customizing Tapestry of Grace Archives

Creating Tapestry of Grace Student Notebooks

June 15, 2017Tracy

We’ve used Tapestry of Grace as our core curriculum for going on 6 years. I love it, primarily because it is designed to be customizable. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Tapestry presents a buffet of choices and ideas for reading, crafts and art, literature study, history discussion, and more. It’s perfect for customizing a learning plan that fits our unique ADHD/dyslexia struggles. But for the first time this year (as a solution to the enormous loose-paper crisis we experienced), I’m also customizing our own Tapestry of Grace student notebooks.

While the option is available to purchase these in printed bundles, ready to assemble, I prefer to print my own, allowing my kids to be in-between levels. Also, I wanted to separate the projects into separate notebooks—history and literature—rather than combine these, since we tend to work on them at separate times during our homeschool week. I’m loving the result and am looking forward to a lot less mess this next year.

Creating Tapestry of Grace Student Notebooks for History

Lower Grammar/Upper Grammar Notebook

My daughter will be officially fourth grade this year. While she faces some stiff learning challenges from her dyslexia, she’s made tremendous progress. Technically, she should probably be entirely Upper Grammar this year, but I’m still allowing her to be in-between. Especially for history, where information is more technical and less story-driven, she needs the lower grammar level. Her notebook includes the following items.

Weekly Overview. This page includes major theme and project ideas, famous people we will be covering, and the vocabulary words that she will be encountering in her reading. Each week, she looks over this sheet with me and looks up any words that she isn’t familiar with in the provided glossary. Because of her dyslexia, I do not make her write or copy any of this information, she just reads over it.

Glossary. Last year, I kept one copy of the Year 1 Glossary in my Teacher Notebook, and the kids shared it. However, sharing the notebook didn’t always work out well. To streamline things, I went ahead and printed off a glossary for each child and included it in their own notebook. While this exercise builds my daughter’s vocabulary and prepares her for any difficult words she may encounter in her reading, it also gives me the opportunity to work with her on dictionary skills without an overwhelming amount of information for her to navigate.

Binder Pockets. We’ve used these binder pockets for years to organize different resources in our Case-it Binders. This year, I’ve included one in her history notebook to help my daughter organize lapbooking projects that she is working on. Once these are completed, I will oversee that they make it to their final destination (the portfolio) without taking an indefinite detour to her bedroom floor.

Upper Grammar/Dialectic Notebook

At the end of last year, we tip-toed into the Dialectic stage. This year, we’ll be delving more deeply into this level of thinking with history discussions and accountability questions. Because there is more involved at this level, there is also more included in my son’s history notebook.

History Topic Summary. Each week, there is a brief overview provided for the student to read that provides the basic summary of what we will be covering and a Biblical point of view on that topic. While the content is a little technical and difficult for my daughter to understand, my son will be ready for it this year, and it will provide the groundwork for our discussions each week.

Accountability and Thinking Questions. As part of the Tapestry of Grace curriculum for the dialectic level (grades 6-8), each week there are accountability questions that come from the reading and thinking questions that provoke the student to form some opinions and comparisons about what he is learning. (Yes, the answers are provided in the teacher material, so I’m not on my own on this.) This will be our first time to use this consistently, and I’m expecting to do quite a bit of hand-holding as my son gets used to thinking critically in this way. I have provided these questions in his notebook so that he can read over them and know what we will be discussing as he does his reading. This is not pop-quiz. It’s just a step to help him understand how to read for information.

Weekly Overview. This is the same sheet that my daughter has in her notebook, but my son will be using the upper grammar vocabulary while she uses lower grammar. It is the same exercise, looking up the words in the glossary; however, my son is required to write the definitions of words he doesn’t know. The Weekly Overview also includes dates for my son to enter into his timeline. Typically, we do not include all the dates. At this stage, I require a few but allow my son to choose those dates that are significant to him because of his reading and the connections that he is making.

Glossary. This is the exact same glossary in my daughter’s notebook, and will be used for both dictionary skills practice and vocabulary.

Creating Tapestry of Grace Student Notebooks for Literature

Our literature ties in directly to our history studies. These selections are either historical fiction novels that demonstrate the history and culture we are studying, or they are classical selections that were written during this time-period. Our curriculum includes literature study activities for these selections. Activities for sequencing, cause and effect, character analysis, plot study, narration and summary writing, and more are included in their Tapestry of Grace student notebooks for literature.

