Getting ready for Tapestry of Grace Year 2

Part of me grieves the fading of summer. We fill our days with all our favorite things, but then too quickly it is time to transition to the rhythm of normal life again! I always hear comments from other parents about how excited they are that school is fast approaching! How different it is for those of us who homeschool. Truly, my only consolation of summer ending is the fact that my children and I can learn new things together! I love having them home. So often summer takes us in different directions - camp, missions trips, neighborhood pools, times with friends. But when school begins, we are learning together at home!

That is one of the reasons I particularly love Tapestry of Grace. With TOG, we all are learning the same themes and time periods of history at the same time - about the same places, people and events. So many books we will read together and so many things we can discuss together. I love that!

This year, we'll be doing Year 2 which begins where we left off last year, after the fall of Rome. We'll be going through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Reformation and early Colonial America right up to the drafting of the Constitution. What an exciting year this will be! I already know that this will be my favorite TOG year!

I was so pleased to find that most of our books that we would need are in our public library system. Each week, I'll be ordering books through the inner-library loan system to be delivered at our local library. The books that are used for many weeks and the ones unavailable at the library are the books that I have purchased. What fun to have all those packages of books arriving at our house! I love new books! Very exciting!

One of the books listed in the Alternate list for unit 1 is Twelve Bright Trumpets by Margaret Leighton. We have decided to buy that book to use rather than (or possibly in addition to) the assigned literature books for those weeks. I ordered this book from Queen's Homeschool Supply along with a literature-based study guide for all ages to accompany the book. It is part of Queen's Learning History Through Living Books section on their website. I thought this would make a nice addition to our study and the study guide would be helpful as well, especially if we substitute this for the other literature selections for those weeks. I really love the products that the Queens offer and we use their Language Lessons books for grammar.

Yesterday, I printed off the weekly overview pages and student activity pages from Unit 1 and put them into notebooks for Joel and Ivy. Once I print out the maps and add those in their notebooks, they will be all ready to go when we start school! I also printed off the reading assignment pages and put them in a notebook that we will all share. (We are using the digital edition). I may decide to print out teachers notes for my notebook also - I'm still deciding about that. This was the first year that I printed out student overview pages for their notebooks. I think it will help them to have the list of vocabulary words and time chart dates easily accessible every week. Joel will be adding time chart cards in his card box each week. He loves to illustrate those cards!

Joel, still at dialectic level, will be writing out the answers to the thinking questions and accountability questions I assign him each week. He'll most likely write that on the computer, print it out and put that in his notebook for me to check. I'll also have a spot in his notebook for his writing assignments. This will be our first year using the Writing Aids.

Ivy will continue at upper grammar level this year and she will be doing the lapbook for unit 1. She will also do the writing assignments each week and add those to her notebook. We are not using the Evaluations this year.

Once we buy new planners for Joel and Ivy, they'll be all set for another year of Tapestry of Grace!

To help me get ready, I looked over the Loom and read through the teacher information pages again as a refresher. Last year was my first year with TOG, and now I feel much more familiar with what we are doing! But it is good to read over everything again anyway.

I also was able to listen in on some of the TOG webinars which were great at helping me to figure out the features of the digital edition. I wasn't sure how I would like it, but I must say that I LOVE it! It has made printing out things so much easier and it is great to know that I can have a fresh clean copy of anything so easily! No more page protectors! All of the webinars are available to listen to at the Tapestry of Grace website.

Also at the website, which you can click to get there from this page, you can download free three week samples of the curriculum for anyone interested! That is how I fell in love with Tapestry of Grace last summer! I printed out the sample and dove right in!

Next time, I'll write about the other subjects that we will be doing this year. Even though I do hate to see summer end, I can tell you that I am looking forward to beginning school soon!

Sometimes I crack myself up!

Today I was reading forum posts at the Tapestry of Grace website and I read a post about planning for the year and setting up student notebooks. I really liked that post and thought how similar that was to how I set up our notebooks! What a kindred spirit! Then imagine my surprise when I read that she has children similar in ages to my children with the same unique spacing between the children!!! I was excited about that - there is someone else out there with the same family dynamics with a big age gap! Then I looked at the name of the poster, and it was ME!!!! I wrote that post a year ago!!! I am SOOOO glad that I didn't make a comment to it and really embarrass myself!!!!

