Simply Good and Beautiful Math 5 Review and Tips
Since 2019 and the beginning of our homeschool journey, we’ve been using math courses from The Good and The Beautiful and we just wrapped up Simply Math 5. If you’re new to TGTB for math you’ll want to start with the math placement test found here and always remember their K-7 math courses are free downloads.
My twin girls both said this was the hardest course they’ve ever done (and I would have to agree), but I think they both gained confidence and built resiliency working through it. We finished strong and the girls were giddy when their level 6 books arrived. One even said, “I can’t wait to start this next book!” Which I think is a good sign. Now that we’re done I wanted to share our experience and offer some support for those who are planning to use it.
Strong and Solid
This course is strong and solid. I feel so good about where my girls at. They have a really good grasp on the concepts that were taught and I think that is really important as this course begins setting a foundation for pre-algebra. Some have asked if I think this course is more advanced than public school and, no, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe a little? Since this course takes a spiral approach to math, there may be some more advanced concepts lightly introduced, but overall I think it is pretty comparable. For the record, mid year, even though I felt good with where they were at, I just thought it would be good to have third-party assessment done on all of their academic progress. We used Homeschool Boss and were very happy with where they were scoring all around - including math.
Before Starting The Course
If I could share one piece of advice about this course it would be to allow time for it. The Good and The Beautiful’s early elementary courses are known for short and effective lessons. They are excellent at catering to a young child’s short attention span while still giving them a solid academic foundation. With a little hindsight behind me now, I can see how their upper elementary courses start to prepare a child for longer course work. Math 4 and especially Math 5 are like “growing up” courses. And, this makes a lot of sense to me because, generally speaking, there is a cognitive developmental milestone around eight years old where children can begin to concentrate for longer amounts of time and begin to reach new levels of depth. This is often about the time we see reading really start to take off and children can think more logically - as long as they’ve had a solid early childhood foundation or there aren’t other learning challenges.
So, how much time should you allow for each lesson? The course book says 35-45 minutes for a full lesson and I would say…that is a very conservative amount of time. I’ve talked to A LOT of people about this course and I would say average is probably closer to 60-75 minutes. Most video lessons are at least 10 minutes (some are 15). But, I would say, for us, most lessons took us about 90 minutes when we completed everything and went back to check it and re-work mistakes. It may have taken us just a tad bit longer because I was working with two of them. Now, obviously, keep in mind - some children work faster and some work slower. And then there is also room for shorter or longer instruction times. There are some days we did cruise through lessons and independent practice in a shorter amount of time though - just allow flexibility to re-work or practice areas a child may struggle with too. I would say by mid-course you will have a good gauge of your child’s pace. The first part of the course should mostly be review so they may go through that a bit quicker. But, just plan accordingly as you get deeper into the book.
Also, be careful not to plan too heavy of a work load alongside this course especially if you’re trying to protect shorter school days. This is important for us so we simplified in other areas to allow more time for math practice. This is very much a “tween” course and what I mean by that is on one hand, it’s so great to see the depth that is beginning to emerge in these early adolescent years. But, on the other hand, there is still a sense of restlessness to be outside playing and holding onto some of those “fluffy” and “fun” things of childhood. So, ultimately, there was still a healthy balance of making sure lessons weren’t too long, but also just long enough to continue to challenge and foster growth.
Ultimately for us, we found the happy medium was breaking up the majority of lessons over two days. This way we were spending about 45 minutes on math a day (I just usually plan for about an hour). Now, I don’t usually define us as “year-round homeschoolers” but that is more the approach we took just with this course. We started it last June over our summer break. It isn’t unusual for us to do a little schoolwork to prevent “the summer slide” anyway so it really didn’t feel like too much. By the time we officially started our homeschool year in August the girls were maybe 25 lessons into the course? (I can’t quite remember) and I am so glad we had a little bit of that buffer throughout the school year. I would say we were very consistent working on the course 4 days a week and some weeks we’d even do 5 days a week. We did take a few weeks off in December and they finished the course in mid-April so it worked out real nicely. We’re planning to take a similar approach with math 6.
Extras We Used
Just two things here:
Small Grid Notebook: In my opinion, this is a must-have. For many of the problems, there is not enough room on the page to work out all the steps of various problems. This is the one we have and I recommend at least something similar to this. It’s just really helpful to copy a problem into the notebook and then be able to look back on how you did that problem. Don’t just use loose papers that get thrown away. Have something right there your child can keep a record of their work in.
Calculator: This course says no calculators, but we still used one. I hope this goes without saying, but just make sure your child understands the basic concepts of what they’re doing and not using the calculator as a crutch for things like simple multiplication. If your child doesn’t have their multiplication facts through 12 memorized, they’ll really struggle with this course so make sure those are solid. I have a blog post on mastering multiplication facts you can read here: Multiplication Facts.
