Tapestry of Grace

Kim,

I hope you do not mind my ramblings regarding unit studies, and I may be going out on a limb here, but, here goes…I’ve not seen My Father’s World, but I have looked at Tapestry of Grace. Yes, it is a unit study. I’ve not been on their site for a couple of years but your post caused me to, oh, I don’t know, feel a caution. Maybe it’s because we have similar families and I’ve read your other posts. We have eight children and when I was considering TOG just looking at it overwhelmed me. I could see myself immediately rebelling against the restraints a unit study would put on us and the frustration I would feel because I had spent all that money and so we’d better use it!! It’s not just TOG; it’s unit studies in general. Anyway, I just visited their site again and I got that same ‘ol feeling. 🙂

As always, I will preface my remarks with, ‘This is just our experience and God can lead in any way He chooses..’ Plus I do not claim to be a Charlotte Mason expert. However, (don’t you just love it when people say that?!) I have found that the CM method allows us to more fully understand and discern where a child is and where God would have them go. For instance, what if today’s lesson is about the slavery in Egypt and the character lessons we’re are supposed to be learning in that scenario but my child wakes up, hits his brother and then slings his scrambled eggs across the table? There are all kinds of character lessons right there that would be addressing the child’s needs versus what someone decided he should learn about on this day just because it was next in the curriculum.

Again regarding God’s plan for our children, He will use our children’s interests to give us parents wisdom on how to train them. While reading a good book together, one child may ask if he could do extra research on space while the other wants to research inventions of the time. Also, knowing our children’s needs allows us to choose titles to ‘preach’ at them in a non-confrontational way. With lots of little ones, I cannot address those desires and needs AND keep up with a unit study.

Now, I think it is fully appropriate to learn about composers, scientists, artists, etc. of the era we are studying, but I think it should be left to the child to make the connections versus us cramming the connections down his throat through a unit study. With lots of children, I truly believe that cm is a much more relaxed (not lazy, mind you!), quiet way to learn.

I hope I have not offended you or other users of unit studies. I do think it was just the fact that you have seven precious children that caused my ‘red flag.’ I may have a totally different experience from others because I am not the most organized person around :/. But that is one of the beauties of this board; we can all hash things out and learn from one another and then take it to the Lord and our husbands and see how they will lead.

Blessings,

Cindy

Kim,

I am by no means an expert in this area, and I even feel funny responding, but this is what I’ve learned from Charlotte Mason. You don’t need fancy curriculum. You don’t need textbooks. You don’t need a lot of grades and report cards. What you need are a lot of good books that you can read aloud to your family. Books that will teach about history, science, and character. Books that will teach spelling and grammar through example. Books that will engage the family and open their eyes to things they have never heard before. Once you start there, I think that the rest of it will come to you. You don’t have to be organized to read aloud (believe me, I know!). I’ve found how this has worked with my family. We use a lot of Five in a Row, and more often than not, I abandon the suggested activities because my kids have questions or ideas of their own.

These are just my observations as my family has begun its homeschooling journey. When I tried to do scheduled curriculum or unit studies, my kids got bored. When we “fly by the seat of our pants,” they seem to be a lot more engaged.

I hope this hasn’t bored you or sounded preachy. I just wanted to put my two cents in since you sounded stuck and frustrated. I hope it helps, even if just a little.

Faith 🙂

Good morning Kim!

A wonderful place to start is with the curriculum guide right on this site. This is how I jumpstarted us when we had wandered into the land of ‘doing too much.’ You sound so much like me that I will talk to you the way I need to hear it so often: Pray for God’s guidance. Turn on some good music and get a piece of paper :). Write, down the side, the subjects from the guide. Write your children’s names across the top. Pray again and decide just what you have time for now, knowing that the seasons of your life are constantly changing. Select a book from each subject and assign it to the children who will do independent reading. Select a family book to read aloud. Now decide when you will do these things during the day. Also decide when the children need to do their other work (math, phonics, chores etc.)Then practice having your children narrate back to you what you have read and what they have read to themselves. Depending on the requirements of your state as far as paper goes (we need to leave a pretty big paper trail, i.e., written work), you may just do this orally for quite awhile until you know that your older children ‘get it.’ Then move into written narrations (or some sort of project).