Organizing our school

It's the time of year that I clean out all the files of the past year and re-organize in preparation for a new start. Yesterday, I spent the entire day working in the homeschool closet! But the results were worth it and I feel much better now that the job is done! I have two file cabinets in there - a drawer for each of teh following: homeschool subjects, family stuff, church things, and homeschool co-ops. On top of the file cabinets, I have racks of files for easy access for Joel and Ivy to put their papers in during the week. Some of these papers will later go into their portfolios. In this closet, we also have drawers of markers, pencils, color books for Jaden, art supplies, etc. The top part of the closet holds all our videos. We keep a ton of stuff in there!!!



Then I moved to the rest of the school room/family room. I tidied up the book shelves,and got my TOG volumes back in order. I emptied the student notebooks and made sure that all extra copied pages were put back in the right places in the volumes so that it is all ready for us in 4 more years! Looking at the space that my printed editions of Year 1 take on the shelves, I'm thankful that I will be using the digital edition for Year 2!!!



After everything was organized and cleaned out, moved to the next task: preparing for the upcoming school year. I love the customized booklist at Lampstand Press for my TOG books. I printed out a list of all the upper grammar and dialectic books I will need for our Year 2. Then I checked off any books we already own - always happy to see I own a few of them! Next, I went to the library site where I searched for all the books. I was very excited to find that the majority of the books we will need are in our library system. A few other books can be found in our church's library. Some of the books that are not in the library can be subsituted with other books from the "alternate" list that TOG provides. Several of those alternate books are in the library and will work for us. That only leaves us with needing to spend about $180 on additional books to use with TOG for next year. Not bad!

I printed the reading assignment pages (pages 4&5) from each week in Unit 1 to put in my binder. I really like having a printed copy of those lists so I can take them with me to the library or whatever. I also printed out the Lampstand list that includes the prices. Many times they offer the books at the same price or cheaper than Amazon, but I always compare to get the lowest price. I pencil in Amazon price lists in there too to help me compare and price everything before I order.

After I recieve the books I order, I will put a color coded sticker on the spines to help me locate them quickly and easily on the shelves. Last year, was Red, for Year 1. Books for this year will be labeled with a yellow sticker. I also write on the sticker what units the book will be used for.

Amazingly, I am very excited about the digital edition of Tapestry. I really, really like it! I love the freedom to print out what I need and never have to worry about it. No more need for page protectors! There are many things about the digital edition that are very convenient and I am having fun exploring it all! There is always a sense of excitement about the year ahead and I can hardly wait to dive in again! And Year 2, I think, will be my favorite year - I love it already!

Tapestry of Grace

When our Year 2 Digital Edition Bonus Bundle arrived in the mail, I was so excited! It was quite a different package from last year's large bundles of printed material! I think I will really like the digital edition and the space saving aspect of it especially. I'm also happy that if something happens to the disk, it can easily and inexpensively be replaced without a problem.

Lampstand Press, the company that produces Tapestry of Grace is a wonderful company to do business with! Along with my Bonus Bundle, I ordered the Writing Aids. As I was looking through my book, I noticed that there was a printing error. I wrote to them yesterday telling about the problem with my book and my new copy will be on my doorstep today! The misprinted book is mine to keep as a back-up or to give away to someone who could use it. How nice is that!

I also want to let everyone know that I have become a Tapestry of Grace affiliate, which means that if you order Tapestry of Grace after clicking on the Tapestry of Grace from my blog, I will get some credit for the sale. Or you can order by phone or mail and give them my affilliate user's name which is "toggers3" or mentioning this blog site. Thank you!

Tapestry of Grace has been a blessing for our family. It is the kind of curriculum I would have loved to have written if I had had the time and ability to put it all together! I pray for God's blessings on the Somervilles and Lampstand Press that they will be able to produce Tapestry of Grace for homeschooling families for many years to come. I had never really known about TOG until last year when a friend shared with me about what she used with her family. After looking at the website and printing out the free samples available on the site, I knew very quickly that it was just what we needed. After using it for a year, I love it even more! So if you are considering it for your family, visit the website by clicking on my link and explore! I think you will really like what you see!

Tapestry of Grace/Digital Edition: Year 1
Tapestry of Grace/Digital Edition: Year 2
Tapestry of Grace/Digital Edition: Year 3

Portfolios....Evaluations....Objectives.....!!!

School is over, but my work continues on as a homeschool mom in PA! This is a busy month as I prepare Joel's and Ivy's portfolios of the year. Thankfully, I have finished Joel's and now I begin to work on Ivy's. These are huge notebooks packed with the daily log of everything we've done and samples of all the work they've done for each subject during the year in school. Also included are many pictures, momentos, and other projects. I like to write a summary for each subject and of course, there are long lists of all the books we have used this year. These portfolios are precious keepsakes of their year and so far, we have eight of these on our shelves! By the time I'm done homeschooling, we'll have 28 huge portfolios in our house!!!

