How to skip part of YR 1 so we can start YR 2 next year

[Sue in Texas]

I just found out about the TOG online courses and it sounds like an answer to prayer. We finished YR 4 this year and started back on year one after Christmas. We are on week 8 now.

I was going to pick up year 1 next year until I found out about the online courses. I think the best thing for my 9th grader this year is to put him in YR 2 next year in 10th grade and then he'll get through year 4 in 12th grade. We only have about 8 weeks left of this school year to finish year 1.

Do you have any suggestions about what unit and weeks to complete this year before starting at YR 2 next year?

I'm planning to finish Unit one and then do a few weeks about the rise and fall of Rome in Unit 4. Maybe Units 28, 31, 35 and 36 or something. My oldest will miss the Iliad and the Odyssey, but I guess I could have him read them sometime, or listen to them on tape or something.

I want to keep all of my kids together so, as the oldest starts the online course, I'll start the younger ones on YR 2 also, although I will miss finishing YR 1. We started TOG 5 years ago so we've been through all 4 years once. My other kids are 7th, 5th, 3rd, 1st and 2 yo this year so they will all go through the entire cycle at least once more.

What would be the best weeks in YR 1 to finish this year before moving to YR 2 next year?

Thank you for any help.
Sue

[Marcia]

Hi, Sue

The best-case scenario would be to have your student read a textbook/Usborne book (or some kind of overview book) on the entire history of the ancient world. You might use this book in a couple of different ways.

1. Use the summer ahead. Continue to do TOG Y1 in depth for the rest of your 8 weeks, and then have your son take up the survey book as light summer reading until fall.

2. Or, if you don't want to use summer months for any schoolwork whatsoever, then release him from TOG studies for the next 8 weeks and do the survey then, more heavily.

If you want all your kids on the same cycle (which I would recommend) you can easily pick and choose from the TOG curriculum and read aloud from Usborne books, do selected crafts, etc. either over the next 8 weeks or over the summer, whichever you choose for your eldest son. Covering the ancient world lightly will probably mean leaving off the Bible survey portion, but your younger kids will get that in the future and/or, again, you can narrate a lot of the content from gleanings from the Teacher's Notes.

HTH!

[Sue in Texas]

Marcia,
Thanks for replying.

As of right now, I've decided to finish YR1 Unit 1 and skip to Unit 4 so we can get in the Romans.

If I do that, I'd like to have my son catch up (or back up) during the summer and go over some of the history he will miss in Unit 2 and 3.

Do you think it would work if I have him read/listen to Story of the World? I'd have him listen to the Chapters that are in each week plan of the weeks that we miss. I could also have him read the Streams of Civilization for those weeks. Would that be enough?

However, I am really interested in your suggestion to have my oldest read a textbook/Usborne book on the entire history of the ancient world during the next 8 weeks. I would like to do that and have him read the Illiad and the Odyssey over the summer.

Do you have a recommendation for a textbook/Usborne book for the entire history of the ancient world?

How do you recommend that someone "surveys" a book?

Thanks for your help.

As an aside, I always wonder about the rest of the story...after you met your husband at the door and said, "this is where I stop homeschooling"... Then what happened? I feel like that almost everyday! How did you not only continue to hs, but you wrote TOG? Did you take some time off? Did you homeschool the next day?

Sue

[Sue in Texas]

I'm going to do a few weeks of Unit 2 about the ancient Greeks and then a few weeks in Unit 4 about the Romans. I'm planning on having him read the Illiad too.

I'd still like to have my oldest, especially, go over more of what we're missing.

Do you think he could do that with Story of the World? Is there a better book?

How does one "survey" a book?

Sue

[DanaCinTN]

Hi Sue,
Yes, you could have him read from Story of the World and Streams of Civilization. I'd also suggest reading (or listening to) as many of the Bible assignments as possible.

Really though, instead of jumping into Unit 4, I'd just spend a couple of weeks covering the material from Units 2 and 3. They set the stage for Jesus entering the world and help in understanding why He came at the time that He did.

When someone "surveys" a book or time frame, they hit the high points, but don't necessarily hit every nitty gritty detail.

Hope this helps some!

[Sue in Texas]

Thanks Dana,
You don't think I should do some of the weeks in Unit four about the Romans?

I am planning to cover the Greeks- week 13, then do some combining for weeks 24-27, then some more combining to do weeks 31-36.

I will relook doing more of Unit 2 and 3 to include the Bible. I LOVE year one because of the Bible portion! I will do some quick scanning of units 2 and 3 and see about your suggestion.

Once suggestion Marcia made was to skip the Bible and do the history more heavily, so I have 2 opposite suggestions. That is a good thing...showing there is no perfect solution. Barb Spanier made a great comment about doing what is best for my child.

Thanks

[Marcia]

Posted by Sue:

As an aside, I always wonder about the rest of the story...after you met your husband at the door and said, "this is where I stop homeschooling"... Then what happened? I feel like that almost everyday! How did you not only continue to hs, but you wrote TOG? Did you take some time off? Did you homeschool the next day?

