Story of the World Archives - Growing In Grace

Why Teach Mythology in classical Christian curriculum

December 28, 2016Tracy

Teaching mythology and ancient gods in classical Christian curriculum can be a little tricky to navigate with your kids. It’s something I debate every time it comes up. But I must say, some of our richest discussions have come from reading these myths about the ancient false gods. The contrast between our God and these mythical gods is so stark that it never fails to leave me filled with gratitude and worship.

I remember four years ago when we covered ancient history for the first time, I had a moment like this when we read The Rain Player, a myth about a Mayan god. The main character had to win at a game against the god to get forgiveness from the god and rain for his people. I was moved to tears as I shared with my little ones that our God does not require us to earn forgiveness; He gives it freely. That our God sends rain upon the just and the unjust to show His common grace to all mankind.

And this year, our second time through ancient history, we had another opportunity. As we finished up our chapters in Story of the World on the ancient Greeks, we were discussing a Greek myth about the Trojan War and the vanity of the gods, and I asked them: What are you thankful for about your God as you read these stories?

I loved their answers. One child mentioned that God was slow to anger, and the Greek gods were not. Another mentioned how God was loving, sending His son to die for men. We mentioned a few other differences. We ended our time in Greek mythology thankful and grateful for the true God.

It’s such a humbling, beautiful thing for me to be able to have these moments with my kids, to worship God together as we study nature and art and ancient civilizations. It’s not just what I’m teaching them; it’s what we share together.

I’m grateful for homeschooling. I’m grateful for my kids and their perspective on life. I’m grateful for Greek mythology and the conversations it sparks. I’m grateful for a God who is slow to anger, merciful, loving, and intentionally revealing Himself to us in every day moments.

Teaching with Crafts

December 6, 2013Tracy

Confession Time—crafts and art are both my joy and my bane. I get so excited writing them onto the calendar and anticipating the experience, but then the day of the craft, it so easy to make excuses for not doing them.

I don’t have the right supplies.
We’re running an hour late in school.
Littlest is into EVERYTHING.
I’m going to be making most of the craft.
I have a splitting head-ache, and it’s flat time to end the day.

But then, when I do finally muster the time, supplies, and energy to pull it off, I never regret it. I never finish our craft time thinking “we should have just skipped this one.”

Part of the reason is that our crafts are tied into our learning. It’s not just busy work. These crafts either teach during the craft, reinforce the lesson, or encourage the kids to repeat the lesson over and over for “fun” (e.g. puppet shows!).

One of our recent crafts that was a huge winner was our Mezuzah crafts that went with our Story of the World lesson on the Jewish Dispersion or Diaspora. In fact, for all of the above reasons and a few more, I’d actually put this craft off for nearly a week. But the kids kept begging. And of course, I had all of those empty Nerd candy boxes that I’d been saving. Thus, we finally pulled it together, and I’m very glad we did.

First note, the instructions said to use matchboxes, but since I had a plethora of Nerd boxes after Halloween, I figured those ought to work just as well.

I hot glued the boxes together and wrapped them in foil. The kids cut out the shema and memorized it, then we stuffed it inside our boxes before gluing them closed. Then, the kids decorated them. With blue sticky tack, I hung them on their bedroom door frames.

For the rest of the day, as the kids ran in and out of their rooms, I heard them shouting the shema “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” (Deut. 6:4)

What I didn’t count on was Littlest, watching his big brother and sister, insist on touching the box before I carry him to bed each night.

So when the next craft time rolls around and I have all my excuses handy (and good excuses at that), prayerfully I’ll remember just how life-changing craft time can be.

Notebooking the Lapbook Way

December 4, 2013Tracy

We’re doing a lot of notebooking this year. I love so much about lapbooking, but in the end, the space it takes was a real deal-killer this year. I am all about concise, confined homeschool. Besides, there’s the fact that my kids still pull out their notebooks from 2 years ago to show people, while the lapbooks stay untouched on the shelf. So, back to notebooking it is.

But I am trying to keep the spirit of lapbooking in mind. We are using, in a sense, a notebooking-hybrid.

Our notebooking pages this year are filled with pockets and mini-books, flaps and folds.

Some of our creativity is out of the pure of joy of creating, while some of it is born of necessity. For instance, our Story of the World activities include a lot of puppets and finger puppets. The kids love these and always opt to do the puppet-project if there is one. Storing all of those pieces takes a little creativity.

