HOTM Friday Meme - Your Favorite Curriculum

Welcome to the Heart of the Matter Online meme. Every Friday we will feature a different topic for our meme. ... please share with us your Favorite Curriculum or Books! With the new school year beginning it would be wonderful to hear why your curriculum works for you, new ideas you're looking forward to trying, or really great book ideas you would love to share.

I've written, before, about our adventures over the last few years with different curricula and different approaches. There are not many we stuck with over the course of the year, much less came back to the next year. This year is different, this year is our second year using Tapestry of Grace. I cannot say enough about TOG.

TOG is a classical, history-based unit study. It covers history, writing, geography, literature, fine arts, government, philosophy and worldview. There are 4 year plans; Year One covers Creation to 1000 AD, Year Two covers 1000 AD to 1800, Year Three covers the 1800's and Year Four covers the Twentieth Century.

"Grades" are divided by the trivium. The trivium is simply explained as the three stages of learning. The grammar stage is learning the basic facts. The dialectic stage is connecting those facts. And the rhetoric stage is being able to communicate the subject. TOG has divided the grammar stage into lower and upper. Lower is generally first through third grades, upper is fourth through sixth. Dialectic would be the middle school years and rhetoric is basically highs school. It should be noted that those are not hard and fast rules, you place your student where he learns best.

TOG utilizes lots of great books, rather than text books. I have our main books on a Shelfari shelf in my sidebar. It does require a bit more teacher preparation than your standard out of the box curriculum, though. I read the teacher's notes on Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday night, I have a planning meeting with each of the boys. I order library books Friday morning for two weeks ahead. Once you get into the groove, it becomes second nature.

I love that TOG encompasses all of world history in every year plan. Sometimes, we homeschoolers get stuck in a US history rut and are unable to get out. US history did not happen in a vacuum and TOG helps bring all the peices of world history together.

The other thing that has made such a huge difference in our homeschool is the writing component of TOG. Teaching writing to three boys was enough to make me want to throw in the towel. And I was bouncing around writing curricula like a pinball. TOG teaches writing incrementally. Every week the writing assignment is about what they've read. For instance for my younger boys (I have them on the same writing level) were learning about pre-writing this week. Our reading was about Teddy Roosevelt. So, they did some graphic organizers with facts about TR. Which brings me to TOG's new writing handbook, Writing Aids. It covers all levels of writing, has teacher and student notes, GRADING rubrics (how many times have you said that you don't know how to grade your child's writing?) and graphic organizers (another huge + for us.)

We love maps. The boys will sit and look at the big wall maps, the globe and atlases for hours. Love 'em! TOG and Knowledge Quest have partnered to create MapAids,  CD-Roms of maps for each year plan. No more searching the internet for just the right map.

If you will take a look at my sidebar, you will see our education philosophy. Under history is says that it "reveals God's interaction with man." TOG has been the perfect product to guide us through understanding God's hand in the affairs of men.