My daughter has a good blend of lower grammar and upper grammar activities depending on the skill involved. Because of her dyslexia, she will be doing many of these activities orally while I scribe or write down her answers. Though she is capable of making the connections, she needs some coaching with communicating her thoughts.

For my son, there are a few skills he still needs to work on that are covered more thoroughly in the upper grammar materials (cause and effect, character analysis, etc.) The other three-fourths of his notebook include the dialectic level worksheets, with more in-depth studies of plot, characters, and genres.

I love the fact that I can create these custom Tapestry of Grace student notebooks for my kids that meet their specific needs and still challenge them appropriately. And hopefully, we will not have quite as much paper on the floor throughout the house this year.

Preparing Tapestry: our Fourth Year

August 24, 2015Tracy

We are headed into our fourth year of our Tapestry of Grace curriculum, which means we will have completed the cycle at the end of this year. (It also means this is my last year of all grammar level.) Last year, I felt like we really made Tapestry our own and found our rhythm, our stride. It felt good, like a fitted glove. Of course, when you end a year like that, it makes planning the next year exciting. I love the aspect of homeschooling where I trouble-shoot and research and find our answers, but the Lord knew I would be doing that in several other areas of our life; so homeschooling was off the hook. No massive revamping this year. With that said, preparing Tapestry for this year went really smoothly.

In summary, I love manilla folders. I keep 36 folders for our weekly “must-do” assignments like language and math and Latin. Then I keep a second set of folders for Tapestry that are labeled by Term (we do three 12 week terms) and by topic (I don’t cover everything; instead, I select the events and topics that will best suit my learners). All of our reading lists, media lists, and project papers are printed off and filed in these topic folders.

So here’s what it looks like. At the beginning of a week, I pull out two folders: the week we are in and the topic we are studying. Within the weekly folder, I pull out assignment pages and file into the kids’ daily pockets inside their binders (we use case-it binders with the accordion file inside). Within the topic folder, I look at my list all of the books and projects assigned for that topic and the number of weeks that I’ve guessed it will take us to complete (i.e. Titanic, 2 weeks). I then allocate those assignments that will fit with our week’s schedule. Last year, this method cut my weekly prep to about 30 to 45 minutes total! Both kids filed and ready to go in around a half hour. It was beautiful.

Reading Lists

Tapestry’s reading lists are copyrighted, so I can’t share the specific book titles that we are using. However, I will list a couple of other resources I use to compare and substitute book titles. SimplyCharlotteMason.com has a book finder feature that I love. Just type in the event or person you are studying, the reading level of your students, and a great list of engaging living books is listed for you. My second resource is my local library online catalogue search feature. Again, I type in the event or person, narrow it to children’s resources, and voila! I love my local library. It has an enormous selection.

I also use SimplyCharlotteMason’s Story of America and Story of the Nations ebooks as my core. These are not Tapestry titles, but the table of contents make it very easy to assign chapters that fit what we are covering. And the books are very engaging. We love them.

I select my favorites. Depending on how long we intend to study a topic, for each week I will select one to two read-aloud titles, one to two independent reading titles per child (depending on the length of the book), and the rest will be assigned merely as reference, as in “let’s look at more pictures.”

Media List

I love audios. Awhile back I scored Diana Waring’s history audio from Answers in Genesis‘ history program. We love listening to these on the way back and forth to karate and co-op. So, on the days we don’t get to our reading, we are still getting to our history. And this is another very engaging resource.

Netflix is also a resource where I search for related films to what we are studying. We don’t always get to this, but it is great for those off-days or sick days to already have this list compiled.

Projects

Homeschool in the Woods is not a Tapestry resource either, but we LOVE these projects. I use the Time Traveler activities. We make notebooking pages using both the notebooking and lapbooking project ideas. Especially since my kids are finally old enough to do their own cutting and pasting, these have been really fun activities to assign. They work on these while I read-aloud. It keeps their fingers busy but doesn’t distract them from the reading.

I generally choose the projects that fit what we are studying, our time-frame, and my kids’ interests. I spend one long afternoon printing all of my chosen activities and filing into my topic folders. This saves me so much time during the school year.

I also have the Draw Through History titles. My son loves to draw; my daughter loves to trace. And it gives them some ideas for drawing and enhancing their notebook with images of what we are studying.