A super fun and effective way to “notebook” our finger puppets is to trace the kids hands, have them decorate their hand, then I cut the “finger” lines with an exacto, and we slip the puppets over the paper fingers. Too cute!

For us, it makes our memories easier to take with us and easier to share with others. (Plus, it helps me keep all the parts and pieces in one place.)

Note: Many of our lapbooking/notebooking elements are courtesy of the free downloads from Dynamic2Moms website. Check out their vast collection of resources for history.

Hands-on Geography

November 13, 2013Tracy

I will admit, as I planned and plotted for this year, I wondered if maybe—just maybe—I’d tried to do too much. After all, the activities of 3 different geography curriculums did seem a little excessive. But I couldn’t help but love how the three complimented each other so well, one filling in for the gaps of the other two and vice versa.

Surprisingly, we’ve had plenty of time for everything! I’m stunned and amazed at how smoothly all of the components have fit together. Just to clue you in, Oldest does the maps from Tapestry of Grace on our magnet board; this is probably his most intensive mapwork. Then, Oldest and Middlest complete the simpler map work from Story of the World before listening to their audio history lesson, and we play Mr. Sprinkle with that map. Quite honestly, this map time is more for Middlest, but Oldest enjoys the fun activity and review.

Last but not least, I added Leagues and Legends to our geography mix. Here’s why: my son needed to know how to use a map, not just how to locate Scandinavia and Normandy. L&L, as we affectionately call it, covers the equator, longitude and latitude, directions on a compass, how to draw your own map, and much more. The storybook tells a funny, memorable dialogue among three men, Mr. Tardy, Mr. Longitude, and Mr. Latitude. It’s short and thorough, and very entertaining.

Then, there’s the activity book, which has been a highlight for Oldest. There are enough activities to work one a week for about half the year. Some of the activities include toilet paper roll puppets for the characters, drawing a map of your room or neighborhood, coloring the different points on a compass, making your own compass, etc. And best of all, most of the activities are things he can complete by himself with a little instruction.

Rather than one more thing to do, Leagues and Legends has been another hands-on component to geography that my son looks forward to every week.

Illuminated Letters and Calligraphy

October 25, 2013Tracy2 Comments

We’ve been learning about the fall of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic Empire, and some church history over the last few weeks. St. Patrick, St. Valentine, and St. Augustine are a few of the names we’ve read about. And for art, we’ve explored the printed books the monks would work on.

We read Caedmon’s Song, a beautiful book about a shepherd who became a monk and wrote songs. Then the kids colored an illuminated letter. But I thought it might be more fun to go a step further.

We cut out our illuminated letter, glued it to some brown card stock, and experimented with calligraphy markers. I did help them with the actual writing, holding their little hands as they wrote so that they could keep the right angle. But to see their eyes light up as they saw the beautiful letters was worth a little intervention.

Then we hole-punched the pictures and threaded some twine for hangers. It was a fun way to explore the work the monks would do and the perfect craft as we head into the Thanksgiving season.

Tapestry of Grace, after a year

May 29, 2013Tracy3 Comments

This year was our first (long-awaited) year for both classical education and Tapestry of Grace curriculum. And it was as awesome as I dreamed it would be. There definitely was a learning curve and lots of adjustments along the way, but the core of what I was looking forward to with Tapestry was definitely accomplished.

Tapestry of Grace is a classical/unit studies curriculum that covers the humanities: history, geography, art, writing/literature, and Bible/church history. It is full of read-alouds and hands-on learning. It is absolutely anything you want to make it to be, which is why there’s a learning curve. The choices are there for you to select from, but there is no lesson plan per se.

We’ve had a fantastic time with it, especially as I settled into a method toward the end of the year. I’m still tweaking, still learning. But it’s been a fantastic journey.

What I loved:

learning as a family

I have really enjoyed incorporating the Bible and church history into the world history and cultural studies of the time period. I’ve loved weaving the story and truths of redemption and contrasting those realities with the myths and false religions of the surrounding civilizations. I’ve loved seeing my kids light up when they see a name from history in their Bible reading. And I’ve loved having us all learn together.

