Review is based on the original printing. Years 1,2 and 3 have recently been revised.
|
Tapestry of Grace By: Scott & Marcia Sommerville With the help of Dana Caywood & Kelley Ricucci Integrated studies of History, Literature, Fine Arts, Geography, Church History, Government and Writing $ 130 per Year, complete Review by Jolene Underwood |
|
“Wow! There is a lot of material here!” Like perhaps many other individuals first looking at Tapestry of Grace (TOG) (whether through the website or at the curriculum itself) this was my initial reaction. It appeared confusing, overwhelming and I wasn’t sure where to start. In order to get a good grasp of the concepts and premise, the first thing I did was find the “Quick Prints” on the TOG website and print off pages and pages of sample week studies. Somehow I still couldn’t fit the puzzle together in my mind. I am a very visual person and am greatly helped by seeing things laid-out in front of me. (One of the reasons this library is here, so others like me can do the same!) Then, we received Year 2, Unit 1 for review and I was able to spend several hours pouring over the material to more fully comprehend the layout and content. My impression continues, “There is a LOT of material here!” Seriously there is a great deal to each Tapestry of Grace volume, and it can look confusing and honestly overwhelming in the beginning, however, if you are willing to review the content and understand the method and the layout, will find a rich curriculum of literature based studies with a Christian worldview while offering parental guidance and structure, yet flexibility, and more. Marcia Sommerville, author of Tapestry of Grace, summarizes the program in this manner: “Read, Think, Write”. I’ve heard it said that TOG is the best of Sonlight, KONOS, and Classical Education all rolled into one. My summary, well, I’ll leave that for the end! Premise and Philosophies Rooted in the trivium of Classical Education, and born out of a need to survive (and thrive) the home schooling adventure in her own home, Marcia, with the help of her husband Scott (and others) came up with a plan for integrating History, Biblical Worldview, Church History, Fine Arts, Hands-On Activities, Geography, English and Government into a re-usable, four-year rotating, chronological plan for all levels of learning. Getting Started
Brochure If you are interested in learning more about Tapestry of Grace the very first thing I recommend you do is to print off and read the fabulous 25 page brochure available on the TOG website (www.tapestryofgrace.com). This is a wonderful way to meet Marcia and to become familiar with the philosophy and methods behind the TOG Volumes. You will want to save this print-out should you decide to purchase TOG as it will come in quite handy to help you sort through, understand and organize the material you receive. Thank you to the Sommerville’s for putting together such a wonderful and helpful brochure that can be viewed right online! (A free download of Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the brochure.) Website Second, I suggest spending some time on the website. It too is full of information and will take some time surfing through it. You will find information on Scope & Sequence for each Unit and Volume as well as sample pages, FAQ’s, book lists for each year and links to informative web sites and helpful resources for each week of each unit for each year! Amazing! In addition, there is a bulletin board forum for users and seekers of TOG to meet, ask questions and share ideas. There are two things I find quite helpful when looking into a curriculum: sample pages & a support network of other users. TOG has both of these and much more. In addition, support groups for TOG, as well as numerous other home school curriculum publishers, can be found on Yahoo groups. The best part! Should you decide to use TOG (perhaps even with another chronological study) you will want to visit TOG’s web site time and time again. There are numerous web links and resources available here and they are all organized by time period and area of study. At the site, click on the top tab for Year 1, 2, 3 or 4 (depending on the time period or era you are studying). The sub-menu provides several choices and the majority of these will bring you to pages filled with suggested and helpful websites and resources to supplement your study. They are organized by time period (listed per Week listed in TOG) and are categorized (in the sub-menu) by History, Geography, Literature, Church History, Arts/Activities, Government, Gallery, Evaluations & Writing. These categories are available for each year of study making for a large wealth of website helps wonderfully organized. Don’t miss this! General Notes on Volumes & Layout (Key Components)
There are so many facets and possibilities with this curriculum. In order to help break down the information and summarize it here, I will try to pull together for you what the key components are and how they work together. Primarily, it should be understood that Tapestry of Grace is “plan of study”. It is material organized to assist parents in the facilitation of various areas of study. In addition, it includes material written to the students to assist them in independent studies, therefore freeing up the parent to focus on character training, the 3 R’s for younger students and discussion. When you receive TOG, you will get packets of loose-leaf, three-hole punched paper. If you receive a full years plan, you will have a LOT of paper! You will need to decide how best to organize the material in binders. Binder cover sheets and spine labels are provided. Tapestry of Grace also sells divider tabs that can be helpful in organizing the various sections, or you may wish to make your own. Key components are color-coded. Purple pages are introductory and are provided for both the base package and each unit. In each unit: white pages include notes for the teacher for each week, yellow pages include the Reading Assignment Charts and Weekly Overview Charts (written TO the students) and blue is for the Student Activity pages (also written TO the students, with an introduction provided on the first page for the parent-teacher to read aloud). Supplemental activities and assignment material are provided in green pages. Base & Units What is a “Base” and is it needed? When you order from Tapestry of Grace you will need to decide if you are going to begin at the beginning of a year’s study, or somewhere in the middle. A TOG year plan is sold in five components, the Base and 4 separate Units. If you begin in the