As for those nasty little ‘gaps’ we all fear so much, I just read a neat idea in the Timberdoodle catalog. She said to use a timeline as a log for your reading. That way, you can easily see what you have covered and not covered. Not necessary for this discussion; but I thought it was interesting.

As far as the subject of literature, I tend to give priority to more Lamplighter type books than what is listed. I suppose that may come under the heading of Personal Development. For instance, I was just reminded yesterday to read The Basket of Flowers to my younger children (the older ones heard it years ago). It is a wonderful story about how to act when we are being mistreated.

I’ll be praying for you (as I hear the rumble starting upstairs of feet hitting the floor)!

Blessings,

Cindy

Hi! I’ve been pretty relaxed (more like crisis survival mode!) for several years. I am trying to get a routine going and do all the wonderful things I read here! 🙂 I have checked other CM sites out, and I truly believe the name of this one fits–SIMPLY Charlotte Mason! It is so easy to get overwhelmed with all *we* think we need to do, let alone what we think others think or a parent guide to a curriculum says we should do! 😛

I took the information here and printed it out to put into a binder. Use the information about “Making the Transition” and just take one step at at time. That’s what I’m doing! My goal is to make Bible, narration, and short lessons for my younger set consistent. (I have 9 dc total–2 graduated, 1 high school, 1 middle school, 3 elementary and 2 toddlers!) They’ll continue to do their Language Lessons (I use Sandi Queen’s series) and math, but my focus is just those three things. Anyway, I hope you find the information here helpful! Don’t try to do it all at once! I love the gentle way Sonya has laid it out in Making the Transition!

You can do it! Just start with a little and add to it as each part is in place.

Blessings!

Trisch

I’ve used MFW and not TOG. I kind of felt “constrained” by the end of MFW, too. We only used it one year, but we all got kind of tired of it by the end. We do much better if we stay more open-ended.

I have to say, that sometimes when we have a lot of things “correlated” like history, music, art, etc, that my kids sometimes just don’t ‘get’ the connections. But if we study things as they come, then there are those little flashes of “Oh, hey, mom, that reminds me of . . . . ” I LOVE that! It’s worth lots of my time to get those little flashes!

Michelle D, also in Iowa, but with only 3 boys 14, 12, 7

Hello Kim,

I am probably not going to be the popular one on this question. I have 8 kiddos ages 15.5 down to 1. I have been homeschooling since 2007 and I have tried all sorts of things from BJU, Beautiful Feet, Mystery of History, Veritas Press and the Ambleside online (I liked it a lot). I have been pretty much CM based since we left BJU. I love it. But AO got very overwheming for this mama with all the planning and having everyone in different time periods etc. I was about to give up until a friend introduced TOG to me ( I had seen before but it scared me..lol) and I was immediately drawn to us all studying the same things but different time periods. So we tried it out last year for the first time in a co op. Yes, it was an adjustment but a good one. I made lots of changes to make it work for us. slowed down the alloted time for books to be read, oral and written narrations instead of worksheets. We LOVE Lapbooks and I know they are not CM but we love them and my kids put what they want in them and it is great for writing etc. My kids grew leaps and bounds working together as we do several things together. My now 10th grader does and did most of her stuff on her own but she joins us for read alouds, geography, etc.. I learned so much more then I have ever learned with anything else.. I couldn’t separate the different time periods in my head when my kids would narrate etc.. one talking about Lincoln the other Egypt, the other Ben Franklin.. if that makes sense…

What I will do this coming year is I am making a schedule that is TOG/AO. I refer to AO a LOT!!! I get book breakdown ideas, I compare the books etc.

My older ones will do a book of centuries , timelines etc.

I personally believe you can make it work whether you do CM or not. Yes, it looks overwhelming but AO looks that way to me too as I look at it. I have learned that there is not a ONE FOR ALL curriculum!! I take what I want to use and use it to the way we like to school. Being in a co op is really good for us and WE LOVE IT and have grown so much and made great friends.

Yes TOG reads to fast, yes they are classical, unit studies etc.. but you can adjust however you feel you need too. I bought mine cheap used.

I have just learned that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I feel I do CM to the best of my ability.