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                                                        An integrated, classical approach to educating your children.

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 The 4-Year Plan

 --Adjusting the cycle to fit your family's needs 

Print a sample week to look at as you step through our explanation.


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The Four-Year Plan

Tapestry covers "horizontal history" every four years

• Tapestry provides an orderly plan with a place for all main subjects except science and math. 
• Each Year-Plan will provide detailed lesson and/or discussion plans for studying the histories of the nations of the world, the church, art, technology, science, and government--all with an emphasis on America. 
• Correlated readings in world and American literature, and weekly vocabulary development, hands-on projects, group projects for co-ops, geography studies, and time line work will solidify comprehension of each time period by providing interwoven content, context, and depth to the human experience. 
• Because studying by this method is interesting to students, they begin to "own" their work, and they remember what they’ve learned.

Experience all history at each level of learning

Tapestry is arranged in a four-year rotation to give each child three separate exposures to each period of history.  Following the ideal of classical education, children who begin Tapestry early enough experience the material on three successive levels over their school careers: the grammar stage, the dialectic stage, and the rhetoric stage. 

• During the Grammar Stage (elementary grades), children eagerly learn new words and delight to learn the broad outlines and interesting personalities of history and literature.
• The Dialectic Stage typically occurs during junior high.  These students are busy asking questions and looking for connections.  They want to see how things relate to each other.  This is the "ohhhh-hhhhh" age, when facts begin to be organized into matrixes, no longer floating free like unconnected balloons.
• In the Rhetoric Stage, well into the High School years, your students are increasingly eager to analyze complex situations, breaking them down into component parts, and then putting the pieces back together in new, interesting ways.

(NOTE: I am indebted to an article by Dorothy Sayers for my first introduction to these terms, although they are widely used with a variety of meanings in the home school vernacular today.  To see more on my definitions, for the purposes of organization of materials in Tapestry of Grace Curriculum guides, click on the purple "Philosophy" tab above.) 

Tapestry of Grace teaches you how to weave history together with art, music, literature, geography, government studies, church history, and the history of science to put everything in context.  

Question: How did we choose our divisions?

Answer: Many people have proposed varying divisions of the study of chronological history.  Each such plan has organizing principles behind it, and this plan is no different.  If you look at the periods of history covered by the 4-year rotation of Tapestry of Grace, you find:

Year 2: About 1400 year of history covered. (Fall of Rome through the Adams presidency)

Year 3: 100 years of history covered (the 19th Century)

Year 4: 100+ years of history covered (the 20th Century to the present day)

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Why do we devote two whole years of study to only 200 years of history?  Quite simply, because this curriculum is first "worldview driven" and second "High School driven."  Let me explain.

High School driven: the "meat" of a worldview is most often developed during the High School years.  Since most families want their children to finish high school in 4 years, it seems logical to allow the high school study pace to dictate the entire plan.  The focus of Grammar and Dialectic years is on first building basic "fact banks" and then on beginning to make thematic sense of those fact banks.  Since there is no definitive pace to this process, again, it seems logical to allow the needs of our high schoolers to dictate the structure/pace.

Question: Why is Tapestry arranged in a 4-Year rotation?

Answer: The reason I chose Tapestry to be arranged in a 4-Year rotation is twofold: one, following the idea of a classical education, in an ideal family, children are exposed to material on three successive levels over their school careers: the grammar stage, the dialectic stage, and the rhetoric stage. Two, if a student finds/uses for the first time Tapestry in High School, I want him to be able to get it all in.

You can easily make modifications to suit your individual family's needs!  

Question: Can we rearrange it?

Answer: Absolutely!  All the modifications listed below have been done by families I know:

• Chosen to use a half of Year 1: just doing Greece and Rome for a whole year.  They devoted 2 weeks' study to each Tapestry Week-Plan.
• Chosen to do just one rotation for their children under the age of 8th grade: they took 2 years to do each Year-Plan, again, devoting 2 weeks to each Tapestry Week-Plan.
• Chosen to enter the program in both Year 2 and Year 3.  Their children loved the program, and had no problem getting "on board" with the threads of history being followed.  Sometimes parents had to "bring students up to speed" by summarizing threads studied in earlier Year-Plans, but often these students had covered the basic historical material covered in earlier Year-Plans, and were ready to jump into a time period they'd not yet studied.

Because of the "family rotation" and where that rotation "hit" their younger students, many students end up studying Year 1 in their Junior or Senior years of High School.  These older students actually had a richer, more satisfying time studying the History of Redemption.  Why?  See more on this in our discussion below.