After the portfolios are completed, we have an evaluation with our evaluator, a school teacher who has graduated her own homeschooled children. She will look over their portfolios and talk to Joel and Ivy about their year and answer any questions I may have. She is a great resource of information about homeschooling through high school! Even though I am a certified teacher, I comply with this part of the homeschooling law because it gives added accountability and support. Also I love the feeling of accomplishment after putting those portfolios together!!!

Then I must write out the objectives for each of our children for all subject areas for next year and send that along with a notarized affidavit of our plan to homeschool and turn in the portfolios to the school district. There are many homeschool families in our school district so the portfolios really pile up in the office! After a couple of days, we may go and pick up our portfolios. I always wonder if they even look at them all!

Along with all the paperwork and the preparation of the portfolios, June is a busy time for us choosing and ordering our curriculum for next year. That's the fun part! I am very happy with Tapestry of Grace - we really learned so much last year! So this year, we will be doing Year 2, digital edition! Using the digital edition will be different for us, but I think I will like it. I also ordered Writing Aids and look forward to using that this year for the first time. We did the Bonus Bundle so we'll have the Map Aids again and the first unit Lapbook for Ivy. Year 2 covers the time after the fall of Rome right up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence! We'll be studying the Rennaisance, Reformation and Colonial America - all very interesting! I am so excited! And best of all, most of the books we need are at the library so there are very few that I will have to purchase this year!

For Math, we will be continuing where we left off in their Math-U-See books. And we will order new Language Lessons books from Queen Homeschool Supply. We love those! For science, Joel is going to complete his General Science book from Apologia He did half the book this year because Future City Engineering fulfilled half of his science requirement for the year. Ivy will be doing the Zoology book and she's excited about that.

We've decided to drop our Monday morning Homeschool group for next year. We loved that group and the classes were fantastic! However, it was too much for us to be involved with two groups. We'll continue the Thursday afternoon Hempfield Homeschool Group that we have been a part of for almost 8 years. I will be teaching classes there in the fall and spring semesters next year.

There is much to look forward to for next year and great memories to look back on from the year just completed. I love homeschooling! Soon, I will enjoy a nice break from it all and savor the summer. Oh I love that too!

Home and School

I like that our family is all home tonight under one roof. Joel had a great time on the Youth Breakaway Retreat, but I was happy to see him get off the bus last night at 9:30. I like it so much better when all our offspring are in the nest! He came home with lots of great memories, but no voice! He was totally exhausted today so I gave him the day off of school! Besides, it's Presidents Day anyway! Ivy and I went to Homeschool group for classes while he rested at home with Jaden who has a cold.

Tomorrow is a special day of remembrance for our family.... 14 years ago, Mark and I found out we were going to be parents!!! It was such a wonderful happy day of rejoicing! We have since that day taken a picture of our family each year on that day and it's been neat to see those pictures over the years. Maybe I'll post those on here sometime when I get a chance!

Also, tomorrow, it's back to the books as we begin week 22 in Year 1 TOG. We'll be studying the Chaldeans (New Babylonians) and the Babylonian Captivity. Sad tales in the history of Israel. It's been really interesting studying through the Old Testament again this year. I've read through the Bible with our children before, but Tapestry of Grace helps us to really dig deeper and that has been fascinating!! Some weeks are very busy and we sometimes have to just skim the surface, but other weeks we can go more in depth. And I always remind myself that we'll be studying this again in 4 years so it's OK to miss some things this time around!!!!

School Days

This week we are in Week 16 (TOG year 1) "Judges, Samuel, and Minor Neighboring Cultures." With Christmas quickly approaching and all of the busyness of the season, we are more laid back these days, but trying to include all the important things. Joel is enjoying reading "The Wanderings of Odysseus" and we are wrapping up our study of the ancient Greeks.

But I am especially enjoying our reading aloud of the book of Judges right now. So many lessons to learn from those ancient Israelites and their relationship with God. The cycle of disobedience, calling to the Lord for help, God's deliverance, peace and safety and then disobedience again keeps being repeated over and over again.

We've had some good talks about that cycle of obedience and disobedience. We all struggle with that. Sometimes as parents, we think that obedience is only something children must learn, but we must all live lives of obedience to the Lord. Am I a good example to my children? I need that reminder now and then as I get caught up in the day to day discipline of our children.

Jaden struggles with obedience in picking up his toys. He loves spreading them out all over the house but balks when it is time to clean up! "Mommy, just look at the ceiling! The ceiling is clean!!!"


