: customer service reached out to me and said they would be glad to refund my money for shipping IF I buy the book and pay for the shipping first. Are you kidding me?! How about offering me the free shipping coupon first, and letting me decide if I want to purchase from them again? If their promise to refund my shipping is anything like their promise of a "free book", no thank you I will pass. Because obviously their promises mean nothing. So sad to see a company market itself as having Christian values and have such clueless customer service and hypocritical...

I don’t write reviews very often, but this is one that I am STOKED to write. My kids are turning into little geniuses and I’m learning so much, too!! I have twins who are 5 and just finished the preschool program and they are legit READING. Like, pointing at signs while we’re driving and READING.

I also elementary aged kids (9 and 11). I LOVE that I don’t have to do any prep work. I DOUBLE LOVE that the elementary language arts program is teaching spelling, poetry, art history, geography and more. It sounds like a lot but it’s done in such a beautiful, EASY way. I find that the curriculum inspires me to enjoy learning and even more importantly, enjoy quality time with my children.

Details:

I’ve been using the language arts curriculum for about five months. My kids are 11, 9, and 5 (twins). The five year olds were too young to be enrolled in kinder this year, but they moved through the preschool program and learned so much that they’re now moving into the kinder curriculum anyways. (It’s January).

I take my time and these programs take about 20-30 minutes per lesson/session. With the preschoolers, I’ve only done lessons about 3x a week and still finished the program in 5 months.

The preschool book is separated into two parts. There is a review between so that you can check their progress. On the review, I felt that my littles had not mastered everything. So we took two whole weeks of reviewing and memorizing letter sounds without moving through lessons before we moved on. I love the reviews because they provide a stopping point where you can address anything that didn’t quite “stick.” After the two weeks of review, the twins were ready to move forward and started reading small words almost immediately.

One of my twins is very sharp when it comes to these things, so I expected him to learn quickly. But the other one is an artist and often doesn’t pay attention as much or apply herself. But to my surprise, a few weeks after her brother started reading, she picked up on it, too. That’s why I know this curriculum really works!!

As for my older kids- they are also excelling big time compared to what I’m used to from their previous years in school. My nine year old has finally started enjoying reading, which is a miracle.

I could go on but if you’re still reading - this...