Level 1 Language Arts Flip Through | The Good and the Beautiful

Hey, I am Jenny Phillips. I'm excited to walk  you through our Level One Language Arts course.  

There is meaning and power that comes into  learning when a course is connected to God,  

family, nature, beautiful art, and strong moral  values. The course connects all of these things  

as it combines the following subjects into  one easy-to-teach, no-prep-time-needed course:  

phonics, reading, spelling, writing, grammar  and punctuation, literature, art, poetry,  

and geography. The Level One course set  comes with three components: the 368 page,  

full-color course book, the Reading Booster  B Cards, and the Reading Booster B Book Set.  

I'll explain how the Reading Booster B Cards  and Book Set work and then we'll dive into  

the course book. The Reading Booster B Cards  have 70 cardstock 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  five to ten minutes before most lessons. You  

can usually practice one to three cards in five  to ten minutes, and 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 cards.  

These beautiful and fun Reading Booster Cards will  also tell you when to read the Reading Booster  

Books. These adorable and interesting books  correlate directly with each card. For example,  

at the bottom of card 30 it says, "Have the child  read the Reading Booster B Book Number 11, Snail  

Takes A Sail". This book focuses on the phonogram  "ai" which was just learned on the Reading Booster  

Card, and the book does not contain any words  the child has not already learned.The phonics  

principles for the Reading Booster B Book Set  includes 20 books that correlate with the cards.  

These books can be read as many times as  desired for review and for cementing principles. 

Okay, let's look at the course book! The lessons  in the course book are quite short and very  

gentle. They were carefully designed to reduce  teaching time yet to be academically robust,  

exceeding national standards. Let's take a look  at how the lessons work. In Lesson 28, the child  

practices sound 2 of "oo" which the child 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.  

One of the things we love about this course  is that the child can move through the Reading  

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 at reading at their own pace, not at  

the pace of other subjects such as spelling. If a  child finishes the Reading Booster B Cards before  

completing the course, wonderful! The child  can continue their advanced pace in reading  

by moving on to the Reading Booster C Cards and  Books while finishing the Level One course book. 

For Lesson 49, you practice Reading Booster  Cards and Reading Booster Books for 5-10 minutes.  

Then the lesson guides you through teaching  alphabetical order through simple kinesthetic  

activities. You then practice poetry memorization  with the child. For independent practice in this  

lesson, the child listens to an interesting  audio narration while they look at these  

two paintings. The audio narration teaches  the child to appreciate and study art, and  

it also teaches them about color wheels and how  artists use warm and cool colors to create moods  

and what mood is created by using colors  opposite of each other on the color wheel. 

Okay, let's look at lesson 72 briefly. After  practicing Booster Cards, the course instructs  

you to use our free Good and Beautiful Letter  Tiles App to practice spelling words with phonics  

principles the child has learned such as words  with "ea" and "wh". The Letter Tiles App is used  

in 19 out of the 120 lessons, but you may opt  to dictate the words, have the child write them,  

or use your own physical tiles if you choose.  After the Letter Tiles activity in Lesson 72,  

you and the child watch a beautiful video  book titled "Pen Pals From The Polar Region"  

to learn more about geography. Books like  these can be found quickly on our free  

Good and Beautiful Homeschool App and are used  to teach geography or art principles nine times  

in the course. At the end of Lesson 72, the child  then completes an independent practice section. 

Lesson 87 starts out with working on Reading  Booster Cards and Books for 5 to 10 minutes.  

Then the child does a short  spelling dictation exercise.  

After that, the child gets to look at fun pictures  of nature while practicing segmenting and reading  

compound words. The child then completes a fun  activity to practice reading words with "ew"  

instead of just reading a chart of words. The  child reads a fun, clever poem about the wind.  

The poem is packed with words that contain  "ew". The child reads the poem three times.  

Repeated reading is a powerful way to improve  reading speed and fluency. To make it fun,  

the child is instructed to draw an item on the  picture on the next page each time after reading  

the poem. For example, the poem talks about the  wind throwing a ball, so one thing the child draws  

is a ball in the sky. This lesson incorporates  phonics, nature, poetry, and drawing practice in  

a short amount of time. The child finishes the  lesson with an independent practice section. 

After practicing Reading Booster Cards and Books  in Lesson 89, you help the child practice the  

unit spelling words and then teach the child  the drop the e-spelling rule. The independent  

section includes a "My Little Journal section. One  focus we had in creating these new versions that I  

am really excited about was to make writing less  overwhelming. Pilot children loved these writing  

practice sections which are included throughout  the course. Also, in the independent section, the  

child practices segmenting and spelling words and  then a beautiful painting is used to give reading  

practice with phonics principles recently learned.  One of the things pilot children and parents love  

about this course are the audio narrations of  paintings that are accessed through our free  

Homeschool App. The child listens to the narration  as they look 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'll end the video with a look at  some other pages in the course book.