Our Rhythm

I mentioned that I note about how many weeks I think a topic will take us. Last year, this was very fluid. We moved on when our books were read and our projects were done. And I found that in the end, things balanced out. Some topics took longer than I estimated, and some topics didn’t take as long. If we read everything in a week, we moved on. If it took us five weeks, because of interest or illness, we took our time and enjoyed it all. Sometimes, it was just a dud, and rather than struggle through 3 more weeks of something we were not enjoying, we covered the basics and moved on.

I’m also sensitive to my kids’ reading interests. There were some books that my son just hated, and while I realize that not all learning can be interest-driven, I think at the younger levels, reading should be. Occasionally, I’d make a call that he just needed to get through a book. But if I made that call, I ensured that I had a very tantalizing book as a reward when he finished. There were books we didn’t read cover-to-cover. (Pause for you to gasp in horror.) We survived, and were no worse for that decision.

In spite of all that flexibility, I was amazed by how much my kids retained and learned. A little went a really long way.

What about discipline and teaching kids to push through the difficult stuff? I split my subjects into two categories: our discipline subjects like math, grammar, spelling; and our inspiration subjects like history, science, and reading. This helped me define my objectives. My discipline subjects were challenging but in short spurts (no more than 15-20 min. per lesson/subject). My inspiration subjects were kept inspiring and interesting and often took closer to an hour or hour and a half (hands-on projects take awhile). But again, I watched my kiddos. If they were engaged, we took our time. If their eyes were glossing over, it was time for lunch.

Want to know more specifics? I’ve listed our specific curriculum choices here. Feel free to browse those links. Not sure what your homeschool style is? Be encouraged with my post about losing the labels.

I’m looking forward to another really great homeschool adventure, and I hope you tag along on our journey.

Update on our Tapestry changes

April 23, 2015Tracy2 Comments

While I love our Tapestry of Grace curriculum, I mentioned at the beginning of the year that I totally overhauled Tapestry. I arranged our year by topics rather than by week (think of the Unit Study concept); I arranged our year into 3 Terms rather than 4 units; and I only did history the first two Terms (our last term branches into more science and biographies of scientists and inventors.) With all of that going down, I wanted to check in and let you all know how our Tapestry changes turned out.

The update is that, this year (drum roll………) our Tapestry changes been a roaring success. Amidst all of this year’s challenges—our ADHD diagnoses, potty training Littlest (for the third and last attempt), and my husband’s second back surgery in roughly a year—homeschool has still happened somehow, and we’ve actually learned quite a bit. In spite of our many challenges, there has been so much to love. And our Tapestry changes were a huge part of that, allowing us the margin for life.

I’ve loved the freedom of studying by topic, moving on when our books are read and our projects are done. It was a little scary to remove the deadlines and assignment dates. There was a fear that we would not get everything done. But what happened was that some topics didn’t take as long as I planned, while others took longer, and in the end it all worked out. And I loved the freedom of never being “behind” in our work.

I loved working in 12-week Terms rather than 9-week Units. It gave me the freedom to plan our breaks when we needed them, and to plan them for as long as I needed them to be. It also gave us margin, the white space to catch up on life when we needed it. For instance, we took the whole month of December off. It was lovely!

And I love feeling like we’ve finished when I need to feel that way. Any homeschooler will admit that February/March is the hardest time of year. It’s burnout time. It’s the time when you are ready to be done; mommy and kids feel it. To have that last term totally different is absolutely a breath of fresh air. And it’s time to get out in the fresh air. The weather is getting beautiful and there’s an itch to be out in it. I’m embracing that itch.

What else has worked well?

Relaxed mornings and hard-core lessons after lunch. Around 10:30 or 11 we meet for our read-aloud and projects, break for lunch, and start on math and language arts after lunch. We finish at 3 or 3:30. On co-op days, karate days, and other busy times, we skip the read-alouds and just tackle our core subjects. Even so, we’ve read everything on our list, completed every project, and finished both Terms on schedule. This schedule has been a life-saver. When mornings are totally over-run with parenting and “character training” (if you know what I mean), I don’t feel behind for dealing with hearts and having those long, unplanned-for conversations.

Our projects fit us perfectly; both kids love it. It’s easy for me to plan for supplies and print what we need. And Praise God! my older kids are finally at the age they can cut their own projects out. Hallelujah!

