Optimize Time

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Tapestry of Grace

An integrated, classical approach to educating your children.

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Statement of Faith Production Calendar Samples FAQ Fan Mail Form a co-op! Science Readings Finding Books College and TOG

What does TOG Cover?

--Supplements to Tapestry:

what else will I need?

Products we Recommend

The 4-Year Plan

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

Planning Aids for the Busy Mom of Multi-grade Students

--What's a Year-Plan?

--Putting your time to its most optimal uses

--Walk me through a weekly planning time

Costs

--Buying and selling books, new and used.

--Cost-cutting ideas

Should I start a
co-op?

Miscellaneous Questions

Like all moms, you need to optimize your teaching time!

The Tapestry of Grace plan seeks to optimize your time. Recognizing that you are only one person who must not only educate children on a variety of learning levels but run a household, Tapestry seeks to help in these specific ways:

The central feature of Tapestry of Grace is that all the children in your home will study the same period of history at the same time, but on their own learning levels. In terms of optimizing your time, this means that you, as teacher, need only prepare one topic per week!
Tapestry offers pre-planned lessons for 4 levels of study. You can use Tapestry plans as written, collecting solely the resources we recommend, or modify it to varying degrees according to your family's needs and strengths. (For more on modifications, click on 4-Year Plan or Choosing Books.) Using these plans cuts your planning time significantly, freeing you to do actual teaching!
Teacher's Notes: these are "cheat sheets" for you! They seek to summarize the main points of each week's topic. Your children will read about the week's topic in detail. You will read a summary that points out for you the main ideas of the week, and provides a discussion script of those main ideas for your use with Dialectic and Rhetoric level students.
Because Tapestry integrates history readings, literature, writing, geography, and hands-on activities, we find that students feel they are truly understanding what they are studying from so many angles. Because we train them to chart their own work from the Tapestry plans, we find they truly begin to "own" their studies. As they grow in this direction, much of the burden for motivation and accountability are lifted from your shoulders.
Older students are especially independent: in a typical week, for Tapestry subjects, they will read most of Monday and Tuesday, discuss the lesson in detail with you on Wednesday, and then write independently until Friday, when you will help them polish their writing and discuss their Literature assignment. The time that you're not with older students is yours to use, either for necessary lessons with younger children, or housework, or service in other areas!
Record keeping is made simple in the Tapestry plan! Even very young students are trained to fill in a chart that plans their week. As they walk through their week, they check off completed assignments. At the end of the week, you file their charts as a record of the completed work. (This same process is carried on in planners for older children, since they often have other appointments--like church events, babysitting, or sports practices--to schedule as well. All of this organizational planning trains your children in time management: the more skilled they are, the less you have to do!) Read more details about growing independent learners below!

Growing Independent Learners the Tapestry Way:

Each week, sit with your students as they make their own daily lesson plans under your supervision. This will, over time, train them to own their work!

With training, this planning time will get shorter and shorter, and your students will become more and more independent learners who own their work since they make their own assignments!
- Some people use published planners, some make assignment charts that are tailor-made to their students' subjects.
- Whatever form you use, there should be room to plan the work, and then record that assignments are done (and for High Schoolers, how much time it took to complete!).
- On Sunday night or Monday morning, students sit with the supervising parent to fill in their entire week from Reading, Weekly Overview and Writing Assignment Charts.
- Then, as they go through their week, day by day, they check off their work.
Parents file these forms each week, or store the planner at year's end.
For High Schoolers, at the end of the year, total times and assign credits! 150 hours = 1 HS Credit!
Click here to see/print a generic, form-version for younger children is provided in .pdf (printable) form. You can this form as your only record-keeping system for non-High Schoolers (who need a spot to record their times), filing them under each student's name, since the assignments they refer to will be kept (for future reference) in your Teacher's Notebook.
We recommend teaching Dialectic level students (and up) to use a planner (paper or computer!) to plan not only their school work, but their other commitments (babysitting, lessons, meetings at church) as well. The ability to plan and manage time is one of the best lessons we can teach our older home schoolers!

Print a sample schedule and set of answers to frequently asked questions.

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