Tapestry of Grace minimally-anyone else do this?

[Karie]

I have a 5th grader and 3rd grader. I'm looking at TOG, but it's too much. I'm thinking of just doing the reading, the geography, and the student pages. Is this enough? Would I be missing a lot not doing much else. Maybe we could do an activity periodically, but that's all I'm thinking. Anyone else do this minimally?

[siloam]

I have a 5th grader and 3rd grader. I'm looking at TOG, but it's too much. I'm thinking of just doing the reading, the geography, and the student pages. Is this enough? Would I be missing a lot not doing much else. Maybe we could do an activity periodically, but that's all I'm thinking. Anyone else do this minimally?

 

You can do as little or as much as you want. Generally here I read the LG out loud to my kids. I do cover both the history and worldview. They read the Lit books on their own once they are done with instructional reading programs. I assign them the mapping and vocab. I don't use the student pages at all. My oldest does some additional reading from the upper level books and from the In-Depth choices.

 

No you don't have to do it all. Are you missing out? Yes. Can your child have a well rounded education even if they miss out on the depth of TOG? Yes. Remember at the R level if you do something like more than 80% of the material it is considered AP. I love the idea of doing AP, who wouldn't? The reality is my kids have other interests that they will pursue, so we enjoy what we can of TOG and let go of what there isn't time for.

 

Heather

 

[laurad1125]

For us, it varies from week to week. We do what we can. One of the things I love about TOG is that there is so much that even I don't feel like I could do it all if we just worked a little harder. For me, the main appeal of TOG is the depth of teacher notes and discussion help for older students. It's why we started using it now, so I'll be more prepared once ds10 moves to the dialectic level.

[bethben]

We're having a busy year this year with an oldest son recovering from hip surgery and a new adopted daughter coming into the family. I decided to do TOG light. My ds 3rd grade ( a good reader) is reading all the books himself and I do assign the activity pages. We don't do any of the hands on activities at home and pick and choose the writing activities. It's a very simple year that way. I figure, at this age, I'm just exposing him to different material and getting him used to working on his own. We'll be using TOG more extensively as he gets older. We've got time...

 

One thing I did set up though was a co-op. I found 4 other families who were doing TOG and convinced them to do a co-op for younger kids. Each of us only has to plan 3 activities for the whole year and our kids get the activities every two weeks without much effort on any of our parts. Just a thought.

 

Beth

[Paisley Hedgehog]

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[houseofrabbits]

Last year was our first year using TOG and we did it "minimally". I view it as a large buffet and it is just not possible to do everything. This year we are going a bit more in depth with some of the art projects, the medieval feast, especially as we are co-oping with 2 other families - it makes those larger projects much easier. We will be revisiting these first two years of TOG again before my children graduate so I don't regret doing it "lightly" the first year as we adjusted to a new curriculum.

 

Liz