Level K Primer Homeschool Review

My four year old recently finished the level k- primer language arts course so I can finally give our complete and honest review. So, what’s our thoughts?

I’ve been waiting to make this post for quite sometime now but was just waiting on my four year old to complete the book. Now, that we are finished with all 34 lessons I am ready! Before I get too far into this review I just need to point out that this post is NOT sponsored. All opinions are honest and not swayed in any way.

When I first decided to homeschool my children I had no idea what I was doing and to be honest I’m still winging it now. Probably will continue to wing it 10 years from now as well but that’s just me. ha! Originally, I assumed all homeschooling families went with only one curriculum and followed a schedule very similar to public school. I could not have been more wrong.

Homeschooling can be done many different ways and one of the better aspects is that you do not have to go with any particular curriculum (or any at all for that matter)! This year, I decided it would be best to go with a Charlotte Mason approach to language arts and after researching many different curriculum I decided on The Good And The Beautiful.

So, did it work for us?

The short answer is sort of.

Preschool Curriculum Review Video

Our Experience Using The Good And The Beautiful

When deciding on a curriculum for my 4 year old son I was looking for something simple, eye catching, and fun. Four year olds typically have a short attention span and in my experience do not enjoy a ton of book work.

I really loved how on The Good And The Beautiful website each course allowed you view sample pages. This let me visualize whether or not it would be something we would enjoy. I loved what I seen and I’m not the only one. The Good And The Beautiful is loved among many homeschooling families and I was excited to give it a shot!

Originally, I was trying to decide on purchasing the Pre-K course or the Level K-Primer. Obviously I went with K-Primer and the reasoning for that is because my child already knew everything taught in the Pre-K course. I wanted something a bit of a challenge but not too difficult for him so I did not purchase Pre-K.

We started lesson one in August and it went really well for the first several lessons. I could not have been more satisfied with Level K-Primer. However, the course went from from reviewing letters and sounds to reading short words very quickly.

The more words that was added, the more my child got frustrated that he could not read them. Although he knew many letter sounds, he continued to struggle putting words together. At one point I decided that we would only do 1 lesson a week with lots of review. This didn’t really work for us though because at times he would want to work on the book 2-3 times a week.

Something that he LOVED in this curriculum was the little games. There were several clothespin games to help learn the vowels and he enjoyed making it a race with me to see who would get the answer right first.

After finishing the course there is a little “test” at the end. Before moving on to Level K the child will need to pass the test with 100% accuracy. Wyatt missed 12 out of 54 which I didn’t think was too bad. Since he isn’t quite ready yet to move on, we will work on reviewing the letters and sounds he missed. Hopefully, he will be good to go before Kindergarten this summer but if not, that’s completely okay too.

Level K-Primer Overview

Meeting The Requirements

Before starting Level K-Primer with your child there are a few prerequisite requirements. They must be able to sing most of the alphabet with or without the help of a parent. He or she must also be able to recognize the majority of letters and their sounds but have not mastered all of them. Lastly, knowing how to count to 10 as well as knowing basic shapes and colors are also prerequisites.

What This Course Covers

According to The Good And The Beautiful website this course covers:

• Letters and their sounds
• Long and short vowels
• phonemic awareness and isolating sounds in a word
• reading simple 2 and 3 letter words and sight words
• Counting 10-15
• Fine motor skills
• Rhyming, sorting, order of events

Skills Expected To Master

Although Level K-Primer covers many skills as noted above, there are only a select few expected to master before moving on to Level K. These skills are knowing the alphabet and instantly recognizing all letters (upper and lowercase) as well as their most common sounds.

Would I Recommend This Curriculum?

I’ll be honest and say that I had different expectations of how this course would go. Of course everyone wants their child to do well but I’ll take the blame for choosing a course that he probably wasn’t 100% ready for. Although he did meet the prerequisites, it would have benefited him if we had started with the Pre-K course regardless of him already knowing the content.

So my answer is YES, I would still recommend this curriculum but I’m going to say be cautious. The Good And The Beautiful is known for being about one grade level ahead than other curriculum.

I wasn’t aware until this year that my 4 year old is more advanced in math than language arts. Knowing what I know now I may have chosen a slower paced language arts curriculum. If you have a child that catches on super quickly in language arts then The Good And The Beautiful would be fantastic!

As for now I am unsure if we will continue with the Level K course for Kindergarten. I plan to purchase learning board games at my 4 year old’s request and do reviewing between now and summertime.

He will learn at his own pace and that’s the beauty of homeschooling. We can learn to read now if he wants or 2 years from now. Regardless, it will happen eventually and we will call it a success either way!

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