Tapestry of Grace Archives - Page 7 of 8

Eating Egypt

October 19, 2012Tracy2 Comments

We love geography: maps, globes, atlases, all of it! But we’ve definitely taken our geography to new heights with our Egypt study. It’s one thing to make a map, but it’s something entirely different to get to eat your map after you’ve made it!

We’ve been working on learning the map of Egypt. Each day we’d review the different places on the map that I wanted them to remember. The first couple of days, we do this with the Teacher map that includes the names and locations. We finished the week reviewing with a blank student map. Finally, I finish the map work by having each of the kids label a blank map. I got the idea from The Jobe Journal to actually create labels for the kids to stick onto the map, since neither of my kids are really at the age for filling out blanks on a map. This has worked great! They love “stickers” and it gives me a good idea of what they are remembering.

But then came the real fun. I baked some cookie dough and got out the frosting.

Eating Egypt

We frosted the entire cookie first. Our desert or “Red Lands” were decorated with colored sugar sprinkles. The kids (with a little oversight and direction) frosted the fertile flood plains (or Black Land), the Nile River, and the Nile River Delta. I had originally planned for our pyramids to be chocolate chips, but it wasn’t until after we finished frosting our cookie that I realized I was out of chocolate chips. After a brief moment of panic, I remembered that I did have tootsie rolls. So I pinched off tootsie roll and shaped it into pyramids for the kids to place on their cookies.

After all that hard work, I was barely able to get pictures before the kids were begging to “eat Egypt.” Let’s just say, this is one map they won’t forget soon.

Pyramid Construction: Lessons in Motion

October 10, 2012Tracy1 Comment

As if Tapestry of Grace didn’t have enough hands-on activities planned into the curriculum, I picked up this book of activities from our local library.

Among the many great ideas was an activity that illustrated how Egyptians moved blocks that weighed as much as a mini van to the tops of pyramids.

First, Oldest had to try moving a large, heavy book across the floor with his nose. Not easy!

Next, we placed a number of pencils underneath the book to simulate the logs the Egyptians would have placed underneath the large blocks they were moving. The Egyptians also added mud to the logs to lessen the friction and to slide the block along even easier. But even with just the pencils, pushing our large book was much easier.

Not only was it a great illustration, but it was a very memorable and fun way to study Egypt and add in a little science for a bonus.

In Moses’ Day…

October 3, 2012Tracy

We’re studying ancient Egypt right now: mummies, pyramids, the Nile River, the 10 plagues, the Exodus. One of the things I’m loving about Tapestry of Grace is how Bible and history are woven together so tightly.

The kids have been learning about life in ancient Egypt and Moses. What would he have eaten? What toys would he have played with? Why was the Nile important? Why would Moses have been afraid to go before Pharaoh? Why would Pharaoh have not believed in God? What was the purpose of the 10 plagues?

Another highlight are the hands-on activities—the crafts that really bring this curriculum to life. For our Egypt crafts, we made toys that children in Moses’ day would have played with. Oldest made a throwing stick that little boys would have used for target practice.

Middlest chose to make a paddle doll.

Tapestry of Grace activities

These crafts and other hands-on activities that we have done, along with the enjoyable read-alouds, have really served to anchor the information for my kids. The facts are not random lists of names and terms but are connected with pictures they’ve seen in stories or crafts they can hold in their hand. The result has been an astounding amount of information they’ve been able to retain, particularly Oldest. (I’ve allowed Middlest to play close by while I read and simply absorb what’s going on.)

I’m learning a ton, too! And I feel blessed to have found a curriculum that so beautifully reinforces our vision for our children’s education with such a practical daily plan.

TimeMaps by Knowledge Quest Review

July 20, 2012Tracy

TimeMaps, produced by Knowledge Quest, is both timeline and map in one product.

There are several components to this product. First, TimeMaps are grouped by topic.

Ancient China

The Rise of the Roman Empire

The Fall of the Roman Empire

The Rise of Islam

European Exploration and Discovery

The Black Death

The Atlantic Slave Trade

In flash format, a series of maps highlights the different changes within a topic. Watch the Roman Empire swell in its might (and see the rise and fall of the Persian and Greek empires in the process.) Interactive links and icons provide more information on what is happening on the map. Questions are also provided to guide your discussion with your student.

Another element is the map timeline, accessed through the “TimeMaps of World History” link.

By clicking on different dates on a timeline, changes around the world are indicated on the map. Again, this map includes links that provide more information when you hover over them. “What’s happening in the world” provides a brief summary to read to the student.

Lesson plans and activities are also provided, but I found that these were aimed largely at older children, probably dialectic level. Assignments included creating a timeline or researching a topic and writing an essay.

My kids loved to see the places that we’ve been studying in our geography. And they loved to “uncover” the facts on the maps through the interactive links. Though we’ve already enjoyed this product, I can’t wait to put it into context with our Tapestry of Grace studies. From ancient history to the Enlightenment, these maps and eventually the activities will be something we’ll use for years! I was also thrilled to find maps and information on the Maya and ancient Mexico as well as Mesopotamia within these products, especially since these places and time periods are often difficult to find information and activities for.

My husband was also impressed. He’ll be taking a class on Islam in the fall for his ThM in apologetics, and the Rise of Islam has a lot of information to provide him with a background for that class.

I love this product; it is just as cool as it looked like it would be and is definitely worth the price. Topics can be purchased individually for $9.95 or as a set for $44.95. Visit the site for more information and to watch a brief video touring the product.

You can also read more reviews about TimeMaps or Knowledge Quests MapTrek series at the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

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Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.