Not all my changes worked. And the ones that weren’t working were quickly scrapped. But overall, this has been a year of incredible grace as we found the margin we so desperately needed and found the learning pace that fits us.

Tailoring Tapestry of Grace to a Custom-Fit

November 6, 2014Tracy3 Comments

I re-evaluated everything last spring, even Tapestry of Grace, and asked myself some hard questions. I was disillusioned with it, to be quite honest. I had expected the first year fog, but the second year I thought I ought to have found my stride. Unfortunately, I still had some growing pains. The kids were fine; they’re fine with just about anything I do. (Bless them!) But my expectations weren’t being met, or at least, I was feeling insecure. I started looking at other curriculums (gasp!) and wondering if Tapestry of Grace truly was our match.

I asked myself some hard questions. One of those questions: why had I loved Tapestry to begin with? My #1 reason wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t the book lists or activities; it wasn’t necessarily the whole family learning or the integration of subjects. I love many of those aspects, but at the top of my list was customization. Of course, you CAN customize just about any curriculum, but what I love is that Tapestry of Grace is designed to be customized.

I “customize” and find substitutes for a lot of the books a lot of the time. The activity suggestions I’ve almost entirely replaced; they just didn’t our family and my time-limits. I loved the Bible suggestions and world-view, but even those were merely a jumping off point.

Bottom-line, I’m not a curriculum-follower; I’m a curriculum-creator with not enough time to create from scratch. Tapestry of Grace allows me to customize, and I love that.

After learning that about myself and about Tapestry, I’m maximizing that possibility. I am customizing the curriculum to the point where some of you might not even recognize it. I’m tailoring Tapestry of Grace, and I’m loving it so far.

Tailoring Tapestry by Topics, not Weeks

Toward the end of last year, I found myself totally overwhelmed with keeping up with the week plans. Trying to accomplish the reading deadlines was throttling our joy of reading and learning together. I hated it. To survive, I tossed the week plans and studied by topic instead. We studied the explorers, the colonies, and the American War for Independence. We moved on when we were ready, when our books were read—and we took the time to enjoy our books.

This worked so well that I’ve implemented it from the very beginning of this year. I’ve selected the events we will cover (and we won’t cover them all; no history curriculum does) and arranged our terms by topic instead of by week.

I do have a rough idea of how long we will spend on each topic, but I’m keeping it rough.

Tailoring Tapestry by Terms, not Units

Tapestry is divided into four 9-week units. But I overhauled this, too. It became difficult last year to work our vacations around our units. Also, some units were very busy while others seemed pretty empty. By arranging our year by topics, I could smooth these busy times out. But then my units were all messed up.

Instead of units, I’ve arranged our year into three Terms of about 12 weeks. Tapestry, for the most part, will fit into the first two terms. (That’s right, 24 weeks instead of 36.) And the last term will be for science. Why?

To counter-act burnout. When spring hits, I’m ready for a change and so are the kids. Tapestry felt like it dragged on forever both years we’ve done it. When the sun comes out, I want to study outside and explore. Science seems like such a natural subject that time of year.

I’ve even rearranged Tapestry topics to tailor this. For instance, at different points in Year 3 we are supposed to study inventors and inventions. I’ve pulled these weeks out of place and arranged that topic for part of our science study in Term 3.

I told you, I gave Tapestry a massive overhaul. But it’s custom, and it fits.

Q/A:

What about maps?

I’m only using the maps as a reference point for our reading and discussion. We will be using the Classical Conversations dry-erase “Trivium Table” maps instead. And an old GeoSafari, for those who remember what that is.

What about chronology?

I’ve kept the topics in order for the most part. The only rearranged item were the inventors. I’m really wanting to free us up to form relationships with the people we are studying, something I felt too rushed to do in the past.

What about books?

I use Tapestry as a starting point and search my library by topic. I also do a lot of comparing on the SimplyCharlotteMason.com website. I’m pickier about book choices. We only have time for the best, living books. No dry fact summaries. And I’m not opposed to searching Netflix or my library’s videos. Liberty Kids was a life-saver toward the end of last year, and very effective.

What about activities?