This is the calculator we use.
Protractor: Any protractor works, but these are the ones we have.
General Tips
Video & Mini Lessons: I LOVE the video lessons (which are open to view). They are so well done. They’re short, they’re professional, and very aesthetically presentable. No boring math teachers here!
Now, this is personal to my girls, but I will share - about half way through the course they didn’t want to watch the videos anymore. This is exactly what happened with TGTB Level 4 too. I don’t know what it is - a personal hang up or a burn out, but both years I’ve just started teaching the course mid-way. I use the mini-lesson and just summarize it and then work some problems out with them on our white board. At most it doesn’t take me longer than 10 minutes to teach though and I know they do like that they can ask me questions. This is a HUGE reason why I love this course - those mini-lessons make it so easy for you as the parent to jump in at any time when your child needs help whether they use the videos or not. I love that I don’t have to sift through two pages of a parent guides or watch the video lesson to brush up on what I need to help them with. The mini-lessons are simple with straightforward examples which is exactly what I need.
Extra Support: First, again, just emphasizing that time to support your child with this course can be really helpful. If you have a child who can do this course independently, I am so glad and you probably don’t need this blog post. But, I think a big thing I saw with this course versus earlier courses is that it is just about the time in math where we stop using some of these concepts for our “every day” type of math. Because of that, I think it’s easy for parents and children to get a bit more overwhelmed with what’s being taught, but it’s really important to lay these foundations for later math classes so use those mini lessons and google and whatever you need to provide support. Don’t be afraid to simplify some other areas of your homeschool to allow for more brain energy to go toward math. This is definently something I had to do. And, don’t worry, there is still plenty of real world math in this course that is very helpful to know.
Break Lessons Up & Adjust: There are a fair amount of math problems in each lesson. I wouldn’t say TGTB over did the amount of problems by any means (way better than the textbooks I remember working through). But, many of the problems are multi-step so, again, just takes time to work through them especially if your child is making mistakes.
It just depended on the lesson, but since I was so involved I felt very comfortable letting my girls skip some of the problems if they were clearly understanding what was being taught. Say if there were four practice problems, I’d still have them practice two, but then they’d skip the other two if they got the first two correct and could solve without assistance.
As mentioned above, we also split many of the lessons over two days.
Repetition: If there was something either one struggled with in a problem - I’d make sure to go back and do the problem with them again. Help them see where their mistakes are and keep practicing.
Working Through Frustration: Any time either of the girls started to show frustration beyond the normal curve of learning something new…you know that stereotypical view of…tears and someone throwing a pencil across the room…we’d just set everything aside and come back to it the next day with a fresh start. Again, there is a healthy balance between challenging your child and knowing when their brain is tired and they need to set it aside and come back. It’s okay if math is hard - this is an excellent place to teach resiliency. But, I just always try to make sure that overall we’re laying a positive foundation. We still have a lot of years of math ahead of us!
Grading Work: The girls check all their own school work. I know this might not work for every child, but I’ve let them check answers in the parent guides since 4th grade for all of our subjects. I think especially for math it’s really helpful. They know to independently try a problem and then they immediately can check it so they don’t do 4 more problems the wrong way. When they get a problem right it gives them the confidence they need to keep going. They also know if they repeatedly are getting a problem wrong, they skip it (or that section) and do what they can until I can meet with them and help them later in the day.
Routine: I am sure this is different from everyone, but it works well for the girls to do all their independent work for all their subjects first thing in the morning. Sometimes they do this upstairs on their desks, sometimes they do it right next to me and the boys, sometimes they do it in their room, sometimes they do it on the kitchen counter, and sometimes they do it on the couch in our living room. No matter where they’re working, this allows me a great chunk of time to work with my younger boys. They usually have about 2 hours of independent work a day.
For math, the girls would complete the review problems or any of the lesson that they could do independently and then just depending on the day we’d either meet right before or after lunch and go over any school work they’d need help with. 95% of the time they would need help with math so we’d work through whatever was left. Sometimes this took 5 minutes and sometimes it took 30 minutes - it just depends on what it was. If it was a good day - we’d keep on going and work on the mini-lesson a little bit and add in some new instruction, but if they were tired, we’d call it a day and re-visit the new lesson work the next day. If they were caught up and just needed me to teach the lesson I’d have them work on all their other school work and then meet with them as soon as I was done working with my younger boys so I could teach the lesson and then they could get going on their practice work.
Utilize The Reference Guide: There is a great reference guide in the back of the book. We ripped it out and kept it in their current lesson so it was always right there for whatever they came across in their review work. I didn’t feel like there was ever anything extra we needed to supplement with like extra notecards or conversion charts, ect.
Okay, I think that's it! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. We’ll be starting math 6 in June and I’ve heard it’s another great course so we’ll keep chugging along.
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