Tapestry of Grace
This is a L-O-N-G review and explanation of Tapestry of Grace. It includes sample week plans, possible lesson plans, and, if you have the time to read to the bottom of this page, how this curriculum is working for our family. I hope that you'll find something useful here!
As a member of The Old Schoolhouse magazine’s TOS Crew, I’ve received some wonderful curricula to review. Today, you’ll get to see my review of Tapestry of Grace.
My Background in History
For those of you who know me well, you’ve heard me explain how I was taught virtually no world history in my school and college years, and all of the U.S. history I was taught didn’t stick in my brain well because it was taught using dry textbooks. (I’m not against textbooks, per se, just "dry" textbooks!)
Because of this poor background in history, and not enjoying history at all until I discovered historical fiction books in my high school years, I have spent literally hundreds of hours over the last five years researching and studying to make certain that my children have a far better understanding of world history and God’s hand in all of humanity, than I did.
I'd heard of Tapestry of Grace a few times, and I might have even explored it online years ago when the girls were much younger. But, I’d never seen a copy of it "in person", and had no idea what it really was or how it all worked. Nor did I know anyone personally who had used Tapestry of Grace, so I didn’t have anyone local to question and get some guidance on how to use this curriculum.
General Information on Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press
Tapestry of Grace is an extremely thorough classical Christian world/U.S. history and literature program based on a biblical worldview and excellent choices, for the most part, in literature. Its head company is Lampstand Press, which also produces other accompanying pieces for its Tapestry of Grace curriculum. Tapestry of Grace was written by a very well educated Christian homeschooling mother.
What does TOG cover? What will you need to purchase to accompany TOG?
Tapestry of Grace (TOG) contains history, church history, geography, literature, fine arts, writing, philosophy, and government. If you decide to purchase Tapestry of Grace, you’ll also need to purchase additional curricula for math, science, foreign language, phonics, grammar, and spelling. Writing is worked into TOG if you purchase the accompanying Writing Aids, which I also received to review. Or, you can choose to use a separate writing program, if desired.
For whom was Tapestry originally designed? Which age ranges does TOG cover?
Tapestry of Grace was designed to especially assist homeschooling mothers who have larger families. The purpose was to enable children at all ages in one family to focus on the same particular era of history so that history and literature become a unit study where everyone participates with the same topics each week.
The lessons are divided into four main levels:
*Lower Grammar (typically, grades K-3)
*Upper Grammar (typically, grades 4-6)
*Dialectic (typically, grades 6-9)
*Rhetoric (typically, grades 9-12)
You’ll notice a bit of overlap on those years; that is because Tapestry of Grace allows parents to place their children where they feel they should belong, more on ability levels instead of grade levels. For example, my oldest daughter is in the 5th grade, but she was definitely ready for the Dialectic level, so that is where I placed her when we began preparing to review this curriculum. My second daughter is best placed at the Upper Grammar level, as a third grader who reads and comprehends very well but prefers shorter books to read.
A four-year history rotation cycle
Tapestry of Grace is designed to be used in a four-year rotation, so that by the time younger children finish the 12th grade, they have been through the world history cycle three times. However, it is also recommended that families generally don’t begin using Tapestry until their oldest child is starting the 5th grade. This curriculum is especially affordable if you have three or more children and will be rotating them through the four cycles, making better use of the money you paid originally for the curriculum and accompanying literature and history books. For families who only have 1-2 children, or will only be going through the four-year cycle one time, this curriculum could be considered fairly pricey.
My Background in History
For those of you who know me well, you’ve heard me explain how I was taught virtually no world history in my school and college years, and all of the U.S. history I was taught didn’t stick in my brain well because it was taught using dry textbooks. (I’m not against textbooks, per se, just "dry" textbooks!)
Because of this poor background in history, and not enjoying history at all until I discovered historical fiction books in my high school years, I have spent literally hundreds of hours over the last five years researching and studying to make certain that my children have a far better understanding of world history and God’s hand in all of humanity, than I did.
I'd heard of Tapestry of Grace a few times, and I might have even explored it online years ago when the girls were much younger. But, I’d never seen a copy of it "in person", and had no idea what it really was or how it all worked. Nor did I know anyone personally who had used Tapestry of Grace, so I didn’t have anyone local to question and get some guidance on how to use this curriculum.
General Information on Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press
Tapestry of Grace is an extremely thorough classical Christian world/U.S. history and literature program based on a biblical worldview and excellent choices, for the most part, in literature. Its head company is Lampstand Press, which also produces other accompanying pieces for its Tapestry of Grace curriculum. Tapestry of Grace was written by a very well educated Christian homeschooling mother.
What does TOG cover? What will you need to purchase to accompany TOG?
Tapestry of Grace (TOG) contains history, church history, geography, literature, fine arts, writing, philosophy, and government. If you decide to purchase Tapestry of Grace, you’ll also need to purchase additional curricula for math, science, foreign language, phonics, grammar, and spelling. Writing is worked into TOG if you purchase the accompanying Writing Aids, which I also received to review. Or, you can choose to use a separate writing program, if desired.
For whom was Tapestry originally designed? Which age ranges does TOG cover?
Tapestry of Grace was designed to especially assist homeschooling mothers who have larger families. The purpose was to enable children at all ages in one family to focus on the same particular era of history so that history and literature become a unit study where everyone participates with the same topics each week.