middle of Year 2 (for example) you will still need to order the $30 Base package and the 2 units ($25 each). The Base includes several pages of introductory notes on utilizing and implementing TOG (some of which is available on the website). It also includes a comprehensive reading list for the year and the Writing Components (assignments, supplements and overviews of skills taught by writing level) used during the year. Each unit includes teacher notes, reading assignments, weekly overviews and student activity pages for each week. Additional supplements (such as Luther’s 95 Theses) and occasional “Pageant of Philosophy” pages are included to be used in weeks where needed. In order to implement the writing assignments offered and in order have the guidelines for implementation, you will need the Base package whether you purchase 1 unit or all four. Planning & Preparing Annual Initially you should expect to spend a few hours pouring over the material and reading through the weekly lessons to understand how to use Tapestry of Grace and what material will be covered. I recommend skimming through the entire year, then preparing in further depth for the first unit to be covered. Information detailed in the Teacher’s Notes will provide a good overview and will help you to prepare for the upcoming weeks of study and discussions. In addition, you will want to make decisions about reading selections: Do you have these books already? Will you need to purchase? What other books might you be able to use from the library or elsewhere? Finally, by skimming through the material for the year, you will have a general idea of items that may require planning in advance of a week or two and you may wish to note these. Weekly To properly prepare for each week, you will want to spend some time studying the white “Teacher’s Notes” pages over the weekend. These pages include an essential overview for the parent of the “Threads” of history, literature, geography, fine arts etc. that will be covered. “Core Assignments by learning levels” are provided on the side bar of the first white notes page. Use the boxes to check off key items covered. Much background information is also provided in the following “Teacher’s Notes” pages that will assist you as parent in understanding what your child will be studying.
In addition, you will need to review the suggested reading assignments, writing assignments and activities so that you may prepare in advance (by a couple weeks) for possible library trips or items needed for various activities. It is likely that many TOG users will enjoy highlighting and marking up the pages with notes as to how they will use it in their own homes. Planning is exciting to some and a chore for others. Your view on this and the ability to discipline yourself to plan will affect the benefits you will receive and your opinion of the curriculum. At the beginning of each week, you will need to spend some time with each student helping them to plan their assignments. This will include selecting and discussing reading and writing assignments and reviewing hands-on activities, student activity pages and supplements to be used throughout the week. Over time, the goal is to teach each student how to transfer the suggested information and activities to their own weekly assignment pages.
Students are provided with Reading Assignments each week. Much of the work is to be done independently while some assignments are left as Read Aloud options (especially more so for the Grammar level students.) There are books selected for Core History, optional (but recommended) In-Depth History, Fine Arts, Literature and Worldview. Page or Chapter references are provided for selections when appropriate, or a book may be listed as being covered over 2-3 weeks. Students will then need to determine how much to read each week based on the total number of pages or chapters. It is suggested that the majority of the reading be done on Monday, flowing over to Tuesday as needed. This will provide the students with the core information needed for discussions and additional activities throughout the rest of the week. Note that the literature selections follow a Christian Classical model. Older rhetoric students will read original works (the Illiad and Aeneid for example) while younger children may read adaptations of these works such as “Children’s Homer” or “In Search of a Homeland”. Tapestry of Grace provides a wealth of literature options that also include books such as Greenleaf Press’s “Famous Men of” series, H.A. Guerber histories, Usborne books and numerous other secular and Christian written fictional titles. Textbooks such as BJU History texts and “Streams of Civilization” are also referred to for additional overview information. However, none of the specific book titles are essential to make Tapestry of Grace work. If you do not have the means to utilize a particular book, write in a replacement you may find from the library or your own collection or preference. Think Teaching your child to think about the world around him, especially when begun in the early and impressionable Grammar years, may well help you as parent-teacher to provide a foundation for your child’s belief structures that will help them through the Dialectic & Rhetoric years and for the rest of their life. I agree wholeheartedly with Mrs. Sommerville in her statement about the importance of your child’s spiritual direction during the 6th-9th grade years. At this time, your child is at a point where he or she is questioning more about the world they live in and deciding whether or not to make your “God” truly their God. What a wonderful and important time to be spending time discussing God’s hand in history and the consequences of obedience or disobedience in times before us. These discussions can then be applied to today and how the decisions made by them, by you and by our society affect the world around us. Properly utilizing TOG will require time each day and at the close of every week in discussion with your children over what they are learning. Through discussions and use of the Socratic method of questioning, your student will be pushed to examine why they believe as they do as they build a strong foundation for their beliefs. Mrs. Sommerville has provided discussion questions for each level of learning to foster this process on a weekly basis. Grammar & Dialectic level questions are provided in page 2 of the weekly overview charts. More detailed discussions (questions and answers) for Rhetoric level students and co-op groups are provided in the Teacher’s Notes sections for each week.
