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   Tapestry of Grace

                                                        An integrated, classical approach to educating your children.

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  Why "Tapestry"?

Our thoughts on:

Elementary Years

Middle Years

High School Years

Grace-Centered  Schooling

Who really IS the best teacher for my kids?


How do I teach all my kids at once?

Teacher Development

Philosophy of Education: Middle Years (Grades 6-9)

Spiritually, the middle years are crucial. It is likely the time when your child makes the decision about whether or not your God is truly his God. Unless your child is manifesting a love for God and His Word, you cannot assume that acquiescence to all church-related family activities is saving faith. Look, in these years, to see your child reach out and grab hold of a living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Until this is a reality, continue to grab every opportunity to preach the gospel to your adolescent child!

Academically, there are basically two paths for Middle School students: the choice depends on the child, and how far he has come in the Elementary years. One course is to launch immediately into High School level work, and the other is to use these years to solidify skills not completely learned in Elementary years. Most home taught middle-graders are strong readers; Tapestry’s middle school assignments assume a strong reading ability. If the student has not become a strong writer, or if he needs more general knowledge of History and Science topics typically covered in Elementary years, then middle-year students will follow this curriculum as it is written. The suggestions for middle school assignments are given for this type of student. Because Tapestry provides assignments for all grade levels, moms with delayed readers can simply choose assignments in lower levels, or perhaps read aloud particularly challenging material. The books this program recommends at each level will benefit younger children at all reading levels if read aloud. If your child is a slow, or tactile learner, this program has lots of hands-on projects suggested so he can learn and be successfully.

Some students are ready, at age 12, to begin High School level work. Any student who successfully masters High School level work can receive a High School credit for that work. It does not matter how old the student is. If your student is advanced, simply have him do the work listed in the High School assign-ment columns. He can mix and match: High School level in strong subjects, Middle School level in weaker ones, and still get High School credit for High School work.

For many students, some of their subjects will fall into the first category and some into the second. It is not uncommon, for instance, for a 7th Grader to be taking pre-algebra and doing High School level History and Literature. The same student may take 7th Grade to focus on building writing skills that could have been learned in 5th-6th Grade (such as research skills) while learning writing forms (such as essay writing) that belong to older grades. Whatever your student's strengths are, this curriculum will present assignments that he can use. The assignment column "levels" are set at those that I found my children (and the children I've taught this material to in co-op situations) capable of doing. If you guess wrong in the opening reading or writing assignments, it will be easy to switch (up or down) as you go.

Discerning parents must make the choices in this area. Since most students have areas of strengths and weaknesses, it is not surprising that students can work at different levels at the same time. Many parents are unaware that Middle School students can earn High School credits, and that traditional curricula present very little new material during these years. Once you know these facts, you can be released to allow your student to use these years to solidify weaker skills, while allowing him to advance in stronger skills.

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Unique aspects of this curriculum: planning ahead pays off!

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 Tapestry Year-Plan (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 or Year 4) at the same time, so that, for instance, all grades are studying Year 1: The Ancient World. Ideally, you should determine the course of study for your oldest student first. Ideally again, a student will begin Year 1 in 5th Grade. However, since Tapestry of Grace is designed to be used by the entire family, your second or third child may not become a 9th 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 9th Grade, 7th Grade, and 5th Grade this year. Your family begins Year 1, the Ancient World. You need to make a choice for your 7th Grader. Either this student is a strong reader/writer and can do the 9th 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 11th Grade. If you choose the latter option, do not be concerned about the chronological historical sequence of his or her four-year sequence (i.e. 9th Grade, Year 3, 10th Grade, Year 4, 11th Grade, Year 1, and 12th 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 7th 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 7th 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 7th Grader in thematic discussions with the 9th Grader. In the end, this decision will depend on the child’s skill and maturity levels as he grows.

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

In this family, the parent-teachers might decide on several courses of action, depending on the children. Mike, if he were a strong reader/writer, would probably skip 12th Grade and finish High School a year early. If this was the family’s first year, and he had a weak Elementary background, he could plan to use 8th Grade to review and strengthen basic writing and math skills, while learning the themes, timeline, and historical figures thoroughly.

Christy, depending on her strengths, will probably need to put in extra work on understanding at least the vocabulary of the themes and flow of HIStory, but can stick to age-grade reading/writing assignments. She need not spend lots of time on memorizing people or dates, because she’ll get a second chance at all the years but year 4. But because Tapestry builds to a climax in Year 4, she’ll need to have more awareness of themes and flow than the other younger children do in this family. Christy's family could also decide to "recalibrate" by using the summer after her 9th Grade year to do an abbreviated Year 1 for 10 weeks, and then start Year 2 in 10th Grade.

David, if even an average student, could finish High School at home a year early, or take extra time on extracurricular subjects (such as music) that interest him. Since he will have had 2 passes at world History, and the chance to develop both a solid writing/reading base and a chance to hone his analysis skills, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t graduate early. He can review the 20th Century on his own if he so desires after he leaves the home school.

Charity should also be given strong emphasis on themes and flows in 7-8th Grades so that her 9-10th Grade years will make sense and have their full impact. She, too, depending on her gifts, could graduate early... by 2 years! She has 4 years before the middle years to develop a strong reading/writing base. Alternately, if her skills were weak for some reason, she could, like others, do her reading and writing assignments at grade level and be attentive to theme/flow in 7-8th Grades. An alternative to repeating just Years 1-2 in her 11th-12th Grade years would be to do a focused study on just the literature and worldviews of all 4 years. Thus, she’d focus in 7th-10th Grades on mastering historical facts at the older levels (which are easier than the philosophical/ theological/ governmental materials), and then in 11th and 12th, she’d do much less historical reading and dive into great depth with the worldview-oriented assignments. Using this plan, she’d cover Years 1-2 in 11th Grade, and Years 3-4 in 12th Grade, independently.