The lessons are divided into four main levels:
*Lower Grammar (typically, grades K-3)
*Upper Grammar (typically, grades 4-6)
*Dialectic (typically, grades 6-9)
*Rhetoric (typically, grades 9-12)
You’ll notice a bit of overlap on those years; that is because Tapestry of Grace allows parents to place their children where they feel they should belong, more on ability levels instead of grade levels. For example, my oldest daughter is in the 5th grade, but she was definitely ready for the Dialectic level, so that is where I placed her when we began preparing to review this curriculum. My second daughter is best placed at the Upper Grammar level, as a third grader who reads and comprehends very well but prefers shorter books to read.
A four-year history rotation cycle
Tapestry of Grace is designed to be used in a four-year rotation, so that by the time younger children finish the 12th grade, they have been through the world history cycle three times. However, it is also recommended that families generally don’t begin using Tapestry until their oldest child is starting the 5th grade. This curriculum is especially affordable if you have three or more children and will be rotating them through the four cycles, making better use of the money you paid originally for the curriculum and accompanying literature and history books. For families who only have 1-2 children, or will only be going through the four-year cycle one time, this curriculum could be considered fairly pricey.
The Digital Edition (DE) of Tapestry of Grace:
Pros and Cons
I received a copy of Tapestry’s new digital edition (DE) to review, having selected Year 2, Unit 2 (The Renaissance and the Reformation). We will be studying this era of history exclusively the next two school years using another Christian history curriculum as our "spine", so I thought that this would be an excellent way to see how Tapestry could best fit our family with two children.
Lampstand Press, the mother company who developed the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, has now refined the download process (using "LockLizard" for copyright protection), and it is generally very quick and smooth. The Tapestry technical support staff is absolutely wonderful, the best I’ve seen yet with online and over-the-phone assistance. I was very impressed with their help when it was needed.
While the digital edition isn’t ideal for every family, it is a quick and less expensive method of obtaining the Tapestry curriculum. The digital edition has the main benefit of being regularly updated at no charge to the original purchaser. Also, if a family’s computer has "died", or their house burns to the ground (heaven forbid!), they can go back to Lampstand Press and easily receive a replacement digital copy. To be able to have curriculum updated continuously for years and years to come is a huge blessing!
In my opinion, owning the digital edition alone may not be ideal for families who are brand new to Tapestry. While I do enjoy many e-books, reading through 450 pages on my computer screen is not something that is easy for me to do, especially when I am trying to make detailed decisions on how to use a curriculum. I also have a mild visual tracking disorder that makes it more challenging for me to scroll from page to page and keep track of where I am in the DE unit I received. In fact, it was challenging enough for me that I asked Lampstand Press if they would consider also sending me a printed version, maybe from a damaged or returned copy, of the unit I had received. Within two weeks, I had a printed version of my unit to peruse, and this was such a blessing! I would highly recommend that families who are new to Tapestry of Grace units or year-plans purchase the combination of the digital edition/printed edition. Unless you have a very large computer monitor, it may be challenging to scroll back and forth, see column and row headings easily, and overall get a decent picture of what Tapestry really looks like and how to use it most effectively.
The digital edition allows some copying and pasting of specific text on student worksheet pages, and it is nice to be able to easily print out worksheet pages when needed. Some TOS Crew reviewers found, however, that printing out pages from their DE units was a bit on the difficult side of things. Depending on the printer, the page numbers at the bottom of the page might not be printed out correctly, or the PDF files (LockLizard protected) may not print out at all. If you are concerned that your printer/ scanner/fax/copier may not allow you to print out Tapestry of Grace PDF files, you may want to contact Lampstand Press and let them know which printer/scanner/fax/copier you own to make certain it will be compatible. Most printer issues have been resolved as of June 2010.
One key point I need to mention here is that the digital version (and its accompanying printed copies) are NOT able to be resold, meaning that it is against copyright law to sell them to another family. For those families who are used to selling curriculum they’ve outgrown, you will want to know this and be aware of copyright infringement if you do attempt to resell any printed copies. Digital copies cannot be transferred from one person to another, even as a gift, because the LockLizard copyright protection system prevents that. However, there seems to be some indication that you could pass the digital curriculum down to your children; that would need to be confirmed with Lampstand Press.
Customer support with Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press
Lampstand Press supports its customers in a variety of ways that I found helpful. First, their online "Bookshelf Central" contains nearly all of the required literature and history books for each unit. Their prices for these new copies are very reasonable, often cheaper than Amazon.com.
TOG also supports online message boards/forums with a variety of helpful headings and moderators. I asked several questions on these forums and quickly received answers from either families who enjoy using TOG, or from the author herself or Lampstand Press employees. That is impressive! This is one of the things I love most about homeschooling curriculum companies: the authors are generally highly involved in their product support, whether on their product message boards, Yahoo groups, over just over the phone. Nice!
Lampstand Press, the mother company who developed the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, has now refined the download process (using "LockLizard" for copyright protection), and it is generally very quick and smooth. The Tapestry technical support staff is absolutely wonderful, the best I’ve seen yet with online and over-the-phone assistance. I was very impressed with their help when it was needed.
While the digital edition isn’t ideal for every family, it is a quick and less expensive method of obtaining the Tapestry curriculum. The digital edition has the main benefit of being regularly updated at no charge to the original purchaser. Also, if a family’s computer has "died", or their house burns to the ground (heaven forbid!), they can go back to Lampstand Press and easily receive a replacement digital copy. To be able to have curriculum updated continuously for years and years to come is a huge blessing!
