Moving Into New Territory

I have been thinking hard about the next two years of my son's grammar stage years. He is entering what would be his last year in a public elementary school and entering a middle school next year. Learning has certainly become a different thing in the last few months. Intellectually I can see the changes that are referenced by all the classical education gurus--he is moving from the grammar stage into the logic stage, what Dorothy Sayers refers to as the "pert" age--I'll say! Last year, we returned to CC after a year off and settled ourselves into a strong educational community. We also approached our studies in a much more systematic way. We enjoyed the content of CC's history sentences by building on it and giving it context at home. We did the memory work and fulfilled the requirement for Memory Master, which was a very rewarding experience, and pushed Matty to a new level of confidence. In thinking about next year, I was fine with the content that would be covered in cycle 3 of Classical Conversations, but I knew I would have to find a solution for the year after this. I had already looked way ahead into the Challenge years and decided that Challenge was not going to be a fit for our style of learning, so the "6th grade" year seemed a logical place to step out of CC.

I found myself praying to God for vision, but more than that, a plan. I decided to trust him to guide me to the thing I should be doing next, and I am so thankful that two days after that prayer for guidance the Lord spoke clearly to me. In a conversation with a friend, I was weighing out all the pros and cons of our situation, and I mentioned to her that I had always thought about Tapestry of Grace as an option for us...

Since Matty's first year homeschooling, I have been keeping an eye on the Tapestry of Grace (TOG) website, wondering whether or not that curriculum would be right for our family. I always seemed to resonate with their philosophy, and I certainly loved the title! A friend of mine had a year of it that she wasn't using and offered to let me look at it. It seems a perfect fit. Today I discovered this video put out by the author of TOG, and the way she lays it out makes so much sense to me.


Map of the Humanities from Tapestry of Grace on Vimeo.

So, to make the long story short, we will be using Tapestry of Grace Year 3 next school year as our core curriculum, beginning a four-year history cycle (as recommended in The Well Trained Mind). I have always wanted to take this approach, and the timing is perfect, as Molly will be entering first grade and Matty will be in 5th, completing the 4-year cycle in 8th grade.

Here's to a new chapter in our homeschooling journey!