Good Soil Project

Good Soil Project is a small Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum publisher that organizes the homeschool year around the liturgical calendar rather than the academic one. For Catholic families already committed to Charlotte Mason, it is one of the few publishers that shares both priors.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Charlotte Mason / literature-based / liturgical-year-integrated
Worldview	Christian-Catholic
Grades	PreK through middle school (roughly PreK-8)
Formats	Digital downloads / print
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	4
ESA-common	Varies (religious-materials eligibility depends on state)
Accredited	No (publisher, not a school)
Established	2017 (per publisher's structured data; founding details not prominently published on the public site as of April 2026)
Website	goodsoilproject.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Charlotte Mason literature-and-narration work, expected to match CM standards
Ease of teaching	3	CM method requires parent engagement; digital download requires parent assembly
Content quality	4	Catholic Charlotte Mason sourcing is a genuine editorial niche
Flexibility	4	Weekly schedules are advisory; families adapt them to their parish year
Value for money	4	Digital-download pricing is friendly; most cost sits in book purchases
Worldview scope	2	Specifically Catholic liturgical-year framing; not designed for non-Catholic use
Visual/design	3	Characteristic small-publisher design; liturgical color-coding in schedules
Support resources	3	Publisher forum and Catholic CM communities; no phone support

Who the publisher is

Good Soil Project is one of a small cohort of Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum publishers that emerged in the late 2010s to serve a specific double-niche: families who had arrived at the Charlotte Mason method (living books, narration, nature study, short lessons, picture and composer study) and who wanted that method organized around the Catholic liturgical year rather than around a secular or generically Christian calendar. The publisher operates as a small digital-download shop at goodsoilproject.com and sells schedule guides, living-book reading lists organized by liturgical season, nature-study guides, and composer and artist study organized around the sanctoral cycle.

Our editorial team was unable to independently verify a founder biography or detailed founding history from the publisher's public site as of April 2026. The publisher's structured data lists 2017 as the year of establishment. Good Soil Project sits in the same general category as Mater Amabilis (a free Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum), Bear Good Fruits (a paid Catholic liturgical CM curriculum), and Joyfully Domestic's traditional-Catholic CM year cycles, small, author-led publishers serving a devout Catholic homeschool audience that has specific liturgical and theological commitments.

Theologically, Good Soil Project self-identifies as Catholic and uses the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar (Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Ordinary Time through Christ the King) as the primary organizing framework. Families from Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, Protestant, and non-liturgical Christian traditions may find some overlap but should not expect the publisher to accommodate their own calendar, the Roman Catholic liturgical year is the curriculum's organizing premise, not a feature to be toggled.

The core pedagogy

Good Soil Project is a Charlotte Mason curriculum in method and a Catholic liturgical curriculum in structure. The two commitments are not in tension. Charlotte Mason herself was Anglican and her method assumed a Christian liturgical rhythm, but they combine to produce a specific kind of homeschool week. The parent works from a schedule guide that lays out the week by subject and by liturgical season rather than by secular date. Reading selections are tied to the liturgical calendar: saints' feast days dictate biography readings, the Advent and Lenten seasons dictate particular themes, and nature-study topics follow both the outdoor season and any liturgical tie-in available.

Scope and sequence reflects Charlotte Mason's canonical approach: short lessons in the early years (15 to 20 minutes each), narration as the primary assessment method rather than quizzes or tests, picture study and composer study rotated through the year, nature study as a daily or weekly discipline, and a habit of copywork and dictation in place of spelling drill. Good Soil Project does not publish its own textbooks for core subjects, math, grammar, Latin, formal science, and instead points families to outside publishers for those subjects. The curriculum's contribution is the schedule, the reading list, the liturgical framework, and the CM method guidance.

Signature mechanics: (1) Liturgical-year schedules, the weekly schedule guide marks Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter as first-class structural divisions rather than brief interruptions. (2) Living-book lists by season, reading selections are curated to align with the liturgical moment, with biographies scheduled near the relevant saint's feast day. (3) Nature study guides tied to the Catholic tradition of creation-contemplation. (4) Composer and artist study drawn from the Western Catholic artistic inheritance. (5) Parent-assembly required, the digital downloads are schedule frameworks the parent uses to acquire the actual books from libraries, used-book sellers, or publishers.

A day in the life

A Catholic family using Good Soil Project in the third week of Advent, for a third-grader, starts the morning with morning prayer and the short Advent reading from the schedule guide, followed by copywork from a Psalm selected for the season (15 minutes). Math happens next from an outside publisher (the schedule guide names options but does not publish the math itself, roughly 30 minutes). Then the CM rotation: narration of yesterday's history reading, a new 20-minute history reading aligned to the liturgical season, and a geography map-work session (totaling about 45 minutes). After a break, nature study outdoors (a Good Soil Project guide for late-Advent observations, 30 minutes). Afternoon includes picture study of a Caravaggio from the schedule's composer-and-artist cycle, composer study listening to an Advent motet, and a read-aloud from a living book scheduled for the week.

The rhythm is closer to the classical Charlotte Mason school day than to a workbook day. There is no student filling in blanks on a worksheet. There is a parent reading aloud, a child narrating back, a parent asking what the child saw on the walk, a child working a math problem and then listening to music. The parent intensity is high because this is the parent's teaching, not a scripted video's.