In my opinion, owning the digital edition alone may not be ideal for families who are brand new to Tapestry. While I do enjoy many e-books, reading through 450 pages on my computer screen is not something that is easy for me to do, especially when I am trying to make detailed decisions on how to use a curriculum. I also have a mild visual tracking disorder that makes it more challenging for me to scroll from page to page and keep track of where I am in the DE unit I received. In fact, it was challenging enough for me that I asked Lampstand Press if they would consider also sending me a printed version, maybe from a damaged or returned copy, of the unit I had received. Within two weeks, I had a printed version of my unit to peruse, and this was such a blessing! I would highly recommend that families who are new to Tapestry of Grace units or year-plans purchase the combination of the digital edition/printed edition. Unless you have a very large computer monitor, it may be challenging to scroll back and forth, see column and row headings easily, and overall get a decent picture of what Tapestry really looks like and how to use it most effectively.
The digital edition allows some copying and pasting of specific text on student worksheet pages, and it is nice to be able to easily print out worksheet pages when needed. Some TOS Crew reviewers found, however, that printing out pages from their DE units was a bit on the difficult side of things. Depending on the printer, the page numbers at the bottom of the page might not be printed out correctly, or the PDF files (LockLizard protected) may not print out at all. If you are concerned that your printer/ scanner/fax/copier may not allow you to print out Tapestry of Grace PDF files, you may want to contact Lampstand Press and let them know which printer/scanner/fax/copier you own to make certain it will be compatible. Most printer issues have been resolved as of June 2010.
One key point I need to mention here is that the digital version (and its accompanying printed copies) are NOT able to be resold, meaning that it is against copyright law to sell them to another family. For those families who are used to selling curriculum they’ve outgrown, you will want to know this and be aware of copyright infringement if you do attempt to resell any printed copies. Digital copies cannot be transferred from one person to another, even as a gift, because the LockLizard copyright protection system prevents that. However, there seems to be some indication that you could pass the digital curriculum down to your children; that would need to be confirmed with Lampstand Press.
Customer support with Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press
Lampstand Press supports its customers in a variety of ways that I found helpful. First, their online "Bookshelf Central" contains nearly all of the required literature and history books for each unit. Their prices for these new copies are very reasonable, often cheaper than Amazon.com.
TOG also supports online message boards/forums with a variety of helpful headings and moderators. I asked several questions on these forums and quickly received answers from either families who enjoy using TOG, or from the author herself or Lampstand Press employees. That is impressive! This is one of the things I love most about homeschooling curriculum companies: the authors are generally highly involved in their product support, whether on their product message boards, Yahoo groups, over just over the phone. Nice!
Tapestry of Grace samples for Year One:
History of Redemption - From Creation to the Fall of Rome
This is a free three-week tutorial sample unit study from TOG: Ancient Egypt.
click here to view the free samples!
Here are some sample lesson plans for Week 1,
showing how you might break up the assignments listed above throughout the week.
Please note that Tapestry does not provide similar lesson plans for other weeks. . .
these are just for you to see how you might do it.
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK ONE at the
LOWER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK ONE at the
UPPER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK ONE at the
DIALECTIC level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK ONE at the
RHETORIC level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK TWO
at the LOWER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK TWO at the UPPER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK TWO
at the DIALECTIC level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK TWO
at the RHETORIC level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK THREE
at the
LOWER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK THREE at the
UPPER GRAMMAR level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK THREE
at the DIALECTIC level:
Possible Lesson Plan for WEEK THREE
at the RHETORIC level:
Here's a blank form for lesson planning that we used this year to do our planning and scheduling for Tapestry of Grace and our other curriculum:
Here is a sample of one of my daughter's weekly lesson plan forms filled out for the Dialectic (middle school) level. Items in red are those that the girls and I read together.
So, how has Tapestry of Grace worked for my family?
I’d like to be able to share with you how the Tapestry of Grace curriculum has worked for me as the teacher of two children at the Upper Grammar and Dialectic levels.
Breakdowns of Tapestry of Grace’s student levels
Since Tapestry is designed to be used for the entire family, each week’s lesson plan is broken down into four age levels. The lowest level (Lower Grammar stage) wasn’t used by our family, for the most part, because our children are older than that. However, there were a few book suggestions from the "Lower Grammar" level that we chose to check out from the library just for fun.
Brittany is in the second level of Tapestry at the Upper Grammar stage, and Kelsi is at the Dialectic stage. While we didn’t use either the lowest or highest levels of Tapestry in our home, I can easily see the benefit of having the entire family work together on one specific topic each week.
30-day "fog"
When I received the printed copy of Tapestry, I was a bit overwhelmed at the length of the unit. 450+ pages to be used in a nine- or ten-week study? That seemed quite intensive, especially since we’ve been using a different history program for the last four years, and we take two years to go through 450 pages in that other curriculum!
At first, I thought that I myself would have to be reading over 50 pages of printed material a week, before I planned on giving the girls their reading schedules. Well, that wasn’t going to happen for our family, at least not right now. But, I determined I would read through everything that pertained to the two levels we would be using for our girls: Upper Grammar and Dialectic.
It became clear at that point that I truly didn’t need to read each and every page in the unit in order to use Tapestry! Whew. But, there is what Tapestry itself calls a "30-day fog" of working through the curriculum for a month in order to really get the hang of it all. With the digital edition, you’ll find that this fog might last even longer for you; if you are new to Tapestry, I would recommend buying a printed copy if at all possible, until you are very familiar with the layout of the curriculum and feel comfortable enough with it to enable you to maneuver and work through their digital edition (DE) of Tapestry of Grace.