Sue

Here's the full story, from an article I wrote for the Japanese homeschoolers I spoke to last fall:

One afternoon, late in October of 1995, I met my husband, Scott, at the door of our home as he came in from work. I walked up, gave him a kiss and a cheerful smile, and said, "Honey, here's where we stop homeschooling!" I then waited for his response.

I was serious about quitting. Though I had happily homeschooled my children (five of the six of them) for eight years, and though Scott's day job was as an attorney for homeschooling rights throughout America with HSLDA, the addition of high school courses for my two eldest boys and a sixth child in Kindergarten that fall had brought me to a place where I felt that I was harming my children to continue. I was an organized, competent homeschooler. And, as I say, we had loved it. I had given all I had to making the children's lessons both meaty and interesting over the years, while keeping my home neat and hospitable. My husband had given me a generous budget with which I bought quality educational materials. My children were well disciplined and eager students who loved me and loved to learn. Very little was wrong with our happy homeschooling family. So, why did I grow so discouraged in the first six weeks of that school year, to the point that on that October day I had come to a firm decision that we would quit homeschooling?

Part of it was my personal background. I was from New England, a region of America that values education highly. My father was a product of that culture, and I had been privileged to attend very good schools as a child and young adult. I went to a top-notch prep school in high school, and excelled. I loved the school: I loved to learn, I loved the challenge of the work, and I loved my successes in education. Most of all, I loved the history of ideas, and learning how they had so effected the course of history on our planet. As I raised and schooled my children during the early years, I had been eagerly awaiting the day when my eldest children would enter into high school, because I knew how much my own worldview had been formed during those years and I was eager to introduce my children to the challenging material that belongs to the high school years. We were going to read all the classics of Eastern and Western culture, and discuss all the challenges that philosophers and writers have mounted against Christianity. And I was going to have them wrestle with these materials and bring biblical interpretations to them so as to solidify the faith and knowledge of my Christian children as they saw that the Christian worldview held together when all others failed to deliver what they promised.

Such were my fond hopes and dreams. But, as the fall of '95 unfolded, I found myself so busy that I could not do what a team of high school teachers at my excellent prep school had done for me. I was so pressed for time that I began simply tossing works of great literature and thinkers to my oldest boys, along with the Cliff's Notes for each work, and saying, "Read the notes first, and then the chapters. Good luck!" I found myself only hoping that they would absorb something from the readings while I turned to help my 4th grader learn to write, and my new Kindergartener how to read. You see, as a homeschooling mother of six children, there really weren't enough hours in the day for me (a lone individual) to give my older children the good education that I knew to exist from my own upbringing, and that I had planned to give them for the eight years that I'd been working to prepare them for it. Or so I thought.

God often has solutions that we haven't yet discovered!

Scott listened to me as I explained that this was the end of our homeschooling years that October night. Scott is always a self-controlled man, and his response was measured. He put down his briefcase, and took off and cleaned his glasses as the silence hung between us like a curtain. He then quietly reminded me that his job as a homeschooling lawyer for HSLDA would probably end if we stopped homeschooling. My response was, “Well, that may be, but I’m not about to sacrifice the educations of my kids on the altar of your job.” And with that, I walked off to finish preparing dinner. It was not a high point in our marriage relations, and I'm not proud of my bahavior!



You’ve probably guessed by now that we didn’t stop homeschooling. Scott’s loving leadership was that we needed to pray this decision through, ask for counsel, and research the alternatives. Meanwhile, I had to keep going with the text book-oriented programs that I’d planned the summer before.



The next few weeks were tough: I cried a lot, prayed hard, and talked to as many older women as I could about how they had done high school. Because of Scott’s job, I was privileged to know personally such godly women as Vikki Farris (wife of Mike Farris, founder of HSLDA) and Elizabeth Smith (wife of the current President of HSLDA) among others.Through godly counselors and prayer, God began to reveal possibilities that I, alone in my own mind, had not previously imagined.



Vicki’s advice was to find what subjects I could teach and find classes for the rest of the subjects that I couldn’t teach. That made me sad. I didn’t want to farm out my kids to others to teach, but it got me thinking about what my strengths and weaknesses were, and where I might let go and let others do a better job than I could in teaching.



Elizabeth Smith filled me with vision for why it was so important to homeschool through high school. She wasn’t that focused on academics, though her two children had done well in colleges. She was all about discipleship and parenting in the high school years. Through her care, I received the God-oriented perspective that my older children needed our presence and guidance more (not less) in the crucial years of young adulthood, when some of their most life-shaping decisions would be made. I became convinced that homeschooling in the teen years would be more about discipleship and building a lasting bond of friendship with my kids than it would ever be about math, science, or foreign language studies.