There’s nothing wrong with Tapestry activities. In fact, when I first looked at Tapestry, this was a huge selling point for me—making bricks like the Israelites did, making armor like the medieval knights wore, etc. But, life happened. And I realize that I’m just not up for that most of the time. I don’t happen to have rebar or cement or wire or washers on hand. Not to mention that I’m tired of feeling guilty for not fitting it in. It’s just not us. (Not that my kids wouldn’t love it. You are more than welcome to come over and stomp bricks with them in the wading pool. But I’m lucky to have supper cooked and laundry caught up.)

Oldest likes to draw and caption, while Middlest likes to imagine and execute her own craft ideas. We like paper-crafts with glue and scissors. That’s more our speed.

Why do Tapestry at all if you are going to maul it like that?

This is my own question asked to myself. And my answer is, I looked at all the other curriculums very closely once more. Tapestry still had the core of what I wanted, more so than all the others. I like the literature woven into the history, I like the discussions and world view highlights, I like the 4 year rotation and the classical learning divisions (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric). I like that Tapestry was designed to be customized.

So there you have it. A face-lift, an overhaul, or a demolition—whatever you want to call it, I call it tailoring Tapestry of Grace to a perfect custom-fit.

**UPDATE: Curious to see how this turned out for us? Check out my update on our Tapestry of Grace changes.**

Homeschooling Simplicity: Simplifying Tapestry

May 6, 2014Tracy2 Comments

I’m trying to achieve simplicity for the rest of this year and the upcoming year, to give my kids a quality education while allowing us to live life, the life God’s given us. I’ve been tackling several different areas of our homeschool where I felt the pressure getting a little out of hand, one of those has been our integrated history studies through Tapestry of Grace. Because Tapestry includes plans for all twelve grades and ideas for all the learning styles, it can easily become too much if you try to do it all. It’s meant to be a buffet, where you pick and choose the ideas and projects that fit your family best. Even so, I desperately needed to make a change: simplifying Tapestry has breathed new life into our homeschool day.

Simplifying Tapestry

I love that Tapestry will fit into the Charlotte Mason method well while still maintaining the tenants of classical education that I value. But I am changing the way we do a few things. I’m simplifying Tapestry of Grace, or at least how we use it, to fit our family and our needs right now. One of those chief needs is for short lessons.

Organizing by topic. I’ve begun to prep the unit by topic rather than by week. That means, I request the books from the library for the whole unit, arrange the order we’ll read those books, print off the TOG pages we’ll need to go along with those books and topics, and then close the curriculum and don’t look at it again until the next unit.

This allows us the freedom to maintain short lessons (the Charlotte Mason way) and enjoy the journey. I no longer worry that “I HAVE to finish a book in a single week because we have three more books to start next week.” Instead, when we finish one set of books, we move to the next in my sequence. Sometimes it takes more time, and sometimes it takes less.

Choosing an emphasis. I’ve also started choosing our emphasis rather than emphasizing every event in history, as I’ve done in the past. We don’t HAVE to cover the Pilgrims, Catherine the Great, the wars in Europe, and the British conqest of India all in one week. I choose our emphasis and allow myself the freedom to pick another emphasis on the next rotation of history. {allow me to take a huge sigh of relief here}

Simplifying mapwork. Last but not least, I’m simplifying mapwork. Rather than a new map each week, I’m choosing one or two maps per unit, depending on what we are studying. Again, I’m allowing us the time to make a relationship and form connections with the places we are studying. Not to mention that it makes my life a whole lot easier.

Let me give you an example here. We’ve spent 3-4 weeks on the map of the 13 original colonies. The first week, I gave Oldest the teacher map and sheets of tracing paper. Each day, he traced the map on the paper. Week 2, he drew his own map while looking at the original. Week 3 and 4, he drew it without looking. The result? That boy knows his colonies! He has a relationship with them; he’s memorized them just from this activity; he perks up in each of our stories when a particular colony is mentioned; he’s never taken more than 5-10 minutes a day on mapwork. Because we stretched this out, he’s had a greater depth of understand and stayed within our “short lesson” rule.

The beauty of Tapestry of Grace, one of the reasons I loved it to begin with, is that it allows for customizing to fit your family. I’m so thankful I’m finally allowing myself to maximize that benefit by simplifying Tapestry and how we use it. It’s been a breath of fresh grace in our homeschool.

Want an update on our Tapestry journey? Read about the benefits of using a literature-rich curriculum with ADHD/Dyslexia.