Back to school for parents…
Ideally, it would be wonderful for me as the parent who never studied European history, to be able to read through the entire unit and get a very well-rounded understanding of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Tapestry is doing a wonderful job of encouraging parents to educate themselves as well as their children. Since in high school, I thought that Kublai Khan was a professional basketball player, you can see how much I still have to learn! (By the way, I did finally learn the answer to that this winter/spring, in our chronological study of history with another history curriculum we’ve been using for several years!)
Instead of reading through the entire unit as we use Tapestry, though, I’m going to read the levels we will be using in our home, at our girls’ age levels, and then as they progress to a higher stage, I’ll have some more reading to do, right? That’s okay with me. I don’t mind at all trying to fill some of those "swiss cheese" holes in my academic learning from a public school education.
Weekly Parent Preparation Time
Here’s what I did to prepare for Week One of Tapestry, Year 2, Unit 2:
1. First, I read through the "Threads" sections that were basically a list of teaching objectives for the week.
2. Next, I read through the Reading Assignment Charts for the week, to help me determine which books I want to check out from the library, purchase, read online for free, or ignore altogether due to lack of availability or funds to purchase additional books. I spent a lot of time on our county library’s website from our home, figuring out which titles would be available to me from the library, etc. It turned out that for both the Upper Grammar and Dialectic levels, I could check out most books from the county library. I purchased 6 books for the Dialectic level that would be needed for more than half of the 10-week unit, especially since they weren’t available at our library. I also ended up doing an inter-library loan which cost $3 for three weeks to check out the book from a different library system.
3. I read through the Weekly Overview charts that include a repeating of the teaching objectives for the week, a list of people that would be studied for the week, a list of vocabulary words, and timeline dates for those who choose to make timelines.
4. I made a lesson plan form on my computer that was a lesson plan for each of the girls for each week that we used Tapestry this winter. Tapestry also has some of these charts and forms available for families to use, but I wanted something that worked specifically for the other curriculum we use during the day. So, I tweaked their form and made it fit our family’s needs.
5. I began typing and filling out the girls’ lesson plans for their three weeks of using Tapestry’s curriculum. I typed in the lists of books they would be reading each day (from Tapestry’s "Reading Assignment Charts"), the activities they would be doing (from Tapestry’s "Activities" section that includes art, geography, and so much more), their writing assignments (using Tapestry’s Writing Aids book), and "Student Activities".
(Tapestry of Grace would encourages students to fill out their own lesson plan charts for the week, so that they learn to pace themselves in their independent reading. While this would work better for us if we had been planning to use Tapestry of Grace throughout the school year, we only had several weeks to use and review the curriculum. I began having the girls write everything out, but because there can be so much to do in the Tapestry curriculum, the boxes in my lesson plan form were very small. The girls wrote in very tiny print, making it difficult for them and me to decipher. Plus, it was taking over an hour just for them to get their week down on paper. I know when they are older, this will be a quicker process for us all, but at this stage of the game, all three of us came to the conclusion that Mom had better type out or fill out the charts so they are very legible and neat, yet still written in that necessary small lettering.)
6. Next, I read through the pages of Teacher’s Notes that fit the ages of my children. While it was very informative, I was thankful several times that I would only be instructing two levels instead of three or four for this review! For the weeks that we used, this meant that I was reading 7-10 pages of notes to help me be better prepared to guide my children through this week’s lessons.
7. Lastly, I made copies of any student activity pages and worksheets, and I stapled them to my daughters’ weekly assignment chart that I helped them fill out. They also had a list of vocabulary words and a map of Italy stapled to their lesson plan/weekly assignment chart.
What if I don’t want to use or make a lesson plan chart for Tapestry?
If you aren’t interested in using a lesson planning chart for your weeks of Tapestry studies, you could just print out a copy of the Reading Assignment Charts for each child, and then highlight what they need to read and do for the week, as well as pencil in any comments that will help them to be successful with Tapestry.
How long should it take for parents to prepare for each week of school using Tapestry of Grace curriculum?
From my experience, the most time consuming part of using Tapestry of Grace in our home was obtaining the literature selections/books. I spent literally hours on my computer, looking up each title we would need, for the entire unit, to see what I was able to borrow from the library and what I might need to purchase.
Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press indicates that it should take a parent about 1-2 hours per week to plan out the week’s school schedule of curriculum and independent reading. I have found that it takes me at least three hours and sometimes longer to fill out the girls' lesson plan charts, make sure I have all of the library books we need, gather supplies for the art lessons and science experiments, type out a vocabulary list for them to write in the definitions, print out questions for the dialectic level, print out any needed worksheets from the curriculum, and plan the remainder of the lessons in other subject areas.
I would love to say that it doesn't take me this long, but this was the one BIG hold-up for me this year: PLANNING. We didn't make it through as many week plans as I would have liked. We normally stick to our history schedule and go right through it, finishing it off by the beginning of June. However, this summer we will be continuing our history studies, so we can hopefully start a new unit from Year Two in the autumn. I cannot imagine spending only one week on Tapestry's week plans! We spent a minimum of two weeks, and sometimes three weeks on each week plan. It wasn't because we were necessarily so slow at what we did, but because we didn't want to rush the concepts and ideas.
