www. TapestryofGrace.com
By far the most extensive product that I have received to review for the TOS Crew is the history curriculum Tapestry of Grace by Lampstand Press. After using the curriculum for well over a month, I think I finally have my arms around it well enough to write this review.
I am truly grateful for all of the publishers who have created quality history curriculums that are written from a Christian worldview. We have a strong history focus in our homeschool and in the past I have researched and/or used Truthquest History, My Father’s World, Beautiful Feet and Sonlight, as well as many smaller unit study products.
This is my first experience with TOG (Tapestry of Grace), which has its own unique place in the world of history curriculum options.
TOG is a literature based classical Christian curriculum that is organized to teach history chronologically, on a 4 year cycle. That means that you would repeat this cycle 3 times over a 12 year period, at a higher level of reading and understanding each time the time period is studied.
The subjects that are included in TOG include world history, literature, geography, church history, writing , philosophy (upper grades only) and hands-on activities. This is a comprehensive curriculum, so you would really only need to add math, plus any electives that you might want to cover.
The curriculum is divided into 4 years, with 4 independent units for each year. Each unit covers assignments for 4 different levels that cover grades K through 12. The four levels are organized according to the Classical learning approach: Lower Grammar (K-3), Upper Grammar (3-6), Dialectic (6-9) and Rhetoric (9-12).
Each unit includes 9 weekly plans, for a total of 36 weeks per year. There are more than enough suggestions for each week. Most families will want to select only a few of the activities and books recommended, or take longer than 1 week to complete the work. A daily plan is not provided, so some planning will be required after making the decisions of which books and activities to include.
The units can be purchased individually or in full year bundles. There are 2 options for purchasing this product, a printed version that comes in large binders, or a digital edition (called DE) which is an online license for the curriculum that you can access and print for yourself as often as you like. The cost per year is as follows: $170 for the DE or $225 for the printed version. If you have never used TOG before, I would recommend getting the print version. Once you get used to how the curriculum works, you might consider purchasing just the DE for future years.
I found that there was a longer learning curve for the parent/teacher than I am used to when starting a new curriculum, and part of that was trying to figure out how to navigate the large number of pages in a digital format.
We chose to review Year 3 because that corresponded to where we were in our American History studies to date. So far we have reviewed 2 sections of Year 3 Unit 1(Napoleon’s World): week 3 - “Early Industrial Revolution” and week 6 - “Madison and the War of 1812.” Although these are planned to be covered in 1 week, we prefer a more relaxed schedule, so we have been taking 2 to 4 weeks to complete a 1 week section of TOG.
Here’s my take on what I liked about TOG, and a description of the areas that I needed to adjust so I could tailor it to suit our family.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT TOG
1. I loved the essay that was included on “Why Study History”.
2. Studying history chronologically makes the most sense to me.
3. We agree with the TOG approach of using real books, rather than textbooks, for real learning.
4. The multi-level approach is convenient and cost effective, especially for larger families.
5. The assignments were appropriate for the recommended levels.
6. Their customer support is excellent and there are many helpful resources on the website.
7. You can interact with other families who use TOG in the online forum.
8. Most of the recommended books were available through my local library system.
9. Recommendations for optional supplemental resources are included.
10. We found that most (but not all) of the recommended books were well written and appropriate for our family.
11. An optional lapbook is available for each unit, which fits in with our usual schooling methods.
12. I appreciated the recommendations of classic literature selections for the time periods, as this is not always included in other history curriculum.
13. The discussion questions for the 2 upper levels are very good. The lower 2 levels do not include discussion questions.
14. A brief but thorough overview of each time period is included.
WHAT I NEEDED TO ADJUST TO MAKE IT WORK FOR US
1. The way that TOG is organized is geared toward the parent assigning most of the reading to the students, who work independently at their own levels, then discuss later. Having only 2 children who are close in age, I prefer to read aloud the majority of the books and discuss them real time. This allows me to learn right along with the children and is great bonding/snuggle time.
2. Since I was choosing books to read aloud, rather than assign, I found that I sometimes preferred resources that were listed in the Dialectic level, rather than the Grammar levels that correspond to my children’s ages.
3. One limitation with TOG and other history curriculums that use real books is that they only recommend books that are currently in print. I have found that children’s books written before 1960 are often better written and more historically accurate than today’s versions. The TOG unit we reviewed did recommend several wonderful older books that have come back in print. Because of our passion for the older books, I replaced some of the other TOG recommendations with books from our own shelves, or ones that were listed in the Truthquest history guides and were available through our library. I have heard of other families that combine TQ (Truthquest) and TOG for this reason.
4. A couple of the recommended books had content that I found to be not appropriate for my children. The teacher’s information section of TOG did include warnings about content in these books and suggested that the parent should screen them before deciding if it was right for their family. Unfortunately, I did not read that warning ahead of time before one of my children had picked up and read one of the books from the library pile that I would have preferred not to use.
5. The pace of TOG was too quick for us. We would rather linger a bit more and read a few (or a lot) more books for each time period, so we would definitely not be able to complete the 4 year cycle 3 times.
6. We prefer to focus on American history in the early years and wait until later to cover the more controversial topics of world history. If we decide to use TOG Year 1 on ancient times, we would wait until our children were age 10-12 or older and then take 2 years to complete each of the 4 TOG plan years only completing the chronological cycle 1 time.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER ABOUT TOG
1. The upper 2 levels of assignments include a lot more “meat” than the 2 grammar levels. So, the real bang for the buck in this product is the content for the Dialectic and Rhetoric ages. Because of this, it is recommended that families start using TOG when their oldest child is 5th grade or higher.
2. Some of the resources listed may not be available in your library, so you will have additional cost for them or need to replace with another resource. Lampstand Press carries all of the resources on their website.
3. If you want to fully utilize the writing portion of this curriculum, you will most likely need to purchase the optional Writing Aids resource to further describe the writing assignments .
4. Both the DE and print versions of this product may not be re-sold, so you will need to consider that in your education budget.
5. As this is a complicated and unique product, I highly recommend that you download one of the samples at www.TapestryofGrace.com and use it for a few weeks to try it with your family before deciding to purchase a full year.