Below are some "real life testimonies" of ways other families have rearranged or adapted the Four-year Plan:

"I made the mistake of not slowly starting in with TOG from the beginning and after the first few weeks, we were all feeling blown out of the water with too much reading, too many projects and not enough *down* time. Even though we had been spending approximately 2 weeks on each TOG "week", we were feeling REALLY overloaded. The kids and I loved the curriculum but were just plain tired <g>. We decided that even with breaking up the amount of reading and spreading the projects out over the week, it was too much to fit both in everyday so we've begun rotating the reading with projects and that has made a BIG difference. This week, we begin week 7 and will spend it doing *all* of the history reading and "bookwork" (we're coming into TOG after 3 years with ***** so are used to doing a lot of reading anyway). Next week, we will have no reading to do so can spend all week long enjoying the projects. We will rotate this way all year. It allows the kids to have a break from all of the heavier work (so they don't burn out) and allows me a week with a little more free time (so I don't burn out!). We don't feel we're rushing as much to get through it all even though we're spending the same number of weeks as we were before. Just an idea for those of you with younger ones who need a lot of help with the reading and aren't yet able to do the projects independently."

"Thought I would just jump in here after following this thread. I taught the first half of year 2 last year also. I have 9th, 3rd, 2nd, and K plus two little ones. It was not at all difficult to spread each TOG week out over two actual weeks. We love history and in Year 2 there is so much to learn! It was exciting! We just were able to do more of the readings and the writing assignments. Each week in TOG has many possible assignments to choose from. It is not set up to do a certain reading each day. It really is up to each family how manyof the readings you do and when you do them. That is one of the beauties of TOG. It is also wonderful how everyone learns the same thing each week at their own level. My husband would come home from work and ask what everyone learned. They would reinforce their lessons by answering and listening to each other - kind of feed off of each other's answers and just go on and on about what we did that day. We watched videos for school together as a family, did some research, projects, etc. It was wonderful.

You mentioned the writing. I made sure each student wrote something each week. Sometimes it was from the student activity pages instead of from the actual writing curriculum. Also, sometimes I would intentionally spread a writing assignment out over more than the allotted time. I just made sure they kept working on it. Just depended on the individual student's abilities and what the assignment was. As long as we stayed in the general time period, it didn't matter if the assignment wasn't specifically assigned for that particular week. For example, a paper on Charlemagne could be worked on for more than one week during the Medieval time period, and even though we weren't still formally reading about Charlemagne, the material was fresh in mind and pertinent to the time period.

I hope this all makes sense. Keep asking if you have more questions!"

                                                                                                                Neva in OR

"I will jump in here also with my two cent's worth.  We have been using TOG Y2 since January and haven't found it a bit hard to "revamp".  Some weeks I thought there was a terrific amount of reading, especially for my 14 y/o boy, who is somewhere around 8th-9th grade and I was having him do the rhetoric most weeks.  Those weeks with a lot of reading, I would have him split some of the reading assignments (history, literature, or church history) and give him a week and a half to finish it.  Then we would take the next week and a half to do the next week, so in essence we were covering 2 weeks of material in 3 weeks of time.  It wasn't at all difficult.  As far as the writing, I would just increase the length of the project one week and give a shorter one (i.e. 2 paragraphs instead of 4) the next week.  Also, I usually assign the writing assignment the week after we had done all the reading, research, etc.  We incorporate Institute for Excellence in Writing and they do the key word outline one day, rewrite the paragraph, then dress it up, then a final copy.  For example, in week 12, we studied Columbus and the one choice for the writing assignment was to write a persuasive paragraph about "inspiration from the life of Columbus".  We would drop down and do the writing assignment for week 11.  The next week when we started our reading for week 13 about the later explorers, the writing assignment from week 12 was given.  It didn't seem at all cumbersome for me.  It is actually harder to explain it on paper (excuse me, screen) than it is to do it.

The beauty of the planned lesson plans is still there--I don't have to do all the work--I just make it work for me and it is less work than anything I have ever tired in my 14 years of homeschooling.  That's flexibility.  We are taking a few weeks break now and we finished up with a week of the study skills and essay test-taking skills while we took a week to finish up our math, analogies, read-alouds, etc.  It is working great.

Hope that encourages you--I used to be afraid to get out of sync with curriculum, but over the years God has set me free from that bondage and having my oldest off to college this past year, made me realize that it doesn't matter if you don't cover every tiny detail.  Believe me you can never cover it all--it's best to teach your kids to enjoy learning for themselves.  With 3 teenage boys in the house, I'm not sure I have accomplished that, but that was/is my goal.