Online Support for Tapestry of Grace
There are multiple resources available for help and encouragement with Tapestry of Grace. Several Yahoo online groups/message boards exist as well.
http://tapestryofgrace.groupee.net/groupee has been designed by Lampstand Press/Tapestry of Grace, and it is one of the better organized message boards I’ve seen. If you have a question to ask about the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, they have a message board to answer it! Excellent resource where the author(s) and technical support folks often answer peoples’ questions. I highly recommend this as a great resource for your family.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TOGLooseThreads/ is an extremely active message board for Tapestry of Grace users. It is a great place to ask questions and receive answers, ask for prayer, and become a community with this very large group. If you don’t want to be bombarded with lengthy or frequent emails from this Yahoo group, you can choose to go "no mail" when you manage your subscription there, and you can just periodically check in at your own convenience, or just use some of the helpful resources in their Files section.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TOG_Starters/ is a fairly slow message board for Tapestry of Grace users. For example, there may only be a few postings each month there. However, it is also a great place to have your questions answered.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SimplyTOG/ is a Yahoo group designed to strictly answer questions about using Tapestry of Grace. Only on-topic questions and comments are allowed. This group gets more frequent postings than "TOG Starters" but far fewer postings than "Loose Threads".
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TapestryofGraceYear2/ is a Yahoo group designed just for Year 2 users of Tapestry of Grace’s curriculum. Very helpful group for Year 2 users!
So…what did we all think of our first year using Tapestry of Grace?
Overall, I really enjoyed using Tapestry of Grace, Year Two, Unit Two (Renaissance and Reformation) this school year.
Pros:
1. The curriculum is solidly classical with a distinct biblical worldview. This had an impact on both me and my children.
2. I loved having lists of literature books provided for me!
3. I really enjoyed having "built in" vocabulary words and questions prepared for me by the author of Tapestry of Grace.
4. My daughter who ranks history as her #1 favorite school subject ADORED the Tapestry of Grace curriculum.
5. Both girls really enjoyed having some of their history and literature work done with me, as read-alouds, and also having a good sized portion of it as independent work.
6. Having everything altogether in one place for me was a big blessing. I didn't need to scour the internet to find crafts, science experiments, and other hands-on projects and activities to fit the topic we were studying.
7. The Lampstand book, Writing Aids, is really an amazing book. Using the simple tools in that book, my girls were able to write their first five-page report and find it an enjoyable process.
8. Most importantly, I felt like this curriculum "ramped up" the level of education I was providing for my children, especially for my older daughter who was entering her first year of middle school.
Cons:
1. I found the planning to be challenging. After I figured out how this program works, and got past the "thirty-day fog", I still felt like I was spending a lot more time planning out our weeks of school than I had ever done before. What I ended up doing is planning out two weeks of school on one week's lesson plan form, and as the girls finished each task, they would use a highlighter to cross that task off of the list. By doing this, I was only planning every other week, which kept me sane!
2. I spent more money on literature and history books than I have in the past. I didn't use the library as much as I thought I would, because we needed most of the books for most of the school year since we had planned to work through only one unit (one quarter) of a year plan.
3. One of my daughters, who ranks history at the bottom of her school subjects, didn't like using Tapestry as well as the program we have used in the past. However, by the end of this school year, she was beginning to like it a little bit more. She prefers not to read academic literature independently, so she and I read a lot more together than I did with my older daughter.
4. My main concern with using Tapestry of Grace with only two children in the family is that if I purchased the "required" elements from Lampstand Press, it is a very expensive program. Yes, it is a very solid classical education, and it costs a lot less than a classical private school, but it is still a lot of money. I can't imagine needing to buy books for more than two levels of students! If I had students at the Lower Grammar stage (typically, grades K-3), I'd be checking out library books on the same topic vs. buying the exact titles listed in the Tapestry of Grace curriculum. I might even do the same for the "Upper Grammar" stage. But for the "Dialectic" and "Rhetoric" stages, to take advantage of all that this solid curriculum offers, it is fairly important to purchase the exact titles required for the program.
5. Another concern is that if I haven't purchased the exact edition of a book title required for Tapestry of Grace unit plans, the page numbers may be incorrect in my edition of the book vs. the page numbers listed in my teacher's guide. Since the prices for brand new books listed on Bookshelf Central, the bookstore for Lampstand Press, is quite reasonable, I would highly recommend that you purchase the exact titles and editions listed on their bookstore website. Many people have had complaints about Dialectic and Rhetoric levels' page numbers of reading being inconsistent with their particular edition of their books.
6. My final concern is that while Lampstand Press makes many attempts to "warn" parents or provide a caution of anything that could be potentially troublesome in the next week's readings (nudity, swearing, etc.), there are some things that have slipped through the cracks. I know that Lampstand Press cannot address every issue that some Christian families would be opposed to; however, with the group of reviewers I worked with, there were at least two instances where very sensitive topics slipped through the cracks and were not mentioned. Hence, some children read about topics that their parents would have rather read with them and discussed, or left out those particular pages if the child wasn't mature enough for that topic or subject.
Often, parents with larger families cannot possibly read every page of every book that their children read, so it is nice that Lampstand Press provides many cautions or warnings. I do appreciate this.
Lastly, along the same lines, if you happen to choose Year Two, Unit Two like I did, to use in your family's education, be aware that many of the recommended books for Tapestry of Grace contain nudes. For our family, we are not extremists, where we shelter our children from every sense of nudity - otherwise, we'd never leave our home, based on how most women dress these days baring cleavage...and more.