Why Classical? and our 2012/2013 curriculum

July 12, 2012Tracy7 Comments

There are many fine ways of educating children. I was homeschooled using largely A Beka and Alpha Omega, a graduate of the traditional schooling method. My husband graduated from public school. And we’ve both done well in life by God’s grace.

When I began homeschooling my children, I really had little idea of all of the different approaches and styles. I began on a traditional road, and quickly fell into a lot of potholes. We could have trudged on I’m sure, but none of us enjoyed those first weeks of by-the-book schooling. Disillusioned, I took a break and re-evaluated everything. I searched blogs and checked out books from the library, one of which was the Well-Trained Mind. It was my first introduction to the idea of classical education, and every part of it appealed to me.

I began researching more about this approach. The more I discovered, the more my husband and I were convinced that this was the path for us. Classical is more than the study of ancient cultures and ancient languages; it’s about a framework and an ordering of information.

In a recent article I read by Martin Cochran, published in The Classical Teacher, Cochran sites an illustration given by Neil Postman in a speech. Postman referred to a new deck of cards which is arranged in a fashion that gives sense to the whole deck. Once that deck is shuffled, however, the order is lost. There is no means of knowing which card will follow the next. Classical education gives order to the vast amount of information in our world. History is studied in chronological fashion; science is studied from the framework of history; modern languages and English are learned from the foundation of the classical languages from which they were derived. Classically educating is laying a foundation and constructing a framework for the facts our children must learn.

Another appealing aspect to this style is the trivium, the three stages of training through which a child progresses: grammar, logic or dialectic, and rhetoric. First, a child learns facts without fully understanding all of the relationships between those facts. Next, as the child nears adolescence, he begins to explore the logic, the relationships of ideas, and the reasons behind those relationships. It’s the stage when a child naturally starts questioning everything. In the final stage, the rhetoric stage, the high school student is now developing an understanding of what he believes and is now learning how to articulate and defend those beliefs. I love this video clip where Michael Horton explains the advantages of the trivium for the Christian faith.

And, thus, we embark on this adventure, fully embracing the classical model for the first time.

2012/2013 Curriculum

History and Bible Curriculum: Tapestry of Grace (history, geography, Bible, art, literature, and beginning grammar)

Anatomy and Nutrition: Anatomy notebooking pages; Usborne’s See Inside Your Body; God’s Design for Life: the human body (borrowed from a friend); Little D’s Nutrition Expedition (free curriculum); My Plate (free printables)

1st grade Core:

A Beka 1st grade phonics/spelling

A Beka 1st grade math, supplemented with Math Mammoth as needed

K4/K5: (Middlest will be doing a blend of K4/K5 this year.)

A Beka K4/K5 phonics

A Beka K4 math (ABC-123)—she’s nearly finished this already; Professor B math and Math Mammoth

She’ll also be participating in our anatomy activities and our Tapestry read-alouds and crafts.

Now, to get my house and my school room as organized as my lesson plans!

Disclaimer: This post contains my Tapestry of Grace affiliate link and my Usborne consultant link. If you purchase your Tapestry materials through my link, I get a discount on the materials that I purchase from them. If you purchase your Usborne books through my consultant page, my 25% commission will be used to help provide funds for down-syndrome orphans awaiting adoption (read more here).

Planning Tapestry (and free planner page)

June 19, 2012Tracy4 Comments

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!

Tapestry Weekly Planner

Graphic is from mycutegraphics.com

Bonding with Tapestry

March 21, 2012Tracy1 Comment

While I waited to be able to use Tapestry with my children, I greedily devoured any blog post I could google on the topic. And in the last two years, I’ve really been blessed with a wealth of terrific advice on getting started. In some small sense, I hardly feel like a rookie. As I click on my DE plans, I hear the myriad voices coaching me through what to look at and which elements to notice. Of course, the “Teacher Training” DVDs helped immensely as well, as Marcia Somerville talked me through the philosophy and set-up of Tapestry.

For one, Tapestry of Grace is not a scripted curriculum (like A Beka or Bob Jones might be), and yet it is much more detailed than many other “unit study” curriculums (that give you a mere skeleton and let you flesh it out with your own research). Tapestry is, as Marcia describes it, a buffet with a variety of choices for learning levels and learning styles. Within each subject (i.e. Ancient Egypt), there will be something for your kinesthetic 1st grader, your very visual 6th grader, and your read/write 11th grader. Make a paddle doll, sculpt a salt map, read this text. And the books! Oh, the books. Most of the book choices would be living books, as in good ole library books, rather than textbooks.

But, as you might imagine, all of those choices for all of the grade levels (split into four learning levels) can be quite daunting. I’d read that in my google search and was prepared for that. And if those choices don’t totally intimidate you, you’ll be a kid in the candy story, like me—bug-eyed and drooling.

The material is extremely easy to navigate (that is the Redesigned plans are; I’ve heard the previous edition was not as user-friendly), and I honestly find myself overwhelmed not by the choices themselves but by having to make the choice. I want to do it all! I want to read it all! And my poor children, I know there’s no way that’s possible—to do it all and still enjoy it. So, I must restrain my gluttonous appetite and content myself with just morsels of this delight.

A budget helps. In other words, my budget keeps me realistic about what we can tackle. Though I want to tackle it all, it really isn’t practical or affordable to do so. So pick and choose I must, beginning with (huge SIGH) the book list.

Thus, after scoping out the entire year and reading the summaries of what we will be covering in each unit, I bring myself back to the reading assignments. And with my curriculum open in one window and my spreadsheet open in another window, I begin the painful task of deciding which books will not make the list [swallow at lump in throat]. I’ll have to get back with you later. This might take me awhile.

Click here for more on our TOG book decisions.