I have used the Tapestry of Grace curriculum with my family for nearly seven years and own all four years of the DE or Digital Edition of the program. We love it! I love the richness and depth of the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, and the ability to customize a weekly plan that fits our family and our life. So when their new Stages product came out, I was curious. What was different from what I currently had? Which product should I recommend to others interested in starting Tapestry? Would having my plans and teacher notes divided into the separate Stages or learning levels solve some of the confusion I sometimes ran into when planning?
Disclaimer: I received three levels of Stages for free from Tapestry of Grace in exchange for a review and product comparison. I was not compensated for my opinions or influenced in any way; all opinions are my own.
What is Tapestry of Grace?
Tapestry of Grace is a classically-influenced, literature-rich curriculum for whole family learning. Everyone studies the same history topics together with age-appropriate book titles and activities; writing/Bible/worldview/literature studies are all integrated into the history you are reading about. History is divided into four years, allowing for the plans to follow the classical rotation of repeating history every three years. The learning levels are also divided classically: Lower and Upper Grammar, Dialectic (or Logic), and Rhetoric.
We’ve loved the whole family learning style with Tapestry (as noisy and chaotic as that often is). Our unit celebrations are the highlight of our year: we throw a party, play a trivia game, and display all of our special projects that each child has worked on for that particular history unit. The book choices and the flexibility of substituting titles, switching to other reading levels when necessary for my dyslexic child, and immersing ourselves in stories have made this the perfect curriculum for our learning challenges. Additionally, the creative project suggestions and the variety of appealing ideas for each learning style keep my ADHD kiddos engaged. History is our favorite subject because it is filled with such rich memories.
So what should a family purchase to get started with Tapestry of Grace?
Tapestry of Grace DE or Tapestry of Grace Stages: What’s the difference?
Tapestry of Grace DE (Digital Edition) contains all the book recommendations, teaching notes, writing assignments, and student pages for an entire year for all learning levels. That means when you purchase the DE plan, you get 1st through 12th grade teaching material for an entire era of history (Ancient, Middle Ages to Colonial, Early Modern, or Modern). It’s a big bang for your buck—roughly 2,400 pages of material! Not only that, but because the plans are part of a digital interface, you also get free updates when books go out of print, making the DE an excellent value particularly if you have a large family and will be using the material for several years through several grades. It’s also ideal if you have kids who are between levels, a higher reading level but not quite mature enough for critical thinking discussions or vice versa. DE allows for a lot of flexibility in your planning, a buffet of choices for you to pick and choose from. And it is also available in a printed edition.
However, there are a few difficulties with Tapestry of Grace DE. When you first open the DE, it is a little overwhelming to navigate all those teacher notes. It is a lot of material, though over the years I have found DE fairly easy to navigate and to switch from one week’s overview or booklist to the next when I was planning. However, I did feel that “newbie overwhelm” when we transitioned to the dialectic level. I was a little lost trying to find what we were supposed to be covering in our Socratic discussions each week.
Also, printing is only possible from a computer. While you can access the DE plans from a tablet, they are “read only” unless you are on your computer. Lastly, extras are purchased separately. Although the DE contains the core of what you need, you will have to purchase Maps, Evaluations, Planning Aids, and any other extras separately.
Explore Tapestry of Grace DE and download three weeks of sample plans.
Tapestry of Grace Stages contains all the same material as the DE for the most part, but it is organized differently. Stages is purchased by learning level, which means you purchase either Lower Grammar (1st-3rd), Upper Grammar (4th-6th), Dialectic (7th-8th), or Rhetoric (9th-12th). There are discounts and bundle pricing if you purchase multiple levels at once. Also, Stages is a PDF product (actually multiple PDFs) rather than a digital interface. When you purchase a level of Stages, you get access through the Tapestry of Grace forums to download 16 different PDFs!
- A Guidebook for each of the four nine-week units (containing World Book encyclopedia articles on the topics covered each week)
- A Multi-Student Handbook for each of the four nine-week units (containing an overview of all learning levels with book recommendations, writing assignments, and a few activities to see how the week fits together across all the learning levels)
- A Teacher Guide for each of the four nine-week units (containing Planning Aids for the Grammar Stage plans and all teaching notes and discussion notes as well as answer keys to the maps and student activity pages)
- A Student Guide for each of the four nine-week units (containing the student’s assignment sheet for the week with an overview of reading assignments, terms, people, and timeline entries as well as maps, activity pages, and recommended activities for fine arts/history/geography/ etc.)
