Frequently Asked Questions

site map | about us | ordering | home

Tapestry of Grace

An integrated, classical approach to educating your children.

Forum

Statement of Faith Calendar Fan Mail Form Co-ops FAQ Finding Books Samples Grammar-Aged Only One Child Only

Books: Why TOG chooses the books it does

Selected books from the Year 1 Plan as an example.

Questions about college admissions

Questions about scheduling

Questions about choosing and buying books for TOG

Sources for buying books: new and used!

Questions about teaching methods

Print a 5-page "Most Frequently Asked Questions" document

I only have Grammar Stage children. Is TOG right for me?

I only have one child. Is TOG right for me?

Read our thoughts about co-ops

Frequently Asked Questions

**Books: why Tapestry chooses the books it does:**

Question: While I would certainly agree that Usborne books are "real books", something I have been wondering is what type of books are there in addition to these?

Answer: Usborne books are, to me, the most interesting "type" of text book, or "spine book." They are real, but usually not in the way that I've always understood that term (which I *think* Charlotte Mason coined).

Question: With Sonlight we read a lot of historical fiction, which I can say we have found very enjoyable. When I think of a literature-based curriculum, it is that type of book that comes to mind. That may not be accurate but that is what I think of based on what we have used in the past. Are there books of this type included?

Answer: For the Grammar levels, this kind of book constitutes our "literature" selections. These would be simpler works written in the historical period we are studying, such as Greek or Egyptian myths, or simplified versions of the "great books," such as A Children's Homer or Black Ships Before Troy.

At the Dialectic-Rhetoric levels, we are truly reading what I would term the "great books" of Western Civilization: in Year 1 this means:

The Old Testament
Macabees
Selected New Testament books
Josephus (selections)
The Odyssey
The Iliad
The Aeneid
Plato's Last Days of Socrates
Greek Plays: Aeschylus, Euripedes, and Sophocles
selections from Aristotle

And more!

In Year 2, the list is dizzying: it represents a wonderful sampling of the literature of the period 450-1800. Included are the following:

Arabian Nights (selections)
Justinian’s Law code (selections)
The Koran (selections)
Beowulf
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (selections) (2 weeks)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Piers Plowman
Dante’s Inferno (selections) (2 weeks)
Thomas A Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ
Malory’s Morte D’Arthur (selections)
Cervantes’ Don Quixote (selections) (2 weeks)
Moore’s Utopia (selections)
Spenser’s Faerie Queen
Luther and His Critics (selections)
Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
Shakespeare’s sonnets (selections)
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew
Queen Elizabeth: The Doubt of Future Foes, On Monsieur’s Departure, Speech to the Troops at Tilbury and
Shakeseare’s Macbeth
John Donne and George Herbert (selections)
William Bradford’s Of Plimouth Plantation (selections)
Selections from Roger Williams, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet
Milton’s Paradise Lost (selections) (2 weeks)
Bunyun’s Pilgrim’s Progress (selections) (2 weeks)
Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (selections)
Ben Franklin’s Autobiography (selections)
Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Essay on Man (selections)
Molier’s Tartuffe
Rousseau’s Confessions (selections)
Political Sermons of the Founding Era (selections) (2 weeks)
DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (2 weeks)

Don't worry! We buy Norton's Anthologies for most of the above works, and the rest (all but one) are in the library!

(Return to the top of the page.)

Question: Are works of historical fiction generally scheduled to be completed in the week that topic is covered or if it is a lengthy book does it carry over into other weeks? I am thinking of books similar to Johnny Tremain, By The Great Horn Spoon, Witch of Blackbird Pond...can you tell what we've been studying?

Answer: All of these titles are included in suggested literature selections for Year 2, in the Grammar and Dialectic levels. We hope this allays fears of whether we are using "real" or "great" books, or too many Usborne books.

Now, for the next question, which I know will come: no, you don't have to read them all. And, YES, your average strong reader can really read the selections listed above in one year. FURTHERMORE, YOU, the busy mom, don't have to read them! Tapestry Year-Plans will provide worksheets for your kids, and if you either divvy up discussions in a co-op, or go to the library and borrow Mr. Cliffs' on each work, or just use the discussion scripts as written and wing it, your child will get TONS out of this reading list and (if he's like the kids in Maryland) love it!

(Return to the top of the page.)

Question: I am considering TOG but am concerned about reading book sections vs. whole books. I always encourage my children to complete the book they have started. Reading only a portion is contradictory to what I want to develop in my children.

Answer: In many cases, you have the choice of the full version or using Norton's Anthology based on our child's abilities/time constraints for several of the heavier literature selections, such as the Aeneid. That means you get to choose what is best for your family! The pace of Tapestry is dictated by a tension between two major goals:

A four-year survey of the Western Canon: history and literature. This four-year rotation serves primarily High Schoolers, and can be easily modified. See the Four-Year Plan page.
A desire to survey the breadth of the Western Canon, searching it for three things: what it is, what it says about mankind, and how it magnifies the glory and wisdom of God.

The works that Tapestry recommends selections from are those which we believe are better "tasted" than "consumed" because they are either lengthy, difficult, or archaic. Most selected works are sampled in the Year 2 plan. In Years 1, 3, and 4, most works are read in their entirety.

(Return to the top of the page.)

Question: Can you give us a selected list of books for Year 1?