Because he didn't help pick up the toys, Mommy had to take them away for a few days. Jaden is still in the training phase. He is still learning about what obedience means. I must be patient with him as he learns and also have a certain amount of empathy for him too - aren't I still learning and growing in my walk with the Lord? How often I still fail. But I am thankful for the grace of our Heavenly Father who lovingly forgives us.

The discipline and training of children can be exhausting. Sometimes they can be slow to "get it". But then I remember that these things take time. And God is working in their hearts just like He works in mine.

And then there are those wonderful moments that I see God's fruit in their lives and I rejoice! Like yesterday, after some hard feelings between the big kids, one of them asked the other for forgiveness and mended the relationship - all without being told to do that! And the other asked for forgiveness too and everything was happy
again.

Some of the saddest verses in the Bible, I think, are found in Judges 2 verses 7 through 15. "The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel....After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. The the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals..."

They had failed to teach their children to love and obey God and the result was great distress.

This week, in the midst of the crazy busy Christmas season, I want to focus on the most important parts of our schooling - our time reading the Word together and learning from the children of Israel as we read through Judges, Ruth and First Samuel. Learning about the Greeks is important too, but I love our focus on Scripture this week!

How many more weeks till Christmas break???

We are still plugging away with school. Many of our friends school year around so they can take off most or all of the month of December. We prefer to have a long break in the summer, so we usually only have a week or two off for Christmas. Admittedly it is hard to focus when there is such excitement in the air and such a busy calendar too!

This week we are on Week 15 of TOG year 1, "The Promised Land: Conquest and Settlement". I think it is a good week for us to be focusing on that since we need to press on in our studies as we learn about the children of Israel who had to press on to the Promised Land!

I really love how Tapestry of Grace weaves Biblical history with world history... for example, this week as we read of Joshua and the early judges, we are also reading The Wanderings of Odysseus and D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. Joshua was entering the Promised Land at about the same time that the Mycenaeans were prominant in the Aegean cultures and the Trojan War probably occurred sometime during the period of the Judges. Fascinating! We love to see how it all fits together in history. There are so many interesting connections to make!

I know I keep saying this, but

I LOVE TAPESTRY OF GRACE! This year is so enjoyable for me and I am very thankful that the Lord led us to Tapestry of Grace. I really believe it was His doing and it is a very good fit for our family.

There are so many things that I absolutely love about it... our whole family is learning the same time period at the same time - this week we are learning about Ancient American civilizations, particularly the Maya. And my children love the books they are reading! Like tonight, Ivy just finished her book that she was assigned to read over this week and she was so engrossed, she read the whole book in one afternoon and evening.

And I really love the flexibility!!! With Joel working full-time at the theatre this month, I can pick and choose the most important things for him to do and skip the rest knowing that in 4 years, he will be approaching this same subject again and at a deeper level. No guilt about missing things!

I love it also for me - because I'm learning so much each week! And all the organization and planning has been laid out for me so well so that my work has been greatly reduced, but the learning has increased - Wow! I love it because it helps us to really think - not spit out facts but to discuss, question, ponder, find connections and analyze. I love that! I love the discussion times and the thinking questions that cause us to really dig deep. And I love how it is all interwoven with the grace of God shining through history.

So, as you know, I love Tapestry of Grace..... but I must confess I do dislike change. And this week when the email came that the publisher of Tapestry of Grace is going through financial difficulty and that major changes will be happening, I panicked! I actually stepped away from the computer and cried! However, now that I've had a few days to process that bad news, I realize that it may be a blessing in disguise. The curriculum will probably need to be produced in a digital format if they can continue on as a company. And that will be a big change for an old-fashioned girl like me who prefers printed books over digital. But how nice it would be to store discs instead of huge volumes on the shelves! How nice will it be to just print out what we need and have everything permanently stored safely on disc - no need for page protectors and huge binders! I am actually beginning to see some good things about the change. Plus, the cost will be more affordable! That's the best thing of all! Because even though I think that Tapestry of Grace is a great value for the price, it will be really nice to pay less for the same great content.

I'm praying for Lampstand Press and all the wonderful people who work hard to provide us with Tapestry of Grace. If any of you are interested in this wonderful curriculum, there are fantastic sales going on now! I encourage everyone to give it a look and consider it for your homeschool. There are even free samples for you to download or print out so that you can try it for 3 weeks if you like!

Unit One Completed!

