The last couple of months, I’ve spent getting familiar with Tapestry, looking over all of our options, listening to the Pop Quiz CDs (audio summaries of each week designed to keep Dad in the loop), making out mock schedules, and haunting the forums. The chief obstacle is how to fit all this goodness into a single week! Over and over again, the advice is to select off the buffet of Tapestry and to NOT try to do it all. But even with my selections, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to enjoy it all!
Which is why I’ve started my planning early enough that I can create tons of throw-away schedules and plans. All that said, I do think I’ve settled upon a system that I think will work for us. I’m planning on Tapestry taking us an additional hour each day; so this fall, we’ll be moving from a 2-hour school day to a 3-hour day. Notebooking pages will be assigned as a quiet-time activity for Oldest (while Middlest is napping).
Bible, language arts, and math will be everyday subjects, and I’m planning on those taking the first two hours of our school day. Then, I have Tapestry work spread out through the whole week—Monday, history; Tuesday, geography; Wednesday and Thursday, read-alouds; Friday, art and activities.
Next came the obstacle of trying to figure out how to organize and plan our activities. Though Tapestry provides some basic planner forms and even some sample plans, I just wasn’t satisfied with what I saw. I didn’t want to have to turn back and forth from my curriculum to my planner quite so often. I needed it more streamlined, and I have the hardest time fitting all the information I need at-a-glance into those tiny little schedule blocks.
I searched all over the internet and found a myriad of planning pages. Several had elements that I liked, but something was always missing. So, I finally broke down and made my own (using Open Office power point, then exporting as a pdf).
The first element I really wanted was a place to record our overall theme or focus for the week. For instance, week 1 of Year 1 emphasizes the Nile River and how it affected the Egyptian civilization, specifically what Moses life would have been like. There is so much good material that I didn’t want to lose track of what we were supposed to be learning.
Next, I decided I would need more room for my Tapestry planning than I would need for language arts, math, etc. While our core subjects really just require page numbers and lesson number, I would want to record books and page numbers, map activities, terms to learn, questions to ask, and similar notes under geography, history, and art/activities. Is this information already in the curriculum? Yes, but remember, you are selecting from the curriculum what you want to cover. Some people choose to circle or check off what they want to cover on the plans themselves. But I’d rather not write on the plans, and I really don’t want the hassle of page protectors. So here it is folks, my custom planner sheet for Tapestry. Enjoy!
Graphic is from mycutegraphics.com