While this program was first developed for moms who have some experience home schooling and have hit a stage in their family when multi-grade teaching is a must, I have also had calls from parents of children that are just starting school. These parents have no books on their shelves and have asked for my guidance on choosing a core of books to start the program. I have therefore developed a core list as a sample which I hope will limit no one and serve many.

Many people have contacted us to request a list of essential books they should buy for Year 1. We have been very hesitant to write such a list. We understand that people need to have some idea of how much the whole program will cost them, but it would be very misleading to come up with any particular list of books for any given family. Please read our philosophy (below) to find out why.

Marcia's "philosophy" behind the Resource List is as follows:

First, there was a strong reason why I did not choose one, established, set of books and have all readings and prepared question/answer scripts come off only those books. This reason is as follows:

Tapestry was first designed for the mom who has been home schooling awhile. As I've mentioned in other places, there’s lots of good stuff on the home school market for moms with one or two kids in K-3 (and Tapestry is one of them!). But, when you hit the stage where you have, say, a 5th grader, a 3rd grader, a 1st grader, and 2 more in pre-school, I found nothing out there that's easy to use, comprehensive, and academically satisfying. Some programs are easy to use (like workbooks) and comprehensive. Some are academically satisfying, but are arranged in grade-appropriate guides. As far as I could find, none were both for teaching true, widespread multi-grades.

As I began to put together something to share nation-wide, my heart was for you moms first. I wrote Tapestry to be what I would want if I were buying a program. Among my top goals were three that relate to book lists:

1) To create a unit study program that would be as inexpensive to use as possible, but not allow costs to be a controlling factor.

2) To create a program that had some flexibility, but not an overwhelming list of choices.

3) To create a program that made use of a library when a library was present, but also presented the option of buying books (currently in print and easily located) each week, in case the user was a missionary, or lived in a very rural area.

In order to fulfill those three goals, I wrote Reading Assignments that do require some time to sift and sort. However, in my mind, the time for making these choices would fall in the summer, or in vacation weeks between semesters, not during the busy week-to-week teaching schedule.

Here's how I fulfilled my goals listed above with relation to the book assignments:

1) Because I wanted to keep expenses for families down, I chose to list a few, commonly owned, text books (or overview books, or "spine" books).

Tapestry covers mainstream topics, not "backwater information." Different textbooks have different "flavors" or presentation order, but most contain the exact same information.
I did not want to overwhelm you with choices, so I chose my three-four favorites and provided page numbers for these. The textbook lines we use for Dialectic and Rhetoric levels are: Bob Jones University Press World History and United States History, Streams of Civilization, Volumens 1 and 2, and Western Civilization by Jackson Spielvogel.
But, you can use Kingfisher if it's on your shelf, even though I don't provide you page numbers! You won’t have page numbers all planned for you, but you WILL have topics listed for each week. To use these books, you will have the added effort of finding the section on "Egypt: the Nile" in Week 5.
I truly feel, though, that to ask moms who may have books bought and paid for to go buy a textbook that I arbitrarily chose as the "best" one is an unnecessary burden to finances.

2) "The letter (of the law) kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Cor 3:6)

Different people are going to love different sources. I don't feel it is serving other moms to dictate that they must use a certain set reading list.
It may be more comfortable for some to have a set choice of books to use, but I believe that the flexibility I allow will allow the Spirit of God to lead each mom to just the right books for her children (in terms of both cost and content).
Listing books in a "week-plan" format, rather than a day-by-day format allows families to schedule assignments when they're best for them!

3) Those of you who really like to use a great local library, or who really need to use the library for financial reasons, will find that if you go to call numbers I suggest in the Reading Assignment Charts, you'll find not only the books I chose, but others.

In some cases, the choices your library offers may be even better for your children than the ones I found in my library. For these reasons, library books are noted, and you can always see if your library (which may not have stocked the same ones mine did) has different books on the topic you are studying each week.
Then, for those of you who do live in remote areas (my friend Jayne uses Tapestry in Togo, Africa), the book list provides at least one book per week that is available, currently, in print.
My plan is to update the list each year so that this will always be the case!

We are in the process of building pages that will assist those who wish to purchase new books. To see our partially constructed pages for Year 1, please click here. To see partially constructed pages for Year 3, please click here.

(Return to the top of the page.)

Here are a few tips about looking at both the Weekly Reading Assignment Chart and the Resource List samples posted on this site. (Click on either underlined title to download the free sample chart or list.)

First, not all books in the Reading Assignment Charts are listed in the Resource List. These are books that I found in my library, but not in the Vendor Catalogs: they are not in print. I don't want this program to frustrate you by relying on out-of-print books, so I don't list such in the Resource Lists.
I keep to an established order to each week's Reading Assignment Chart listings. In each grade-level column:

--First, textbooks (or, overview books, or "spine" books) that are used during many, if not most, weeks of the school year, are listed in the Core History row.

--Next, books that are in print, and are listed in the Resource List are listed in the History Supplement section.

--Last, books that were in my library, but are not in the Resource List, are listed, usually in the "Optional" row. Again, these are valuable to you not only for the suggested title, but for the call number location. There, you may find other books like the one I list, if not the one I list.

Another tip about using the Resource List: the books are sorted first by weeks used, so if you're looking at Weekly Assignment Charts for Week 6, and want to know if it’s in the Resource List, there’s no need to search the entire Resource List time and again. There are only a couple of choices (besides the major text for the entire year) to choose from for Week 6.

Where can I buy books: new and used, online?

Click here for our recommendations.

(Return to the top of the page.)