Another godly lady in our church, Cathy, said to me one night, almost in passing, “You know, you don’t need to teach every subject every day.” I realized, as I mused on her words, that, in traditional High Schools, kids generally have three classes a week for major subjects, sometimes four. They can double up on independent assignments and then a teacher can lecture once or twice a week. That was a thunderously new concept to me: I’d spent years doing every subject every day. I’d been planning, implementing, correcting, and reteaching where necessary five major subjects times six kids: 150 core lessons per week, plus electives, and all from age-grade curricula that were designed primarily for traditional school settings. No wonder I couldn’t do it all!



Functionally, it was Vikki’s comment about teaching my strengths that set me onto the path of arranging all the humanities studies—which constituted my strengths—around the core of history studies. It was my history class at my prep school that had most fired my imagination as a high schooler, because it was really a study of worldviews. In fact, I was so deeply influenced by one history teacher at prep school that, when I went to Dartmouth College, history became my major. Now, I wanted that my kids to experience the same thrill when studying history from a Christian perspective.



As a Christian, homeschooling parent, I realized that history studies would be the main means of developing my kids’ worldviews. I knew that my burning desire, in teaching my older kids, was to equip them with the ability to answer those who would seek to undermine their faith with clever arguments or opposing beliefs once they left our home. All of the events and beliefs in human history were grist for the "thinking mill," because it was during these crucial high school years that my kids would each need to answer for themselves this one, most crucial question: "Who is God to me?" Tracing God’s hand and knowing His heart were the two most important elements that I had to get across to them. When it got down to it, Elizabeth Smith was right: everything else was window dressing as far as I was concerned.



Thus did God gradually put the pieces together for me. I saw that history was a hat rack on which I could hang all of the needed high school studies in the humanities. I was strong in history; I determined that I would teach that, and farm out math and sciences, where I was weak.



Once I made that decision, I realized that via a unit study approach, it was not very hard to associate lesser, related subjects that tied in to the historical eras at hand. I connected Geography, Art History, all our crafts, Literature, some major developments in the history of Science, and then added in a concentrated focus on Church History. All these were naturally interrelated, and I researched enough to set them in the historical context each week. Then, I used the public library and homeschooling catalogs to find books for all of my kids on the same basic topic each week.



Finally, I realized that I could put ALL of my children on the same weekly topics in the humanities, and thus unify the whole family on the self-same study. This meant that I, one person, had to prepare essentially one lesson each week for children on all levels. I could do that! Using whole books rather than text books to study these topics restored my sanity and made learning more interesting for my kids and—an added and unexpected bonus—unified us as a family. Suddenly, dinner with dad was a time when everyone was sharing their individual insights, fun facts, and experiences with the same basic content. It was exhilarating for all of us!



In those first months, I wrote my lesson plans on spare pieces of paper, napkins, and the family whiteboard, little thinking that I needed to keep any records of what I was doing. I was working for my own kids, attempting to use the grace and provision of God for me in my life to serve them to the best of my ability. And it was working. Our homeschool had new life, and I was actually enjoying teaching again. While my life was still demanding, it was doable again!



Fast forward about three years. I was growing weary of teaching again as my boys graduated from high school, and I faced another rotation with my second tier of high schoolers in 1998. Since I knew from teaching someone else’s child Latin that I gained an added boost when teaching the children of others, I decided to build in some accountability for myself in 1998 for the upcoming school year by forming a co-op, in which I offered to teach history and share my approach with a group of eight families. These eight families (and more who joined every year) then went through a four-year history cycle today, through which Tapestry of Grace became honed, expanded, formatted, and—surprise to me at the time—sold over the Internet as “Classic Tapestry of Grace.”



Fast forward now to 2010. Through many amazing adventures, here we are today: Tapestry of Grace Redesigned is finished, and is the result of 10 years of field testing, writing, proofing, and rewriting with what became over the years a local co-op involving 70 students! Added to these has been the feedback of thousands of families are using it throughout the world. I am humbled and amazed to see where God has taken me and our family as we were simply trying to be faithful to walk out our homeschooling vision to His glory.



God had answers for me on that October night. I could not have imagined what they were or where He would lead me. But He knew all along. If you are struggling with your decision to homeschool, and wondering how to do all that God seems to have called you to, please take heart from my story. It's a story of a loving Father who waits only for you to turn to him in true humility so that He can take you by the hand, show you the path, and help you every step of the way!

PS Not sure which Usborne books are still in print, but there are a number of text books (some listed as Alternates in TOG) that you can use. http://tapestryofgrace.groupee.net/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[DanaCinTN]

Hi Sue,
I didn't mean to imply to skip Unit 4 on the Romans. What I was trying to say is not to totally skip Units 2 and 3...they are the units to do a quick survey on so that you can jump into Unit 4 more easily, with more understanding.

One good book for a nice overview is the one we recommend for UG: The Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Which Bookshelf Central sells); it will very adequately cover lots of time frame in a format that will be a solid read for your student.

Blessings,