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Schoolhouse

{REVIEW} The Good and the Beautiful History – Year 2

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This was our second year doing history with The Good and the Beautiful and it was incredible. It really was. Lessons this year kept me pondering long after the lesson was finished. We learned a lot and I felt like Jacob is connecting more with history the older he gets. That is my goal. Introduce him to it and you build – layer upon layer – every year.

Topics

There are four units in this study and each cover a different period of time. We actually love that the history is formatted this way. We get to go from ancient to modern each year, pausing at different times. I have a detailed review of each unit – they can be found here:

Preparation

Another great thing about this history is that very little preparation is involved. Easy peasy! Included in the course set is:

  • Year 2 Course Book – This is your book that is going to take you through the course. The lessons are ALL outlined for you.
  • Map & Images – This is a spiral bound book that is BEAUTIFUL. It has – you guessed it! – maps and images related to what you are learning. You are told when to reference these in the course book.
  • Explorers & Settlers Game – I will talk more about this later, but this game is wonderful and really helps you remember important figures related to settling and exploring in history. You are also guided when to play this game in the course book…or whenever you want!
  • The Good and the Beautiful History Timeline – This is a new part of history {if you’ve used Year 1}. I remember last year when we were doing Year 1, it didn’t make any sense to me WHY this wasn’t included in the first year – but I get it now! It helped change things up this year and it was fun to add labels for things we learned in Year 1 and relate them in time to what we were learning about this year.
  • Student Explorers – This is really the only thing you need to prep. When you purchase the course, you will be guided to a PDF where you can download what explorers you need based on the grades of your kiddos. We have only used the Grades 1-3 ones but they are great to add more depth to your lessons.
  • Audio Recordings – These are Jacob’s favorite! He loves listening to “Kate and Jack” – as he calls them. They really are wonderful and we love having them apart of this curriculum.

Click here to see how I prep history for the year.

Length of Lessons

The lessons are designed to take about 60 minutes and I would say that is a pretty fair average. Sometimes we are a little over, sometimes we are a little under, it just depends.

Student Explorers

I can only speak for the Student Explorers for Grades 1 – 3 {as that is all that we have personally used}. But there are also explorers for Grades 4 – 6, 7 – 9, and 10 – 12. There are not explorer pages for every lesson but enough to still give you some great depth.

This year focused mostly on “Timeline” pages. There would be a heading at the top – including a time period – and then your kiddos would write or draw some information about it.

For us, I organize all of the Student Explorer pages into a book and spiral bind it and so Jacob just moves through the book. We kept all of the pages in tact {unless we needed them for an activity} but you could cut out the pages and make a giant timeline.

The student explorers also contain several maps for your kids to color and label. There are also coloring pages, compare/contrast pages, and HISTORY HERO pages {these are my favorite!}. This year spotlighted Christopher Columbus and Noah Webster.

Audio Recordings

I said earlier that these are Jacob’s favorite and I meant it! He loves “Kate and Jack” and several times will be giggling along as we listen. These recordings can be found online {you will be given the password when you purchase the course}. We have never had a problem accessing them and they add such a great depth to lessons. We love them!

They also have the audio recordings available as a script if that fits your family dynamics better. Sometimes I think how fun it would be when my kiddos are older to get our theatrical selves out and read it out loud together. A girl can dream, right?!

Explorers and Settlers Game

Including games into history is GENIUS! When we first played this game at the beginning of the year I remember thinking, “…that was ROUGH.” Neither of us new much {or anything!} and it was difficult. But it is A-MAZING how quickly you pick up on it. Within a couple months we had it DOWN.

The Explorers and Settlers Game is a card game where you match an explorer and/or settler with a description card. There are twenty matches and we learned SO MUCH. Jacob loved asking Mark to play because, more often than not, he knew ALL of the answers while Mark was struggling. Ha! It is such a confidence booster for Jacob – and Mark is always a good sport.

Read Alouds

Ummm…this is my FAVORITE! I love adding wholesome literature into our learning. We have yet to find a “dud” with the suggestions for read alouds. We pick one read aloud per unit, but you could do more if you wanted! This year we read:

I go into more detail about these books in the individual units. The links are listed at the top and bottom of this post. I also include a list of individual reading books I had Jacob read to accompany our history units this year.

Our Favorite Activities

There were A LOT of cooking activities included in Unit 3 about Colonial America and Jacob really enjoyed those. There is something really fun about incorporating food into your learning.

In Unit 1, Jacob loved doing some red figure pottery and practicing some Chinese calligraphy.

Jacob enjoyed making a viking ship as well as making some Aztec style hot chocolate – again, FOOD!

One thing I want to try and do more of is incorporate some of our own family history into our history lessons. My Great Grandfather served in World War I, and I asked my Mom to bring over his pictures of him in his uniform as well as his medals. I think it made a big impact on Jacob {and me!} to have that personal connection. It was powerful and I definitely want to include more of that if I can.

Final Thoughts

I have said it many times before, but history is definitely MY favorite subject to teach. I believe there is a lot of power in remembering our history. It may not always be pretty or how we wish it was, but there is so much we can learn from it. Whether that is a how-to or how-not-to-do.

One thing that has really stood out to me this year is the faith, courage, and resiliency of those in the past. So many had to go through things that I cannot even imagine. Like training for war your entire childhood, like the Spartans of Ancient Greece. Or sailing off in a ship to a place no one you know, knows about, like Christopher Columbus. Or leaving your home and all that you know in search of a better life, like the Puritans. Or men who spent months {or years} in trenches so that freedoms could be protected.

By comparison, so much of my life feels pretty “cushy”. I have my own trials that I have to walk through but learning about the past, gives me the strength to want to do my part in history as well. And to, hopefully, stand as an example of faith, courage, and resiliency, just like they did.

So would I recommend this history – YES, YES, and YES.

Individual unit reviews can be found here:

Have you tried The Good and the Beautiful History yet? What has stood out to you the most?

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