However, we didn't feel it was appropriate to have our girls staring at nude sculpture and artwork every day all year, nor did they want to do that. We explained that if they went to a museum in Italy, this would be something they would view. They told us that they might be able to be okay with some nudity in a museum, but they just didn't want to see it on a daily basis each time we opened up some of our history titles. So, we used a lot of Post-It notes to cover portions of artwork. Since they are ten and twelve years of age, we decided to get their feedback, and this was what they felt most comfortable with.
If you do not want your children exposed to nudity with this particular unit, you may find it more appropriate to use The Mystery of History, vol. 3 by Linda Hobar. It is a full-color, well written book, and the author has carefully selected artwork from the famous artists of the time which DON'T contain nudity. I appreciated her insight in doing this, as most art books from the Renaissance are not as sensitive to children's and families' needs.
All in all, using Tapestry of Grace combined with The Mystery of History, vol. 3 was a very positive experience for our family. We are looking forward to combining the two curricula again this next year.
Breakdowns of Tapestry of Grace’s student levels
Since Tapestry is designed to be used for the entire family, each week’s lesson plan is broken down into four age levels. The lowest level (Lower Grammar stage) wasn’t used by our family, for the most part, because our children are older than that. However, there were a few book suggestions from the "Lower Grammar" level that we chose to check out from the library just for fun.
Brittany is in the second level of Tapestry at the Upper Grammar stage, and Kelsi is at the Dialectic stage. While we didn’t use either the lowest or highest levels of Tapestry in our home, I can easily see the benefit of having the entire family work together on one specific topic each week.
30-day "fog"
When I received the printed copy of Tapestry, I was a bit overwhelmed at the length of the unit. 450+ pages to be used in a nine- or ten-week study? That seemed quite intensive, especially since we’ve been using a different history program for the last four years, and we take two years to go through 450 pages in that other curriculum!
At first, I thought that I myself would have to be reading over 50 pages of printed material a week, before I planned on giving the girls their reading schedules. Well, that wasn’t going to happen for our family, at least not right now. But, I determined I would read through everything that pertained to the two levels we would be using for our girls: Upper Grammar and Dialectic.
It became clear at that point that I truly didn’t need to read each and every page in the unit in order to use Tapestry! Whew. But, there is what Tapestry itself calls a "30-day fog" of working through the curriculum for a month in order to really get the hang of it all. With the digital edition, you’ll find that this fog might last even longer for you; if you are new to Tapestry, I would recommend buying a printed copy if at all possible, until you are very familiar with the layout of the curriculum and feel comfortable enough with it to enable you to maneuver and work through their digital edition (DE) of Tapestry of Grace.
Back to school for parents…
Ideally, it would be wonderful for me as the parent who never studied European history, to be able to read through the entire unit and get a very well-rounded understanding of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Tapestry is doing a wonderful job of encouraging parents to educate themselves as well as their children. Since in high school, I thought that Kublai Khan was a professional basketball player, you can see how much I still have to learn! (By the way, I did finally learn the answer to that this winter/spring, in our chronological study of history with another history curriculum we’ve been using for several years!)
Instead of reading through the entire unit as we use Tapestry, though, I’m going to read the levels we will be using in our home, at our girls’ age levels, and then as they progress to a higher stage, I’ll have some more reading to do, right? That’s okay with me. I don’t mind at all trying to fill some of those "swiss cheese" holes in my academic learning from a public school education.
Weekly Parent Preparation Time
Here’s what I did to prepare for Week One of Tapestry, Year 2, Unit 2:
1. First, I read through the "Threads" sections that were basically a list of teaching objectives for the week.
2. Next, I read through the Reading Assignment Charts for the week, to help me determine which books I want to check out from the library, purchase, read online for free, or ignore altogether due to lack of availability or funds to purchase additional books. I spent a lot of time on our county library’s website from our home, figuring out which titles would be available to me from the library, etc. It turned out that for both the Upper Grammar and Dialectic levels, I could check out most books from the county library. I purchased 6 books for the Dialectic level that would be needed for more than half of the 10-week unit, especially since they weren’t available at our library. I also ended up doing an inter-library loan which cost $3 for three weeks to check out the book from a different library system.
3. I read through the Weekly Overview charts that include a repeating of the teaching objectives for the week, a list of people that would be studied for the week, a list of vocabulary words, and timeline dates for those who choose to make timelines.
4. I made a lesson plan form on my computer that was a lesson plan for each of the girls for each week that we used Tapestry this winter. Tapestry also has some of these charts and forms available for families to use, but I wanted something that worked specifically for the other curriculum we use during the day. So, I tweaked their form and made it fit our family’s needs.
5. I began typing and filling out the girls’ lesson plans for their three weeks of using Tapestry’s curriculum. I typed in the lists of books they would be reading each day (from Tapestry’s "Reading Assignment Charts"), the activities they would be doing (from Tapestry’s "Activities" section that includes art, geography, and so much more), their writing assignments (using Tapestry’s Writing Aids book), and "Student Activities".
(Tapestry of Grace would encourages students to fill out their own lesson plan charts for the week, so that they learn to pace themselves in their independent reading. While this would work better for us if we had been planning to use Tapestry of Grace throughout the school year, we only had several weeks to use and review the curriculum. I began having the girls write everything out, but because there can be so much to do in the Tapestry curriculum, the boxes in my lesson plan form were very small. The girls wrote in very tiny print, making it difficult for them and me to decipher. Plus, it was taking over an hour just for them to get their week down on paper. I know when they are older, this will be a quicker process for us all, but at this stage of the game, all three of us came to the conclusion that Mom had better type out or fill out the charts so they are very legible and neat, yet still written in that necessary small lettering.)
