Review - Tapestry of Grace, Part I

An update to this post can be found here.

This has been a post that has needed writing for quite some time.  You cannot even imagine the number of times I've started and stopped it, partially written it in emails or Facebook posts, or answered questions on The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Facebook page.

First of all, what is Tapestry of Grace....?

Tapestry of Grace, or TOG, is a full humanities curriculum for K-12.  What does that include?  History, Geography, Literature, Bible, Worldview, Fine Arts, also Philosophy and Government at the high school level.

What is unique about Tapestry is that everyone in the family is studying the same "slice" or period of time, at the same time.

Tapestry of Grace follows the Classical Model of education.  That means that all of History is studied in a four year cycle.  You have 3 different learning levels, based on a child's maturity and ability.  Each time you complete the 4 years, you start again, at the beginning of time.  The child can move up to a higher learning level though at any time, when deemed appropriate by the parent/teacher.

Studying History this way, and tying in all of the other Humanities, allows you to recognize that at the same time as Henry VIII and Elizabeth of Tudor England fame, you have Shakespeare (Literature), Martin Luther and William Tyndale (Church History), DaVinci and Michelangelo (Fine Arts), Galileo (Science) and I could go on and on...I love the 16th Century!

Also, everyone in the family is studying the same time period, people, and ideas.  Around the dinner table, we can have conversations and learn from each other.  We might all be learning at a different level, based on our understanding and ability; but, we can still have a conversation where we are all sharing based on the same topics.

This is NOT the way that I learned in school.  All of my subjects were taught separately and there was no tie in made what so ever.  Everyone in my family was learning something different, and so we had little in common to discuss over dinner.  Have you noticed though, that we do not live life in a vacuum?  What is going on around us has a profound influence on what we write, what we invent, and what we believe.  You cannot fully understand Henry VIII and the formation of the Church of England without also studying Martin Luther.

If you want to know more about Tapestry of Grace and how it could be used in your own home, please, check out this link where there are videos, reviews, and free samples for you to download and use. - http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/explore/

Part II will be about the learning levels, what they mean, and a bit about how we have been using Tapestry of Grace in our own homeschool. -
http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-tapestry-of-grace-part-ii.html 

In Part III, I'll talk about how I do my planning and prep work for the school year. -
http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-tapestry-of-grace-part-iii.html

Finally, in Part IV, I'll talk about the big one - How I do my planning for each week.
http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-tapestry-of-grace-part-iv.html

I wrote an "update" and have more pictures of how we do things now, with a Dialectic student in the mix, in this blog post - http://whateveristrueandnoble.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-bit-about-scheduling.html

An update about how we do things with a Rhetoric student in the mix is here.