Tapestry of Grace Review

Tapestry of Grace Review

I am really, really excited about this review about Tapestry of Grace!! There are some curriculums that we have used that we just LOVE, and that are such a perfect fit for our family. I have previously reviewed those curriculums for other subjects, but now I wanted to go over history, literature, philosophy, geography & government.

We are planning on using Tapestry of Grace for the first time this next school year. I have had the best time planning out our first unit! I am just thrilled about starting it, and so are my children! We have used other curriculums for history, literature and writing in the past. However, since my daughter is going to be in 8^th grade next year, I decided that I wanted to have a curriculum with more structure.

Mulitage Use:

I really wanted all of my kids (no matter how many we have) to be able to study the same subjects together. I spend much time homeschooling my two oldest children right now, and I do not think that it would be physically possible for me to homeschool all of our children unless there was some consistency to what they were learning.

Tapestry of Grace covers the four periods of history. There are four total years. Students that start in elementary school will actually cover these four periods of history a total of three times.

Tapestry of Grace is a curriculum that you purchase to use with all age students. Students are separated into four levels. These levels are lower grammar, upper grammar, dialectic and rhetoric.

This is a literature based curriculum. Students will be reading quite a few books. (My kids love to read!) These books will be appropriate to their grade level.

This next year my eldest daughter will be in eighth grade and my second oldest will be in Kindergarten. They will both be studying ancient history together. I will have one prep for both students each week. (Yay!! One prep instead of two, or four or five!) I am personally so excited about learning this with them! I have been reading the books that they will be reading, and they are excellent. Marcia Somerville did a wonderful job picking out the books!

Tapestry of Grace covers what the students will be learning in the teacher’s notes. The teacher reviews that information at the beginning of each week. Then, I make assignments for my students based on the level they are at.

The younger children have lap books that they can make. We actually did not purchase this, but we will still be making our own lapbooks.

This is a unit based curriculum in that it is broken up into four units per year.

I have seen my children learn so much when they are able to talk to each other about what they are learning, so I am very excited that they will be studying the same periods of history together.

There are questions that are written out for the students to answer. I am so excited about this because in the past, I have had to come up with my own questions after reading the books.

Christian Worldview:

This curriculum teaches a Christian Worldview. I think it is extremely important that kids have a Christian Worldview before they go off to college.

Honors Program:

The classes are laid out for high school, including how many credits to give students. I am excited about that, because I am trying to figure out what classes she will be taking in high school, and it will make the transcript easier.

The honors classes do require you to read all of the books that are listed.

Cost:

The cost was the biggest factor for me to overcome when I was looking at this curriculum. The curriculum is expensive, and you have to buy books for each students.

However, when I really started breaking down the cost, you really pay up front, but then it is much cheaper later.

1. You only have to buy 4 years worth of curriculum. This curriculum can be used for ALL students and ALL ages.
2. If you buy the digital version, it is updated for life. This is HUGE for me. I will be homeschooling for at least the next eighteen years IF we don’t have anymore children. Books, history and technology will certainly change over the next eighteen years.
3. Many of the books that I have to purchase are multi year and multi age books. So, there are less books that I have to purchase than it originally looks like.
4. Some of the books can be borrowed from the library, or I already have them. I must admit, I was very disappointed with the number of them available from our local library, but there were at several for each year and grade level.
5. I have been saving up my Swagbucksso that I can hopefully purchase quite a few of the books from my Amazon gift cards.
6. I went through and made a spread sheet of the books and how much they cost from Tapestry of Grace (many of them were the cheapest here), Amazon  and Kindle. I will be purchasing the cheapest of all of these books.
7. I keep my list with me so that I can look for these books at Good Will, garage sales and used book stores.
8. The first year, I will be purchasing the books by unit, so that hopefully I will not have to spend very much out of pocket as I continue to accumulate Swagbucks and purchase Amazon gift cards.

I have looked at many, many curriculums and spent hours (OK, actually days, weeks and months!) researching this to decide on using Tapestry of Grace. I will make sure to let you guys know what I think after I have used it for a while. I would love to hear from any of you that might have used this already!

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