I was so excited on Friday - we finished our very first unit in Tapestry of Grace! We all learned so much over the last nine weeks! We spent a lot of time reviewing our unit on the Books of Moses and talked about all that we had learned. Ivy comopleted her lapbook which was a great way to review. Joel took his unit test and did well too. We didn't do a Unit Celebration per se, but we proudly showed some things to Dad and Grandma. Maybe we'll do a celebration after our next unit.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon taking out the pages of their notebooks from the last unit and printing off all the pages of Unit 2 and putting that in their notebooks. Also printed out all the maps and evaluations and put them in. So we are ready to go today! We have a wonderful library so all our books are in and available to us also.

I am so happy with Tapestry of Grace! What a blessing it has been for our homeschool.

My "Tapestry of Grace" arrived!!!!

I was so excited when I saw the brown truck pull up yesterday! Yes, my Tapestry of Grace Year 1 curriculum arrived - and earlier than I expected! So guess what I did last night.... yes, I put all the pages in the first unit in sheet protectors! I've been reading on the TOG forums the pros and cons of sheet protectors and decided that I'm one of those 'page protector" people! And I could not believe how many pages are in each unit! I've got a huge binder for just the first 9 weeks! Thankfully my mom was able to come up with a lot of large binders for me from the bank. She works in several bank branches and has "rescued" them from going to the trash bins! I guess I will be investing in sheet protectors - I used all I had on the first unit and I'm guessing I'll need 3 more boxes at least to finish the year.

I ordered the Map Aids and the Lapbook Kits and also evaluations for Joel who is in the dialectic stage. Ivy will enjoy the lapbooks and that will do for her evaluations this year as an upper grammar student. I browsed through the whole thing and I know that I will be learning so much this year! I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all, but I am really looking forward to this new direction in our schooling.

So we will be studying "The History of Redemption" this year beginning with ancient Egypt and the books of Moses concluding with the fall of Rome. There is so much packed into this curriculum - world history, biblical history, church history, geography, philosophy, fine arts, writing and even some science. (We are continuing with Math-U-See, and doing Language Arts and Science separately.)

My next step will be ordering all the books we need. This curriculum is literature based so all the books that Joel and Ivy will be reading must be ordered for each unit. A LOT of books! Thankfully we use our library extensively - it is almost like our second home. And we can get books we want through the inter-library loan which means that if any of the 13 libraries in our county have the book we want we can have it sent to our library for us to pick up. And the books are ready for us usually within a couple days. For books that aren't in our county, I can order books to be brought in from outside the area. There are still many books that I will need to buy because we'll be using them very frequently over the next several units or even years. Thanks Mom for my amazon.com gift card for my birthday!!!!!! What a great gift that was!

For the first 7 years of our homeschooling, I've been able to go without a curriculum for the humanities subjects and we have always used books, especially biographies, from the library to study history. But with Joel being in 7th grade this year and high school looming on the horizon, I really felt the need for something more for us. After much research, investigating, ordering a 3 week sample, and of course last but not least - praying about this, we are very happy with our choice to go with Tapestry of Grace. It is a leap of faith for us because it is very expensive initially. However, it is actually very affordable because it is a 4 year curriculum that you can use all 12 years of schooling - cycling through it every 4 years. Joel will be able to do Years 1-4 and then Years 1 and 2 again. Ivy will do Years 1-4 twice since she's in 5th grade. Jaden, assuming we stay with Tapestry of Grace, will cycle through the four years three times. I really like that!

Because Tapestry of Grace (TOG) is designed so you can teach all different ages the same subject, they will all be learning the same period in history at the same time - but on their own level. For example, Joel is in the dialectic level which is usually 6-8th grade and Ivy is upper grammar (4-6th grade) so they will be reading different books and doing different projects based on their own level but both be studying Ancient Egypt, for example. That way our discussions and read-alouds will be all on the same topic for everyone to participate. And the next time they cycle through the Year plans, they will be on a higher level so that when they come to Year 1 again, Ivy will be at the dialectic level and Joel would be in the rhetoric (high school) level.

After I buy all 4 years of TOG, that is all I will need to buy (except for their books). Ivy will be able to use Joel's books from previous years and Jaden will be able to use Joel and Ivy's! So even though the 4 years are expensive they will be used over and over again so it really is very economical. And since I am putting the whole thing in sheet protectors, it will be kept in very good condition for little Jaden for all his schooling! : )

On this blog, I'll be writing about all the new things we learn this year with TOG. I'm really excited! I hated history when I was in school because it was taught in such a dry, boring, textbook way. I have always used real books, not textbooks, when teaching our kids and history is something that we all enjoy very much. And now it will be even better!