6. Next, I read through the pages of Teacher’s Notes that fit the ages of my children. While it was very informative, I was thankful several times that I would only be instructing two levels instead of three or four for this review! For the weeks that we used, this meant that I was reading 7-10 pages of notes to help me be better prepared to guide my children through this week’s lessons.
7. Lastly, I made copies of any student activity pages and worksheets, and I stapled them to my daughters’ weekly assignment chart that I helped them fill out. They also had a list of vocabulary words and a map of Italy stapled to their lesson plan/weekly assignment chart.
What if I don’t want to use or make a lesson plan chart for Tapestry?
If you aren’t interested in using a lesson planning chart for your weeks of Tapestry studies, you could just print out a copy of the Reading Assignment Charts for each child, and then highlight what they need to read and do for the week, as well as pencil in any comments that will help them to be successful with Tapestry.
How long should it take for parents to prepare for each week of school using Tapestry of Grace curriculum?
From my experience, the most time consuming part of using Tapestry of Grace in our home was obtaining the literature selections/books. I spent literally hours on my computer, looking up each title we would need, for the entire unit, to see what I was able to borrow from the library and what I might need to purchase.
Tapestry of Grace/Lampstand Press indicates that it should take a parent about 1-2 hours per week to plan out the week’s school schedule of curriculum and independent reading. I have found that it takes me at least three hours and sometimes longer to fill out the girls' lesson plan charts, make sure I have all of the library books we need, gather supplies for the art lessons and science experiments, type out a vocabulary list for them to write in the definitions, print out questions for the dialectic level, print out any needed worksheets from the curriculum, and plan the remainder of the lessons in other subject areas.
I would love to say that it doesn't take me this long, but this was the one BIG hold-up for me this year: PLANNING. We didn't make it through as many week plans as I would have liked. We normally stick to our history schedule and go right through it, finishing it off by the beginning of June. However, this summer we will be continuing our history studies, so we can hopefully start a new unit from Year Two in the autumn. I cannot imagine spending only one week on Tapestry's week plans! We spent a minimum of two weeks, and sometimes three weeks on each week plan. It wasn't because we were necessarily so slow at what we did, but because we didn't want to rush the concepts and ideas.
Online Support for Tapestry of Grace
There are multiple resources available for help and encouragement with Tapestry of Grace. Several Yahoo online groups/message boards exist as well.
http://tapestryofgrace.groupee.net/groupee has been designed by Lampstand Press/Tapestry of Grace, and it is one of the better organized message boards I’ve seen. If you have a question to ask about the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, they have a message board to answer it! Excellent resource where the author(s) and technical support folks often answer peoples’ questions. I highly recommend this as a great resource for your family.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TOGLooseThreads/ is an extremely active message board for Tapestry of Grace users. It is a great place to ask questions and receive answers, ask for prayer, and become a community with this very large group. If you don’t want to be bombarded with lengthy or frequent emails from this Yahoo group, you can choose to go "no mail" when you manage your subscription there, and you can just periodically check in at your own convenience, or just use some of the helpful resources in their Files section.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TOG_Starters/ is a fairly slow message board for Tapestry of Grace users. For example, there may only be a few postings each month there. However, it is also a great place to have your questions answered.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SimplyTOG/ is a Yahoo group designed to strictly answer questions about using Tapestry of Grace. Only on-topic questions and comments are allowed. This group gets more frequent postings than "TOG Starters" but far fewer postings than "Loose Threads".
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TapestryofGraceYear2/ is a Yahoo group designed just for Year 2 users of Tapestry of Grace’s curriculum. Very helpful group for Year 2 users!
So…what did we all think of our first year using Tapestry of Grace?
Overall, I really enjoyed using Tapestry of Grace, Year Two, Unit Two (Renaissance and Reformation) this school year.
Pros:
1. The curriculum is solidly classical with a distinct biblical worldview. This had an impact on both me and my children.
2. I loved having lists of literature books provided for me!
3. I really enjoyed having "built in" vocabulary words and questions prepared for me by the author of Tapestry of Grace.
4. My daughter who ranks history as her #1 favorite school subject ADORED the Tapestry of Grace curriculum.
5. Both girls really enjoyed having some of their history and literature work done with me, as read-alouds, and also having a good sized portion of it as independent work.
6. Having everything altogether in one place for me was a big blessing. I didn't need to scour the internet to find crafts, science experiments, and other hands-on projects and activities to fit the topic we were studying.
7. The Lampstand book, Writing Aids, is really an amazing book. Using the simple tools in that book, my girls were able to write their first five-page report and find it an enjoyable process.
8. Most importantly, I felt like this curriculum "ramped up" the level of education I was providing for my children, especially for my older daughter who was entering her first year of middle school.
Cons:
1. I found the planning to be challenging. After I figured out how this program works, and got past the "thirty-day fog", I still felt like I was spending a lot more time planning out our weeks of school than I had ever done before. What I ended up doing is planning out two weeks of school on one week's lesson plan form, and as the girls finished each task, they would use a highlighter to cross that task off of the list. By doing this, I was only planning every other week, which kept me sane!
2. I spent more money on literature and history books than I have in the past. I didn't use the library as much as I thought I would, because we needed most of the books for most of the school year since we had planned to work through only one unit (one quarter) of a year plan.