What I’d change:

Tapestry gives tons of choices, but it sometimes felt that the flow of the story was sacrificed. We read about culture here, architecture there, government here, a biography over here, and Bible over there; and at the end, even I had trouble seeing how it all came together. The teacher notes helped, but those were so above my kid’s heads that I had to basically interpret and narrate passages to them. It just didn’t fit as nicely as I would have liked.

Mid-way through the year, I added a timeline study and some lapbooks, which helped tremendously. I’m still experimenting here and making decisions; it’s not exactly what I want it to be yet, but we’ll get there. And I can’t wait for next year.

How I’m planning:

As I prepare for next year’s study with Tapestry of Grace, I’m keeping pretty much the same approach as this year with a few variations. Next year, we’ll be studying the Middle Ages all the way up to the Revolutionary War. It’s a huge span of history, and an enormous selection of readers and projects.

Last year, just to get a feel for what would work for us, we purchased just about everything: DE (digital plans) and printed plans, Map Aids, Pop Quiz (audio and flashcards for Dad to follow along), Evaluations (test and quiz questions), and a Student Pak. This year, I only purchased the DE and the Map Aids.

I found the printed plans too overwhelming. I had two 3″ binders of plans, about 30 pages for each week of study. It was so much easier for me to maneuver through all of that info on a computer than to flip pages.
Pop Quiz was a great idea, but didn’t end up working well for us. I loved the thought of Dad following along with us. But so much of the time it seemed that the Pop Quiz questions were over extra details rather than the meat of the lesson. Since I had small Lower Grammar students, we often did not cover much more than the main emphasis of the week.
Evaluations I used only as a source for my flashcards, and this year I’m going to try something else with my flashcards.
I only ended up using a couple of activities from the Student Pak. The activities only loosely related to the stories and ended up largely being busy work that we just didn’t have time for.
Map Aids I loved and used extensively. I tried several different methods for our map work but always had these as the main resource.
As far as selecting a spine resource, a main resource to use through most of the unit or the year, I’m going to try out Story of the World this next year. It’s listed as an alternate spine resource in the Tapestry plans, and it has audios. My kids love audio books, and having someone else do the reading will free me up to do a few other things (like potty-train Littlest, Eek!)

As far as the reading selections, my first stop is always to compare the Primary and Alternate Resource List with what is at our library. And I’m getting much better at finding what we need at our library. Not only do I search the exact titles, but I also take a key word to search the person, event, or time period. This really broadened my search and narrowed my list of resources to purchase.

*Another lesson learned, last year I ordered a few different Upper Grammar resources, intending to use these as read-alouds. While my children are definitely used to having advanced stories read to them, it wasn’t the vocabulary or diction that posed the biggest problem. Many of these readers contained content that was just a little too mature for my little ones. Just an FYI.*

Another way I narrowed our purchase-list was limiting our reading. This was tough. But after this year, I have a much more realistic expectation of what we will be able to get through. I tried to pick one or two read-alouds per unit instead of per week. Then, I chose one or, in some rare instances, two books that Oldest can read either by himself or with a little read-aloud help from me.

The last thing that was a little different this year was that I felt a little freer to customize. Last year, I wanted to follow as closely to Tapestry as I possibly could until I knew what it had to offer. Now, I’m feeling confident enough to use Tapestry to fit our family, to mold it and select from it, and even to deviate from it slightly. For instance, Tapestry of Grace didn’t emphasize the Reformation nearly as much as I’d like to, so I’m straying from their recommended resources for those weeks and selecting a few of my own to fit our needs.

Also, I’m going with the Story of the World activity book rather than the various activity books that Tapestry recommends, for a couple of reasons. For one, I’m looking for simple this next year (did I mention potty-training is on the horizon?) Many of the recommended activities within the Tapestry resources were very involved and required supplies I don’t usually have on hand (terra cotta clay, metal washers and wire, etc.) The activities are really cool, but very hard to fit into our school week. I needed something that the kids could make with scissors, colored pencils, glue, and toilet paper rolls. Know what I mean? Story of the World has, at the very least, coordinating coloring pages; sounds perfect. My second reason was that my library as an excellent selection of these types of books, not always the exact titles but definitely comparable. If we really felt the itch to do something extra, I could check out my library for the really extreme crafts.

With a year of Tapestry under our belt and another year’s planning nearly done, I’m thankful to report that this curriculum is the perfect fit for us, especially since we get to make it a custom fit.