How to Print The Good & The Beautiful Curriculum

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Printing homeschool curriculum from home isn’t going to be the best option or the most cost-effective option for everyone.

However, if you live outside of the US or have several children who will use the same curriculum, it can save you hundreds (even thousands) of dollars.

This is especially true if you’re using the curriculum from The Good & The Beautiful. They offer their levels K-8 of Language Arts and Math for free as PDF downloads.

Printing curriculum at home may sound simple enough, but in my experience, any time you add a printer into the mix…it gets complicated. Printers can sense your frustration…tell me I’m wrong.

That’s what this post is for. I’m sharing my best tips for how to print The Good & The Beautiful Curriculum at home (without pulling your hair out).

The Best Tips to Print The Good & The Beautiful Curriculum

Before we get into the “how-to” of it all, let’s chat about some necessary tools you’ll need.

Tools You’ll Need

• Economical Printer – The kind of printer you use is a really big deal because printing is NOT going to be a cheaper option if your printer isn’t economical.
  I own an Epson Ecotank ET-4750. It has been fantastic and I’ve not run into any real issues with it.
  
  It is on the higher end of the Ecotank printers that they offer. You do not need the same model as I have (I got it for a really good deal).
  
  If your budget won’t stretch to that model, look at lower models. Just be sure they have an auto-duplex option.
  
  The ink for this printer is so incredibly reasonably priced that it makes it very economical. Plus, the ink lasts for thousands of full-color pages. It’s amazing.
  
  Another option is the Canon Pixma Megatank. I don’t have personal experience with this one, but it’s very similar to the Ecotank.
  
  Finally, there’s the option of HP Insta Ink. Again, I don’t have personal experience, but I’ve heard good things about it from those who use the program.
  
• Binding Options – I use a Coilbind S20 to punch the holes to bind my books. It’s a knockoff for the Trubind S20a and I’ve had no issues with it. I prefer plastic coils to comb binding. It’s tidier and lasts much longer.
  
  I bought my binding coils from Lamination Depot two years ago. Because they come in bulk, I still have an ample amount.
  
  Another option is to just use three-ring binders if that’s what you prefer.
  
• Laminator – You do not need to fork out for an expensive laminator. I bought a $20 one two years ago and it’s still going strong. Here are some good options.
  
• Laminating Sheets – Again, these don’t have to be expensive. I use them for the front and back cover to keep the book sturdy. I buy cheap ones from Kmart in New Zealand.
  
• Paper Trimmer – I like to trim off the ends of the laminated sheets to make things tidy. Sometimes I have to print things that are A5 or half-letter size and a paper trimmer is helpful to convert A4 into A5.
  
• Paper – The kind of paper you’ll want to use will be something you’ll eventually figure out on your own. However, this is what I use:
  
  80gsm for things like handwriting
  100gsm for most text books (math & LA)
  160gsm for front and back covers

IMPORTANT TIP: When printing double-sided with the Ecotank be sure you’re always printing an even number of pages or they will print out of order. For instance, if you choose to print pages 3-7 it will print the odd page first and then the even pages which messes up the order of things.
Always make sure it’s something like 3-8 or 8-11.

Printing Language Arts

I thought it would be helpful to share the print instructions by subject, as they all tend to be formatted a little differently.

Let’s start with Language Arts.

Text Book

The text book is fairly straightforward to print. Always ignore the cover. You will want to print that seperately.

I only print a little at a time in case something goes wrong. That way I’m not wasting paper and ink.

Try a couple pages first to make sure it’s printing as you would like and then start doing larger chunks.

The settings I choose are:

Two-sided, flip on long edge, BEST quality.

Printing on the best quality setting uses more ink but is 100% worth it for better picture quality overall.

I use Adobe Acrobat PDF reader and have found it to work well.

Printing Landscape

If the textbook that you’re planning on printing is landscape, be sure to switch from portrait to landscape in the settings and then choose flip on short edge. This is very important or your pages will not be in the right alignment.

Booster Cards

The booster cards that come in the lastest versions of levels K-2 are fairly simple to print.

I printed mine in A5 size and had the printer scale the pages to that size.

