Do you love The Good and the Beautiful, but want to purchase items with your homeschool state funding money? Here are our favorite products!
We are so blessed to live in a state that offers homeschool state funding money to help purchase our curriculum and other materials that will help enrich our homeschool experience. I know not every state offers this which can make purchasing homeschool items a bit more pricey! In Utah, two groups that I know of that offer the state funding money to homeschoolers is Harmony Education (which is what we use) and My Tech High.
In the past we have used our funding money for passes to museums, rec centers, community sports participation fees, etc. This year because of the pandemic it didn’t make as much sense for us to spend our money on that, as I was afraid we wouldn’t get as much use out of them. We instead decided to really focus on building up our own personal home library, especially since libraries were closed for part of the year!
We use The Good and the Beautiful for our Language Arts, Science, History, and the lower levels of Math (only because the higher levels haven’t been released yet). The only thing that makes using this curriculum difficult while using the funding money, is that the state funding money does not cover any religious material. The Good and the Beautiful offers a highly engaging and wholesome learning experience that is Christian based. I love the products they offer and wanted to share with you how I use my funding money to still purchase items from The Good and the Beautiful!
Utilize the Free Language Arts Courses
The Good and the Beautiful offers their Language Arts Levels 1-5 completely free on their website. I personally love to have the physical copies instead of using a tablet. We have chosen to purchase the actual books for our own use, but don’t write in the books so they can be used for multiple children. I know many people that will print out the books to use the physical copies in their home, and other that just use the writing feature on their tablet. Either way, these levels are free and are AMAZING!
Check the list of Non-Religious Materials
There is a spreadsheet that is regularly updated that lists all of the products available through The Good and the Beautiful that does not contain religious content. I check this list before I order my items and pay for the items with religious content out of pocket. Some examples of things that you can use the funding money for are the phonics and geography flashcards for language arts, the math manipulative kits, science book packs, and any books from The Good and the Beautiful Library. Just check the list to see what is available. You might be surprised how much you can actually use your funding money for!
The Good and the Beautiful Library
This is where I end up spending the bulk of my money! I absolutely love purchasing items from The Good and the Beautiful Library. I love knowing that there will be absolutely no swearing or questionable content, but rather the books will be filled with good language and honorable characters! For the most part I will preview a book before I purchase it to be kept in our home. I know that all the books from this library have been reviewed by a team to ensure that it is wholesome content. Plus, I know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but they have done a fabulous job in designing these books to be appealing to the reader through the cover art.
The Good and the Beautiful Book List
There are many books that are not included in The Good and the Beautiful Library that are still stellar books. They have an entire book list that has been reviewed by a team just as the books in their library have been. My kids read so quickly that there is no way that I could keep up with everything they are reading! I have purchased a number of books from this book list knowing that I can simply hand them to my children and not worrying about the content. We use our homeschool state funding money to purchase these through online bookstores or on Amazon.
I love supporting groups like The Good and the Beautiful. They have completely transformed the way our homeschool runs. We are looking for and finding the good in the world. We are focusing on the arts and discovering the stories in history that would otherwise be lost in memorized lists of dates and facts.We have learned that time is short and that we can choose to spend our time on quality literature and learning. Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how you can use your homeschool state funding money to purchase items from The Good and the Beautiful!