                                                                                               In Christ,
                                                                                                         Linda in MT"

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Question: Is it possible to cover your four-year plan in three, or would that would be too overwhelming?

Answer: These are MEATY plans. You could cover the younger child versions in three, but if you've done Ancient World before, why not start in Year 2 and then repeat the cycle when your kids are older?

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Question: We have just completed American History studies up to the Civil War. Would you recommend beginning in Year 4 next year, or starting over for fourth grade with Year 1?

Answer: In general, however, we want people to be able to start using Tapestry at any Year-Plan. Remember, though they are numbered sequentially--1, 2, 3, and 4, and though it is nice to study all four years sequentially in a row, a lot of families have studied the ancient world with other curriculum plans, and are therefore eager to jump into the Dark Ages with Year 2, or the 1800s with Year 3.   A few, like yourself, will have a reason for picking Year 4 as their first Year-Plan .

Here is an excerpt from my Introductory Notes:

One thing to remember in advancing students, however, is the four-year rotation of this curriculum. It's designed such that you begin the whole family on the same year (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 or Year 4) at the same time, so that, for instance, all grades are studying Year 1: The History of Redemption. In doing this, you should determine the course of study for your oldest student first. However, since Tapestry of Grace is designed to be used by the entire family, your second or third child may not become a 9^th Grader in the year that the family is studying Year 1 again. So, you'll need to look ahead.

Let’s say that your children are entering 9^th Grade, 7^th Grade, and 5^th Grade this year. Your family begins Year 1, the History of Redemption (ancient world). You need to make a choice for your 7^th Grader. Either this student is a strong reader/writer and can do the 9^th Grade work as written and receive a High School credit for this year’s effort, or he should plan to do Year 1 at the middle year level and come back to this subject matter at the upper High School level in 11^th Grade. If he chooses the latter option, do not be concerned about the chronological historical sequence of his or her four-year sequence (i.e. 9^th Grade, Year 3, 10^th Grade, Year 4, 11^th Grade, Year 1, and 12^th Grade, Year 2). There are two things going on in the upper levels of this curriculum: mastery of factual knowledge (dates, people, and themes of the flow of History) and development of analytical skills (writing, reasoning, and thinking about our role in God’s plan). If this student studies the factual knowledge thoroughly from seventh Grade on, working for mastery, his understanding of the flow of God’s story will be unimpaired by an out-of-sequence approach.

All four years contain the same amount of practice with the forms of writing and thinking that belong to the older years. In this area, the historical material is merely grist for the intellectual mill. It will not matter so much what your student studies to develop these skills, so the "out of order" chronological nature of the 4 years of High School will not impair his development. This 7^th Grade student should work hard to master dates and personalities and themes of Years 1 and 2 but can do the reading and writing assignments given for the 7^th Grader. As the teacher, you’ll need to insist that this student do the index-card and time line work outlined in the curriculum, and be careful to include the 7^th Grader in thematic discussions with the 9^th Grader. The 5^th Grader in the above family would hit Year 1 in 9^th Grade, so there would be different issues for him. If the 7^th Grader is ready for High School level work in 7^th Grade, he should merely jump to High School level assignments in 7^th Grade, during Year 3. He will have the opportunity to re-visit this time period later, or he can do it thoroughly at this level and graduate High School early. This decision will depend on the child’s skill and maturity levels as he grows.

Students may actually benefit from taking Year 1, especially, in their 11th or 12th Grade years.  There are a couple of reasons for this:

• Being older, they'd had more chance to struggle with their world and themselves--more chance, therefore, to sense their need for God and identify with struggles addressed in the Bible.  The Bible Survey contained in this study was therefore more meaningful to them than it would have been if they'd encountered it in 8th or 9th Grades.

• If they've been studying with Tapestry, they've seen the multiple attempts mankind has made to find good and avoid evil apart from God's redemptive work on the Cross, and they've seen how it always ends in death and despair.  Such students are eager to revisit the foundations of our faith and drink deeply at the wells of God's wisdom, contained in his priceless Word.

• Older students have had more time to develop important reasoning and writing skills and are able to make profound connections about the world they live in and ancient times.  They are able to see past externals (culture, dress, housing, technology) and learn lessons about character and about the LORD.

To help yourself think out these "middle year issues", I suggest you make a chart such as the one below. (These are my children’s names, but these were not their ages. I just love their names!)

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