You’re going to want to print these single-sided if you don’t have a printer that prints double-sided for A5. For whatever reason, mine prints A4 double-sided, but not A5.

The way to make this work is to print single sided but choose the option of odd pages only or even pages only, depending on where you’re starting.

Remember to omit the cover and print that seperately later on. (I’ll be sharing how to print covers at the end of this post.)

Here is a screenshot of the settings that I use to print the booster cards.

Once you’ve printed the odd (or even) pages, make sure they’re in the right order, put them back in the printer tray facing upwards and print the even (or odd) pages.

I strongly suggest trying this on just one page to start with to make sure you have everything facing the right way.

I chose to laminate all of the pages for the booster cards so that it was super sturdy and non-consumable. However, this is definitely optional.

Mini Books

I played around with printing the mini books for the first 3 levels of LA and ultimately concluded that it was a total pain in the neck to print them at all.
You would need to print four to a page and then figure out which order they need to be printed in if you want them double-sided.

They would then require trimming down to size and binding.

You could print them single-sided to simplify things but you will still need to trim them and will double the amount of paper you use.

For now, I’m choosing to simply use the ipad and the Books app.

Readers

I recently printed out the reader from the older version of Level 1. I printed it in exactly the same way as I did the booster cards above, so refer to that.

Printing Math

Printing off the math books from The Good & The Beautiful is really the same as Language Arts.

Text Book

All of their math is in landscape orientation so be sure to choose that setting and also flip on short edge.

Some people have mentioned images not printing when printing out the math. This is often resolved by making sure that you use Acrobat PDF viewer to print from.

Manipulatives

I have not put together any of the manipulative boxes for the new Simply Good & Beautiful Math.

However, I suggest checking out the group TGTB Printing Helps on Facebook if this is something you’re wanting to do.

That group will have lots of helpful tips for you.

Printing Science Units

The Good & The Beautiful science units should be printed single-sided in my opinion. There are lots of cut outs and removeable parts that just make it difficult to print double-sided.

I have not used any of the most recently updated science units from them that have the new layout. I do know that they’re now binding them which makes me think there are fewer removable parts to the unit but I could be wrong.

Definitely do your own research on this one!

I chose to print a full copy for myself and bound it as I usually do. I then just print the other required things for my children as each lesson calls for them.

Printing Handwriting

Hand writing is very simple to print. You can follow the same instructions as Language Arts.

For levels Pre K-2, printing in color is optional. Level 3 and up include cursive and the rainbow guide for that which definitely requires color printing.

Printing Covers

Let’s wrap this up by talking about how to print your covers.

I always save the cover as a png file so that it’s nice and high quality. If you’re printing in US Letter size then you can print it straight from the PDF file and choose A4 borderless for your page size.

However, for those of us who use A4, if you want a beautiful borderless cover, you’re going to need to resize it a bit.

I use PicMonkey for this but you could probably also use Canva.

I take a screenshot of the cover (you could probably also use an online converter) and upload it to PicMonkey.

Then, I choose an A4 canvas and then just drag and drop the image onto that. It resizes it to fit. I then download it as a png image for print.

To print I just open that file and choose A4 borderless.

Binding & Laminating

I’ve already talked about the tools I use for this process but here’s a simple break down of what it looks like when I’m putting a book together.

I print out the book and then the cover.

Once I’ve done that, I then laminate the front and back cover. I usually just leave the back cover white as I don’t really care about having that all pretty and printed.

Once I’ve laminated the covers, I trim down the excess laminate from the edges so it’s closer to the original size.

Next up I punch all the pages for the text book and covers. I generally punch 15 pages at a time.

For the covers, I run them through the laminator one more time once I’ve punched them just to be sure they’re properly sealed.

Finally, I grab a 25mm plastic coil and wind that through the punched out holes.

I use a binding crimper to trim the coil and clamp the ends so they don’t unwind.

Happy Printing!

There are probably more tips I could pass on but I’ve about exhausted my mind for the time being. I hope that what I’ve shared is helpful.

If you’ve got more questions, just leave them in the comments below, come find me on Instagram, or on my Youtube channel.