Planning Aids and Map Aids are included in the Stages products. There is also enough information within the Stages Multi-level Handbook to allow you to make some adjustments if you had a child whose reading level or writing level was in between levels.
Also, because Stages is a PDF product, you can access your documents on any device that reads PDFs—and you can print from anywhere! In the future, Stages will also be available as a printed product.
On the other hand, while the DE is organized with easy tabs to switch from week to week, Stages is a continuous PDF containing nine weeks worth of material that you will need to scroll through to find what you need. Lastly, Stages is not automatically updated with changes to book titles as the choices go out of print.
Explore Tapestry of Grace Stages and download three-week samples.
Tapestry of Grace DE or Stages: Which should I purchase?
This is a great question. Both products are comparable in a number of ways, including price. Tapestry of Grace offers discounts when you purchase multiple levels of Stages at once, making the Stages products about the same price as the DE.
So really, it comes down to how the material is organized and how you like to plan. Digital interface or PDFs?
Tapestry of Grace Stages was designed with the new-to-Tapestry family in mind. Tapestry of Grace DE can be overwhelming. Sorting through 12 years worth of material when you are only teaching first grade can be a little daunting. For that family, Stages is a nice entry level product that makes the plans much more accessible and easier to use, especially with Planning Aids that provides a daily schedule for each week’s assignments for all subjects. It’s a very accessible, easy to use and easy to print product. If you are just starting out with Tapestry, especially if you have kids within a single learning level, I’d highly recommend starting with Stages.
I would also recommend Stages for those transitioning to the higher learning levels. I found it much easier to wrap my mind around our Dialectic level Socratic Discussions and the teaching notes when I had a chance to view them by themselves. Both the literature notes and the history notes were much easier for me to manage in this format. I loved the convenience of being able to flip through my notes and plans in iBooks rather than in the DE viewer app, and the ability to print straight from my tablet. Also, I really like the look of the newly updated student overview pages.
For large families with kids in multiple levels, Tapestry of Grace DE is still a terrific option. Trying to use Stages would require you to have multiple PDFs open in order to switch between levels as you plan, while DE is one quick and easy click from week to week with all the learning levels and the assignments right there. And the automatic updates of the DE make this a great product for families reusing the plans year after year after year.
Lastly, if you do a lot of customizing and prefer creating a plan rather than following one, I would also recommend the DE. Tapestry’s DE allows for more of those adjustments than the Stages plans do.
What do I think of Stages vs. DE?
I still used my DE quite a bit for planning both my upper and lower grammar students and for getting a bird’s eye view of the week, mostly because that’s what I’m used to. (The Multi-Student Handbook provides that bird’s eye view as well.) Though I have to admit I discovered all kinds of activity suggestions in the Stages format I must have missed while using the DE (even the second time through the plans). And I do love the new student overview pages. Tapestry really did a terrific job in the redesign of the layouts for the Stages plans.
Another reason the DE worked better for me personally at the lower levels was that I customize quite a bit, choosing alternate book titles that are available through my library and switching between lower grammar and upper grammar suggested activity ideas. That level of flexibility also allows me to customize for my kids with dyslexia and reading challenges. I am a curriculum creator, and not a very good curriculum follower. For this kind of planning style, DE really is much better suited to the task with more alternate book titles and alternate activities listed.
But for my Dialectic student, Stages is the bomb! I really have loved how quick and easy it is to see, print, and prepare our week. Next year, I will definitely be getting Stages for Dialectic, even with my complete DE plans.
Could I manage with the DE alone? Oh yes, I could, and families have been for many years. But Stages has made my prep so much smoother at the dialectic level, and the formatting is so much easier for me to follow. It’s been a game-changer for us.
Over the years, Tapestry of Grace has been my anchor, connecting both our family and our homeschool vision together. And Tapestry of Grace Stages makes me love Tapestry that much more!
- Want to see if Tapestry of Grace is the perfect fit for your family? Visit their website, or follow their Facebook page for live videos and more information about the program.
- If you’re ready to purchase your own set and get started, visit the Tapestry website and click on the store tab at the top of the page. Select the year plan you are interested in; then choose DE or Stages.
And I’d love to know in the comments, which would you choose?
