Curriculum gravy!

As promised, here is a post devoted to what we hope will be some really fun learning and exploring this year. While our focus is of course the Three R's, we believe that there is so much more out there that can be learned and enjoyed right alongside Math, Reading and Writing! So, I will for the sake of this post consider our History/Geography/World Cultures/Bible and Literature as the "gravy" to our studies. The analogy only goes so far, because we view these items, especially Bible to be just as important if not more so than the Three R's!

This last year we included a Core from Sonlight for our Bible/History/World Cultures and Literature Read Alouds. I LOVE Sonlight. I love their customer service. I love their book choices. I love their very helpful forums for Sonlight users. I love Sonlight. But, after much prayer and consideration we have chosen to go another route for our family.

Why? Why if we love them so much would we choose to do something different? Well, the answer was pretty simple. Five children. Sonlight divides their curriculum into Cores, or a general age range rather than school assigned grades. So while we could in theory always combine Luke and Ben, and then Grace and Jacob into a Core, and possible baby #5, I would always be working from two or three different cores, teaching different time periods in history. The other option would take some serious tweaking to make up my own material so that the younger kids could study the same time period or chunk of history as Luke and Ben. Yet, this option would completely negate one of the huge benefits of Sonlight....hand me down curriculum that I can reuse for the younger children. So, while I love Sonlight, that was not a very appealing option to me. I would love to one day study American History as a family and head to VA and DC. How do you do that when half the family is studying American History, and half is studying Ancients?

On top of that, I found myself being drawn more and more towards a classical model of education which follows a four year cycle of history (not to mention Jeff just finished a degree in philosophy and had a little something to do with the decision). Enter, Tapestry of Grace. (TOG) I had heard of TOG last year, but was totally overwhelmed by their website as a new homeschool Mom. This year, I could not stay away from the website, soaking up all the information.

Here is a link and blurb from their website:

 

"Tapestry of Grace is: An award-winning homeschool curriculum: a plan of study that helps parents provide a Christian, classical education using a guided unit study approach, with the history of the world as the core organizational theme. From Grades K–12, all students cycle through world history every four years, with all ages studying the same slice of history each week, each at their own learning level. Detailed lesson plans and discussion outlines enable parents to be their children’s primary teachers and mentors and shape their students’ biblical worldviews."

What does that mean for our family? It means that we will cycle through world history every four years, picking up the next sibling as they are ready. We will all be studying the same period of history together, but at age appropriate levels!! I love this!!!! I also love that fact that although the next four years we will have to buy this curriculum, we will reuse it every year until we graduate our youngest if we choose to continue to homeschool. Starting in 1st grade, each child will do three full four year rotations. So each "core" curriculum will be used at least 15 times in our family! Each year we will be choosing from the list of resources of living books to add to our personal family library and which ones we will be borrowing from our public library.

One of the biggest draws is the name and the emphasis of the entire program. Tapestry of Grace is about God's Story woven throughout history and civilizations. That is the common thread through every year, every cycle through history. To be able to teach our children about the hand of God working throughout the ages is invaluable. The fact that we will cycle through this program several times gives me such freedom as well. We will be able to pick and choose which books and which activities we will include. When the curriculum first arrived, I was a bit overwhelmed. But then I made myself remember that I was looking at curriculum for 1st-12th graders and I only needed to focus on the early grammar sections for Luke and Ben this year. I don't feel overwhelmed because if we miss something in Ancient Egypt this year we will hit it two more times down the road.

I also love that I get to learn right alongside my children. While I don't regret my education, it was certainly lacking in several areas. My personal goal is that each year I would try to read through the high school level teachers notes (called the rhetoric level) and read through at least 2-3 of the required readings that I never read. Jeff loves this since a lot of the readings are things he already read for his college degree in the History of Ideas! This way, I feel like I will be better prepared to tackle high school down the road as a teacher. Could I just research books and do this on my own? Maybe? But why reinvent the wheel when brilliant people have already poured their lives into this amazing labor of curriculum?

Here are a few blog posts from families that have actually used Tapestry of Grace. I have found such encouragement from these sites and others as we start our journey.

Three Little Jewels
Joy in Simple Things

While Tapestry of Grace uses almost all "living books" rather than textbooks, it does use less historical fiction than Sonlight. Since we love Sonlight book choices, each year we will try to add in a few fictional Sonlight choices for fun family reading as well.

We are so excited to dive into our first year with Tapestry of Grace studying Creation to Rome! The boys are going crazy watching the new books all lined up on the bookshelf knowing they will have to wait! Each TOG year is broken up into four, nine week units. Our goal is to finish unit one prior to the delivery of our baby. We can't wait to share our Tapestry of Grace adventures with you!

Here is a link to the sample of the first 3 week mini-unit we will be starting:

Go to Egypt Sample