What they do exceptionally well

Catholic-specific CM sourcing. The genuine editorial work in Charlotte Mason curriculum publishing is the reading list, which books, in which order, at which age. For Catholic families, the standard Ambleside Online list (excellent, widely used) requires substitution of certain Protestant-oriented titles for Catholic-oriented equivalents, and addition of saints' biographies the Anglican tradition does not prioritize. Good Soil Project's contribution is exactly this Catholic sourcing, which saves a Catholic CM family the hundreds of hours of reading-list assembly the method otherwise requires.

Liturgical-year integration. Families that take the liturgical year seriously, not as decoration but as the year's actual shape, often find that secular academic calendars fight them. Good Soil Project's schedule guides treat Advent and Lent as structural periods to which the curriculum adapts, rather than as brief digressions in a school year that runs on its own rhythm. For families with a strong parish life, this alignment matters.

Small-publisher authenticity. The curriculum is written for Catholic Charlotte Mason families by Catholic Charlotte Mason families. A reader from that tradition gets a product that reflects lived practice rather than one assembled by a publisher trying to hit a demographic. The same small-publisher context that makes the company modest in scale and customer service also makes the editorial voice recognizably authentic.

What they do poorly

Scope beyond Catholic CM families is narrow. A Protestant Charlotte Mason family looking at Good Soil Project will find much to appreciate and many assumptions that do not match their tradition. A secular family will find the framework unusable. Good Soil Project does not pretend otherwise, but families shopping across worldviews should understand that this is a specifically Catholic product.

No core-subject publishing. Good Soil Project does not publish math, grammar, Latin, or formal science. Families using the curriculum are assembling a full year from outside publishers for those subjects, guided by the Good Soil schedules. This is standard Charlotte Mason practice and not unique to Good Soil, the Ambleside Online approach is the same, but it means Good Soil cannot be described as a full complete curriculum in the box-curriculum sense.

Public transparency. Several details a prospective family would want, a current full product catalog, specific pricing across the catalog, detailed sample pages of the schedule guides, and a founder or editor biography, were not prominently published on the public site as of our April 2026 review. The curriculum is not hidden, but the browsing experience requires more clicking and emailing than a larger publisher would require.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Good Soil Project if: you are a Catholic family already committed to Charlotte Mason and want a curriculum that shares both commitments; you want the liturgical year to organize your school year rather than adapt to it; you are comfortable assembling math, grammar, and formal science from outside publishers; you value small-publisher authenticity over large-publisher polish; your parish life and school life are already intertwined.

• Skip Good Soil Project if: you want a boxed complete curriculum with all subjects published by one publisher; you are Protestant, Orthodox, or secular and want a curriculum that shares your framing; you prefer workbook-based learning to literature-and-narration learning; your parent time budget does not accommodate a 4-rated parent-intensity curriculum; you want full published pricing and sample materials before your first purchase.

Cost honest assessment

Good Soil Project sells primarily through digital downloads, which keeps the direct publisher cost modest; most of the actual spend on a Charlotte Mason year is the book purchases the schedule points the family toward. Families should budget separately for (a) the Good Soil Project schedule guide and supplementary materials (typically modest digital-download prices in the $20-$80 range per product based on category norms), and (b) the curated book list, which varies widely depending on how much the family already owns, sources used, and borrows from the library.

Compared to Mater Amabilis (free Catholic CM), Catholic Heritage Curricula (a boxed Catholic curriculum with its own textbooks, roughly $400-$600 per grade), and Sonlight (Protestant literature-based, roughly $800-$1,100 per core), Good Soil Project sits in the budget-to-standard range for what the publisher itself sells, with the understanding that book purchases add the majority of the total year cost.

An all-in family budget for two elementary children on Good Soil Project with heavy library use and modest book-purchase supplementation in April 2026: $300 to $600 for the year, depending on outside-publisher choices for math and grammar.

ESA eligibility notes

Catholic liturgical curriculum publishers face the same ESA complications as other explicitly-religious publishers: Arizona and Iowa generally permit religious materials, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship does as well, while some state programs restrict religious curriculum or limit digital downloads. Good Soil Project is not widely visible on state ESA marketplaces as of April 2026, in part because small-publisher digital downloads are often below marketplace minimums and in part because the publisher has not invested in direct marketplace registration. Families should verify with their state's marketplace whether Good Soil Project's materials are reimbursable, or whether a parent-purchase-and-reimbursement pathway is open.

Alternatives

• Mater Amabilis, a Catholic CM family would choose Mater Amabilis over Good Soil Project because Mater Amabilis is free, has been in continuous development since 2003, and covers PreK through high school with extensive community support.
• Catholic Heritage Curricula, a Catholic family would choose CHC over Good Soil Project because CHC is a boxed complete curriculum with its own published textbooks across subjects rather than a schedule guide pointing to outside books.
• Ambleside Online, a CM family comfortable with Protestant sourcing would choose Ambleside Online over Good Soil Project because Ambleside is the most fully-developed free Charlotte Mason curriculum available, with decades of reading-list refinement, though it does not organize around the Catholic liturgical year.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed goodsoilproject.com in April 2026, cross-referenced against Mater Amabilis, Bear Good Fruits, and Joyfully Domestic's Catholic CM year cycles for comparative context within the Catholic Charlotte Mason publishing category, and consulted Ambleside Online and Simply Charlotte Mason for the broader Charlotte Mason method framework. Where the publisher's own site did not publish a fact a family would reasonably want (detailed founder biography, full current catalog, full price list), we have noted that absence rather than inferred the data. The 2017 establishment year is drawn from the publisher's structured data; prospective families should verify the publisher's current catalog and pricing directly before ordering.