*NEW* SECULAR Homeschool Curriculum//NOT The Good The Beautiful//Homeschool mom

Hello and Welcome back friends to Our Unruly Nest! Today we are talking about passing on The Good The Beautiful curriculum for a truly Secular language arts curriculum! I hope you will like and subscribe if you find something of value here today! #secular #homeschooling #lifestyle #motherhood #ourunrulynest

Comment below if you’d like me to start a deep dive series into Montessori! I really want to as we are a Montessori; secular homeschool! Thoughts, friends??

[howweschool]

We are also a Christian family who choose to do secular homeschooling! We are wrapping up fourth grade and we used Oak Meadow (secular) and Lightning Literature.
I loved Lightning Literature for reading comprehension! This is what we used it for mostly! Their composition isn’t strong but the comprehension and grammar are great and the books were enjoyed by my son. The poetry components in fourth grade were his favorite. It is secular as far as I’ve seen! We ordered fifth grade for our 22-23 school year! If you try it out, let us know what you thought of it. I hope to have an in-depth look through of all the curriculum we used this year.
Also, if you want something that isn’t a curriculum for reading comprehension you can try Evan Moor’s reading workbook!
Hope this helps!

[reinaquidon]

So grateful to have found this! Two years after you posted this and there still isn't a secular program that is all inclusive and affordable as TG&TB. Thank You for this. Any updates??

[amywhitejones]

if you want secular then id go with bookshark or possibly try teachers pay teachers

[anotherhomeschoolmom]

I would read the book "The Knowledge Gap". It specifically addresses reading comprehension several times in the book and makes recommendations for curriculum and methods to help reading comprehension. Also talks about the big "don't do this!" When it comes to teaching reading comprehension.

[Trekkifulshay]

I found another resource yesterday, under the home - I've downloaded the art and music curriculum. It's free so you can check out what they offer they also offer poetry. I might use some of it next year we're almost done with fables from Core Knowledge.

Have you checked out Evan-Moor workbooks? Obviously not an entire program but they seem really good. We're only on level 1.

I'm planning to use Evan Moor Skill Sharpener Reading and Spell & Write level 2 next school year.

[sweetmaecreations]

I will have a fourth grader next year and it will be our 3rd year using lightening literature. My son loves it, the book list is amazing and he likes every book we have read. We just got grade 4 in the mail last week and he already wants to start. I do no use the writing composition. I add growing with grammar, soaring with spelling and winning with writing from Jack Kris publishing. Next year I plan on starting IEW along with lightning lit 5. I saw your last video about TGTB and thought “good luck girl”. But didn’t want to discourage you. Project Happy Home has great reviews of lightening lit, I think you will love it.

[TheMommaLibrarian]

We used LL for 1st and 4th grade this year and liked them. And are using them next year, too. Project Happy Home has done pretty detailed flip throughs on her channel. It is secular. I find the writing component to be weak but we like everything else.

[TheHomeschoolSweetSpot]

Yay! Love finding other secular homeschoolers on the YT :-)

[EatPrayCrunch]

Just found your channel and can relate to a lot of what you are saying. We are also a Christian homeschooling family that prefers secular curriculum as well. We tried TGATB LA this year for my 9 year old and it got the job done, but really struggled with some of the content and lack of diversity. We too are switching to Lightning Literature in the fall. I did a full review and flip through on my channel if you want to see the inside. Best wishes!

[Slurhkable]

Project Happy Home did several flip through of the Lightening Literature. I will be using it next year.

[Sovereign.Alignment]

Hi from Missouri, next door! I’ve never heard of that Language Arts curriculum, I’m definitely going to have to check it out. It also breaks my heart that The Good and The Beautiful is such a pretty curriculum. Homeschool families want secular curriculum that is pretty! 🦋

[Jessica-gyly]

Hello! So glad I found your channel! The struggle to find engaging secular curriculum is real! We do use TGATB science units and I find it relatively simple to remove the religious elements. I use them more as a spine and add extra books and activities, I so feel that is plenty even if I remove the religious parts of the text. We do not use the math or LA, because the student reads more of the text directly and so it is harder to skip over the religious text.

[kseniaandrew]

I have recently discovered English Lessons Through Literature and we are loving it! No one ever talks about it for some reason. One of those hidden gems in my opinion

[Littlesinthewild]

LOVE LOVE LOVE lighting literature! You can always used teachers guides and sometimes all the readers and teacher guides on Facebook!

[TheEricalynn]

Also I forgot to mention I use “flash kids reading for the gifted student” for his reading comprehension and he absolutely loves it! Also if I feel he needs more attention to a particular subject I buy “Kumon workbooks” I have all of the 3rd grade ones. And he will do some pages as needed. I hope this helps you 😊

[apl]

We used Lightning Literature last year and my daughter hated it and I have to admit I ended up loathing it as well. It seemed like such a beautiful curriculum and it is… BUT the book selection was more misses than hits. Coming from doing Five in a Row where we fell in love with many of the book selections, Lightning Lit books fell very flat. The writing assignments were incredibly frustrating as they required so much of my own made in the spot examples to show her what she needed to do. There are zero templates or written examples to show the child what you’re asking them to do for all writing assignments. The grammar skipped around so much… like 20 lessons in they would circle back to a sentence diagramming concept neither of us remembered how to do but there was no specific lesson reference to go back to for easily finding the original instructions. Can you tell it was incredibly frustrating? It looks beautiful but had major flaws. My kid will NEVER let me try it again… she would shut down and we’d get nowhere with it if I tried it again.

[schultesweeties]

I haven’t tried Lightning Literature, but it has been on my radar the last month or two. I believe it is secular. I was planning to get it with our charter and we can only get secular curriculum. It looks great. We already have a writing program and I was looking at other grammar programs, so we are likely not going to get it after all. I found literature guides in Rainbow Resources called Great Works-an instructional guide for literature, so I think we may do that with a few books. We also do Writeshop (which includes a bit of grammar), spelling from Evan Moor and Beowulf Grammar from Guest Hollow.

[hailelacy]

We are using Lightning Lit Grade 3 and it is completely secular and great for reading comprehension! Also there are a few videos on YouTube of flip throughs that show you exactly what is included in them! I highly highly recommend it though. We have absolutely loved it.

[Gameroomschoolhouse]

What a sweet video! I so appreciate your positive attitude. It is definitely a lot harder to find pretty secular curriculum! We do use TGATB for math and I’ve found the religious references to be minimal. My daughter wanted to use it for LA however, and although I did allow her to (I try to ge their buy-in for school, especially this kid who has learning differences), we skipped the first like three lessons because they were pretty religion heavy. 😐
As a Christian family who prefers secular materials, I am curious about your why. I totally get that there are haters on both sides, so it can be difficult to share about it honestly, but if you felt comfortable talking about it in a future video, I’m sure you’d find many of us are like minded!

[rachaelmarshall]

I have heard wonderful things about Lightening Literature, the only downside I’ve heard is the composition might be lacking. As far as I am aware it is completely secular and we are considering it for next year. We have been just using Novel studies from TpT for this past year and have been looking for something more in depth.
I do wish there was something that was laid out as beautifully as TGTB but secular. It just isn’t out there that I have found, maybe one day though.