Tapestry of Grace offers a writing program for all levels that includes the study and use of poetry, journaling, note taking, researching, paragraph formation, graphic organizers and more. In each Base package, Mrs. Sommerville includes many suggested writing activities and assignments by week per level. Assignments are listed by writing level rather than by grade which will allow you to assess where your child is at rather than being concerned with tying a grade level to their work. As students are tasked with various writing assignments each week, Tapestry of Grace relies heavily upon the addition of an age appropriate Write Source handbook, or something similar, for each child. (For a detailed review on the Write Source handbooks, please click here.) In the earliest years a separate phonics program will need to be utilized and grammar should be studied independently as well (Easy Grammar is recommended and included in daily assignment suggestions.) Formal Latin studies are recommended after your student has received a solid grounding in grammar studies. Essentials & Enrichments One of the things that I feel will be important for parents as they plan and utilize TOG is to remember that there are components to the program that are considered to be essential for a basic study as well as several additional reading assignments, activities and writing assignments that are included for enrichment, in other words, optional. If you are just beginning TOG, or if you are feeling overwhelmed, please remember that the basics are defined in the first page of the white Teacher’s Notes and in the History Overview reading assignments. If needed, take a break and stick to the basics of Math, Phonics, Grammar and the basics of TOG. There is still plenty to learn and delve into and much discussion that can be had if only the essential components are covered. On the other hand, if you have found yourself in a nice flow with TOG, and if you have avid readers, more time or piqued interest by your child(ren) on a particular topic, then it is wonderful to know that the Enrichment options are there. If you or your child wants to learn more, there are guidelines and suggestions to do so. In addition to reading, writing and discussions, TOG offers suggested vocabulary words, characters and events for timeline work, geography studies (terms, mapping, culture studies etc.), and hands-on projects. Not specifically identified, but highly encouraged, are Latin studies for Dialectic & Rhetoric level Wrapping Up Essential to solidifying lessons taught in any curriculum is the wrap-up. Different curricula wrap up in different ways; presentations, tests, discussion sessions and activities are pretty common. Tapestry of Grace wraps up each week with discussions and final drafts of writing assignments. At the end of each unit (after 9-10 weeks of study), there is a suggested End of Unit activity called a “Unit Celebration”. The “Unit Celebration” for Unit 1 of Year 2, for example, is a Medieval Feast. The teacher is provided a heads-up about the celebration in the Teacher’s Notes that begin the Unit. (Here Mrs. Sommerville also provides notes as to why to wrap up the unit with a celebration.) In week 5, the Student Activity Pages begin to make reference to the Medieval Feast and provides suggestions for making costumes. Each weeks activity pages continue to provide additional preparation suggestions so that you can be better prepared and stay on target. Parent Involvement VS. Student Independent Study The majority of parental time and involvement is going to come in terms of planning (reading Teacher Notes and acquiring books and supplies for hands-on projects), helping each student choose books and activities, helping students plan their week and in parent led discussions (one on one, as a family or in a co-op). Tapestry of Grace is not a textbook that will be picked up and read to or by students. It is a richly structured guide to help parents lead children of all ages in educational pursuits, activities and discussions. Initially, there may be more required of the parent as they train each child (student) to own their work and learn how to pace their studies each week. Part of the reason Tapestry of Grace came to be was to maximize parental time with each child and still achieve high educational pursuits. While it may come across as overwhelming, it is designed to ease some of the difficulties of teaching multiple children and therefore make home schooling LESS overwhelming. To achieve this will require: time to review and read through the material, diligence to plug away for at least four weeks, discipline to learn a new method of educating in the home and most importantly – prayer to discern if it will meet your needs as a family. To further assist parents in learning how to use Tapestry of Grace, the Sommerville’s have extensive plans to put together a variety of resources that include Audiotapes, Videos and a co-op handbook. These are likely to be greatly appreciated by users and seekers of TOG. Where might this be a good fit, or not? Part of the beauty of Tapestry of Grace, which is also potentially TOG’s downfall, is that there is so much here. Mrs. Sommerville has done something that I haven’t seen done elsewhere. If your visual like me, think of it on a grid or chart with these essential components: 4-year rotation of history in a chronological fashion (re-use each volume up to 3 times with one home schooling child!), integration of History (with writing, vocabulary, literature, fine arts, geography, hands-on activities), flexibility to choose basic components for solid studies, yet the inclusion of numerous enrichment options for enhancement, and the ability