Marjorie is in the ideal position to get the most out of this curriculum. She will review world History three times, at three different levels. The first time, she'd do a minimal amount, since her foci would be phonics, spelling and basic math. The second time, she'd retain much more of the factual content. The third time, she'd solidify her worldview into a cohesive whole, soundly based on Biblical interpretation and deep reading of the classics.

One final word about Jr. High aged students: if your oldest student is NOT ready to start at the High School level, and especially if your oldest student has recently studied the material in Year 1 or 2, please consider starting this curriculum with whatever year makes sense to you. For instance, in the example chart, if Mike was our oldest child, and we’d recently done ancient or medieval history, I’d probably start our family with Year 4 in 8^th Grade! I’d NOT focus on the flow/themes (since all the students will get them again), but instead I’d make the year’s HIStorical content one that focuses on the twentieth century "interest stories". Youngers and middles would focus on newspaper articles, current events, modern world geography, and major figures/events of the twentieth century. Then, the next year, I’d hit the ground running with Ancient History.

Another, totally different but highly effective approach is to use the "8-4 Plan." This curriculum runs at quite a pace! The pace is necessary to serve High Schoolers, fitting all of world history and literature into four years. If you are just starting home schooling, and your children are all young, it might benefit you to spend eight years on the first rotation of this curriculum. Thus, you'd take two weeks to do each planned week of the curriculum. The reading pace would be slower, and you'd have more time for activities. Then, when your oldest child hits the High School level, you can accelerate the entire family up to the "normal" speed. Again, this approach will take advanced planning, looking ahead to where the children will be in coming years.

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Learning Stages and Appropriate Goals For Them:

The Dialectic Stage

Reviewing from the Grammar Stage article, in case you've just jumped straight to this page, we said:

Dorothy Sayers (a friend of C.S. Lewis's), wrote an essay on education called the Lost Tools of Learning in 1947.  She explained how our medieval ancestors taught their children, identifying their system of education was well designed for the three different learning stages, through which all children go.  Medieval children learned the basics in the "Trivium" (from which we get our word "trivial").  The "basics," in those days, were "grammar" (learning to speak Latin), "dialectic" (learning to debate in Latin), and "rhetoric" (learning to move hearts and minds [perusade] in Latin).  

• Sayers argued that children in the elementary grades are especially good at memorizing things, and not ready yet for true analysis.  She called this the "grammar" or "parrot" phase, and pointed out that all subjects have a "grammar" or basic vocabulary that young children are amazingly well-suited to learn at young ages.  

• As children grow, they lose interest in memorization for its own sake; instead they begin to question everything.  What they want to know is how things connect to one another.  Sayers called this the "dialectic" or "pert" phase.  I call it the "Ohhhhhh!" phase.

• Finally, when children begin turning into young adults, their hearts turn towards the meaning of life.  She called this the "rhetoric" or "poet" phase.  In this phase, mature people are able, when fully trained, to analyze and synthesize; to break down complex situations or ideas into component parts, and then rearrange them in new combinations that are sometimes better!

The Dialectic Stage (6-9): this, as Miss Sayers pointed out, is the stage of "connections"—the "how does it work, or relate?" phase. 

• If your Dialectic Stage child will be able to go through a given Year-Plan again, focus on maps and time line work, and broad, major thematic connections during the discussions of his reading.  

• If this is his last pass through Year 2, you need to help him, through discussion, make more minor connections between concepts and events as well.

The discussion scripts will guide you through this process if you are new to this material yourself, but be assured that if you are a Biblical Christian, helping your child make thematic connections is delightful. Since Tapestry of Grace is K-Mom, you will learn a lot, but you will not be overwhelmed. Here are some general guidelines for discussing material with students in the dialectic stage:

• Begin to train your student to use analytical tools and methods to organize data and compare concepts or events. (This means study charts. Many will be provided in Student Activity Pages but students should be encouraged to construct their own simple charts in their notebooks whenever charts will best serve them.)

• Constantly ask your student: how does this (event, theme, type) relate to that (event, theme, type)?

Here is an example of a major theme for Dialectic students to latch on to. 

A major thread, running all the way through Tapestry of Grace, is the tension between cultures that exalt God (and His Son) and those that exalt man (and his reason).  

• The pagan nations that existed for thousands of years before Christ demonstrate that men, though they could have known God's power and attributes and worshipped Him for them (Romans 1:18-32), preferred their own reason and understanding of deity. 
• Since the coming of Christ, men have often attempted to use the temporal power of the Church for their own glorification. 
• They have also often denied Christ's rightful place as the King of all the Earth, and have sought to rely on human strength, reason (philosophy) and knowledge (science). 
• Though many times such self-reliant, man-glorifying individuals sincerely sought the betterment of mankind, the results of human self-reliance always reaches to all aspects of society and government, resulting in oppression, totalitarianism, and death. 
• By contrast, the earthly results of seeking first the Kingdom of God are life, peace, personal liberty, and often, prosperity. 
• Since this theme runs broad and wide through all of the tapestry of time, you can seek to draw attention to it in virtually every discussion you conduct.

To sum up: through reading, writing and discussion, you will help your Dialectic level student begin to understand both obvious and subtle patterns and threads in God's tapestry, at a level appropriate to his age, and help him to form a life-long habit of making connections between facts and themes.

Continue on to the Rhetoric stage.

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