3. One of my daughters, who ranks history at the bottom of her school subjects, didn't like using Tapestry as well as the program we have used in the past. However, by the end of this school year, she was beginning to like it a little bit more. She prefers not to read academic literature independently, so she and I read a lot more together than I did with my older daughter.
4. My main concern with using Tapestry of Grace with only two children in the family is that if I purchased the "required" elements from Lampstand Press, it is a very expensive program. Yes, it is a very solid classical education, and it costs a lot less than a classical private school, but it is still a lot of money. I can't imagine needing to buy books for more than two levels of students! If I had students at the Lower Grammar stage (typically, grades K-3), I'd be checking out library books on the same topic vs. buying the exact titles listed in the Tapestry of Grace curriculum. I might even do the same for the "Upper Grammar" stage. But for the "Dialectic" and "Rhetoric" stages, to take advantage of all that this solid curriculum offers, it is fairly important to purchase the exact titles required for the program.
5. Another concern is that if I haven't purchased the exact edition of a book title required for Tapestry of Grace unit plans, the page numbers may be incorrect in my edition of the book vs. the page numbers listed in my teacher's guide. Since the prices for brand new books listed on Bookshelf Central, the bookstore for Lampstand Press, is quite reasonable, I would highly recommend that you purchase the exact titles and editions listed on their bookstore website. Many people have had complaints about Dialectic and Rhetoric levels' page numbers of reading being inconsistent with their particular edition of their books.
6. My final concern is that while Lampstand Press makes many attempts to "warn" parents or provide a caution of anything that could be potentially troublesome in the next week's readings (nudity, swearing, etc.), there are some things that have slipped through the cracks. I know that Lampstand Press cannot address every issue that some Christian families would be opposed to; however, with the group of reviewers I worked with, there were at least two instances where very sensitive topics slipped through the cracks and were not mentioned. Hence, some children read about topics that their parents would have rather read with them and discussed, or left out those particular pages if the child wasn't mature enough for that topic or subject.
Often, parents with larger families cannot possibly read every page of every book that their children read, so it is nice that Lampstand Press provides many cautions or warnings. I do appreciate this.
Lastly, along the same lines, if you happen to choose Year Two, Unit Two like I did, to use in your family's education, be aware that many of the recommended books for Tapestry of Grace contain nudes. For our family, we are not extremists, where we shelter our children from every sense of nudity - otherwise, we'd never leave our home, based on how most women dress these days baring cleavage...and more.
However, we didn't feel it was appropriate to have our girls staring at nude sculpture and artwork every day all year, nor did they want to do that. We explained that if they went to a museum in Italy, this would be something they would view. They told us that they might be able to be okay with some nudity in a museum, but they just didn't want to see it on a daily basis each time we opened up some of our history titles. So, we used a lot of Post-It notes to cover portions of artwork. Since they are ten and twelve years of age, we decided to get their feedback, and this was what they felt most comfortable with.
If you do not want your children exposed to nudity with this particular unit, you may find it more appropriate to use The Mystery of History, vol. 3 by Linda Hobar. It is a full-color, well written book, and the author has carefully selected artwork from the famous artists of the time which DON'T contain nudity. I appreciated her insight in doing this, as most art books from the Renaissance are not as sensitive to children's and families' needs.
All in all, using Tapestry of Grace combined with The Mystery of History, vol. 3 was a very positive experience for our family. We are looking forward to combining the two curricula again this next year.
DISCLOSURE: While I will never be paid to write a product review, I did accept a free copy of one unit of Tapestry of Grace for me to use and review in our home. No other compensation was provided.
Comments:
Thank you so much for your review of Tapestry. We started Tapestry last year and will be doing it again this year. I agree with everything you had to say. I spend a TON of time pre-reading material (and I'm glad that I have as there are some things that have "slipped' through as you stated), scheduling and making a list of books that we will borrow and when we will need those books.
My children are a bit younger than yours (6, 9, 10) and I appreciated your insight on having them schedule their own work. I didn't do that last year, but I did consider doing it this year with my oldest (at least for the Literature and History portion). It almost seems like more work for me, but it is an important skill for him to learn.
Again, I just wanted to say, "Thanks!" Your review has validated some of the feelings that I had about the curriculum. It's always good to know you're not alone!
April F.
My children are a bit younger than yours (6, 9, 10) and I appreciated your insight on having them schedule their own work. I didn't do that last year, but I did consider doing it this year with my oldest (at least for the Literature and History portion). It almost seems like more work for me, but it is an important skill for him to learn.
Again, I just wanted to say, "Thanks!" Your review has validated some of the feelings that I had about the curriculum. It's always good to know you're not alone!
April F.
Thank you so much for this review. It was extremely helpful and touched on many areas other reviews had left out. Thanks again and can't wait to try it out.
Gail D.
Gail D.
Thank you so much for your review! I am considering TOG for a co-op, My children are going to be grades 4, 6 and 9th. My 4th grader reads on GL, my 6th grader is not a strong reader at all and my 9th grader can read and understand pretty much anything given to her! I am concerned about all the reading required and all the prep work required by me. I thought the whole point of their lesson plans was so that the teacher would not have to do much prep work? How do you think this will work with 3 students on very different reading levels? Thanks!
Shayna D.
Shayna D.
I have been a TOG user since 2002. In my opinion, you have written an excellent review of the product. I plan to bookmark this post, and when friends ask me about TOG, I will refer them to your review.
Loretta S.
Loretta S.