to utilize with all ages, “K- Mom!” Please note that these plans include quite a bit of material pertaining to older students as well as information for the parent. If you have only younger children (Lower Grammar and below), much of the material will not be utilized. Since TOG is for “K-Mom” it could certainly still be utilized at the younger stages, but it could also be postponed a few years. This time would allow you the opportunity to focus on character training and the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. For more on this, and to read Marcia’s comments on using TOG with only younger children, please see her thoughts on the grammar years here. If you are a mom of several little ones, if you prefer textbooks or a read and quiz format, if you are one who simply cannot say “no” to optional components, or if you are new to home schooling, this may not be the curriculum for you. I say “may” because this is a general statement and certainly I cannot be the one to say what God will lead each person to do in their homes. My prayer and my heart’s desire is that each family will seek the Lord for guidance in all their decisions. My concern for the above listed people is the potential to become overwhelmed and to give up on a wonderful curriculum that may be a better fit later in your home schooling years, if at all. In addition, if you are looking for a pick-up-and-go format, something you can pick up on Monday and put into action, TOG will probably not work for you as planning and preparation will be key in making it not only successful, but fruitful in your home. However, for those who would like to provide a structured education based on the classical approach, for those who need assistance maximizing their teaching time with several students over a span of several years, for those looking for a combination of reading and literature assignments, with integrated writing assignments, hands-on activities and a Biblical worldview approach, than Tapestry of Grace is something to seriously consider. Costs Up front, a full year’s package will cost $150. (Classic version is now only available for Year 4, Revised Years 1,2 & 3 are $225 for a full year plan.) You will also need to consider: binders to hold the material, tab dividers to easily flip to weekly lessons etc. (sold by TOG for $12/year) and books. Book costs will vary as you determine whether or not to use spine books and others referred to in the Reading Assignments and how much may be available to you through your library. To reduce the cost of an up-front investment, TOG is also sold unit by unit. (Note, you will still need the Base package, making an initial investment of $55 plus shipping for one unit.) This may seem like a lot up front, however, should you continue to use TOG over the course of several years, you will be able to reuse the material making it much more cost effective. Also consider that writing instruction and the studies of fine arts, geography, church history and literature are included in addition to the chronological history studies. Personal Notes and Summary As mentioned by Mrs. Sommerville, year 2 is the fastest paced year. Coverage includes the Middle Ages through the Renaissance & Reformation (in 19 weeks), Colonial America and wraps up with the ratification of the Constitution for the United States of America. WOW! That is a lot to cover in one year. Certainly, wherever you begin in TOG you will need to determine whether or not to cover each “Year” in one or two years. This will be shaped by the ages and ranges of your children as well as their previous studies. Please prayerfully consider what to cover and how long to spend on it in your own home and remember, YOU rule the curriculum (with God’s help). It should never rule you. By keeping in prayer and seeking the Lord’s will in your own homes, I believe you will feel more peaceful and sure about the choices you make whether it’s Tapestry of Grace or any other curriculum. There are many benefits overall to Tapestry of Grace (such as the usage of great literature sections, guided discussions in the homes, the teaching of autonomy with each student, writing instruction, integrated geography and areas of study and more). Yes, I would have to conclude that because of the amount of material, it can appear overwhelming and confusing, but it deserves a chance at consideration as it could in fact help alleviate some of the tension and feelings of discouragement some mom’s may be feeling trying to teach children of several different ages. After all, Mrs. Sommerville wrote this out of a need to implement studies in a way that would make it easier and more enjoyable, not more difficult. In addition, if you are able to find or begin a co-op in your area, it can help to share the responsibility and work of discussions and hands-on projects. My final summary, while Tapestry of Grace may not be for every family, it is a wonderful option for home schooling parents that will likely suit the needs of many families for many years to come. As mentioned above, pray for the Lord’s guidance and research further to see if it meets your needs and goals in home education. We’re praying for you too! Further Information If you are interested in seeing for yourself if any of the Tapestry of Grace might be right for your family, you may check it out from our lending library at: www.christianhomelibrary.org. In addition, we currently offer several of the book selections referred to by TOG and videos and audios that will supplement your child’s studies. We hope to continue adding more resources for your benefit. If you found this review helpful,
please let me know by emailing me at: Jolene@christianhomelibrary.org. |