How do YOU do TOG?

[lovinmomma]

How does your family do TOG? How do you tweak it? What do you make it work for your family? What does it look like for your family?

 

I realize that there will probably be a very wide array of answers to this question and that is what I'm looking for. :001_smile:

[specialmama]

We have our meeting after lunch on Fridays and pencil in our entire following week, and I assign all the reading then too. Reading is done Friday night through Sunday for those subjects that it must be. Other books that don't pertain to any assignment forthcoming can be read during the week. Mondays are for maps and timelines. Tuesdays are for SAPs and pre-writing. Wednesdays are first-draft writing and activities. Thursdays are final draft writing and continuing activities and/or fine art. Fridays are a finish everything day, and back to our meeting to arrange next week! I very rarely do vocabulary, and I let my dd choose which activities she would like to do during our meeting, that way I have all weekend to gather supplies if we need them.

 

This is the first year we are having our meetings on Fridays with reading on the weekend. It is working out WAY better than I anticipated! I wish I had done that last year! It saves (for Upper Grammar) about 4 hours during the school week! This is also the first year we're actually staying on track as far as weeks go. The last two years we did 2 units each, either stretching a week plan into weeks, or having the occassional week off TOG. It worked for us. I love tweaking. I'm a tweaker. ;) Tweak tweak!

[Karenciavo]

I have a post on my blog.

[Rhonda in TX]

We'll be starting D level history after Christmas, so we're not doing the history questions yet.

 

I break up the readings over the week, trying to finish everything by Thursday. Fridays are for finishing the literature worksheet and timeline work. We use the History Scribe notebook pages throughout the week for written narrations. For activities, I'm trying something new this year. I made up a system of activity points. The link is to a blog post I wrote explaining it. I've had mixed results so far, but I'm sticking with it.

[Quiver0f10]

On Friday I make copies of the reading assignments, highlight the books and pages they are to read. I put sticky notes on each book with the pages marked. These got onto a shelf specifically for TOG books in use. I give them their SAP, maps etc and we briefly go over they week to come.

 

For my D level students, On Monday they read core and some lit, Tuesday in depth, some lit and answer the SAP questions. Wednesday they do map, lit, church reading/questions and research one person from the people to know section. Thursday they finish lit/answer lit worksheet and finish any work that needs finishing. Friday we have our discussion and they give an oral report of the person they researched. When we are done they get the next week's papers. Most of the time they do some reading over the weekends, but I stopped assigning it and just give them a M-F schedule as some weekends are too busy.

 

With my two LG students, we are using SOTW as our spine and I read those pages on M W F, doing map work as we come across it. On T and Th we do any other books assigned. I keep their TOG week very simple.

 

I don't assign activites but we have some of the activity books and they can do them as they wish.

Edited November 2, 2009 by Quiver0f10

[siloam]

How does your family do TOG? How do you tweak it? What do you make it work for your family? What does it look like for your family?

 

I realize that there will probably be a very wide array of answers to this question and that is what I'm looking for. :001_smile:

 

First I choose what books I want to use, then I schedule them into daily reading portions if I am reading it aloud. This method often results in our reading taking longer than a week. :D

 

On a daily basis I read to them while they eat their lunch, they map a couple places a day, my oldest does timeline work, the oldest two vocab work, and they read their literature daily during their reading time.

 

I have been told I use TOG in a SL way, LOL! Makes sense given I started out with SL. My oldest is doing quite a bit of reading of her history this year, but my 2nd dd isn't the reader she is, so I am not sure she will ever get away from my doing the majority of the reading for her. Who knows it might happen, it just isn't happening now.

 

Heather

 

[profmom]

I have 1 UG & 1 D. Let's see....

 

My D student has a binder with these items tabbed by week:

~ Weekly overview

~ Weekly reading schedule

~ D history & church history questions

~ Literature worksheet

~ Timeline figures (which I print from Google searches and easily get behind on, especially if I don't get them finished during the summer -- we moved in July!)

 

My UG student has a binder with these items tabbed by week:

~ Weekly overview

~ Weekly reading schedule

~ Literature worksheet

 

My kids schedule their reading into daily chunks. We're not using TOG for geography this year (because we're doing a world overview this year instead). I meet with each child once a week to discuss the literature worksheets (current & look ahead to next week), literary terms, and D history questions. I plan to incorporate a bit more memory work into our history, which we'll do together -- a skeleton timeline, etc.

 

Our weeks run M-F, but anything not finished by Friday is homework over the weekend.

 

That's basically it!

[LanainMA]

I have two D students but one of them is just easing into D work. We are now beginning our week on Thursdays. (We didn't start out this way.) I print out maps, geography assignment, and the D questions and we read the intro to the week together after Wednesday discussion. We split up the reading and questions over four days, Thursday-Tuesday with discussion/timeline and Church history on Wednesday. My oldest writes out answers to AQ's and passes them in and only makes notes in her notebook about the TQ's. At present, my youngest fills out the UG history reponse pages instead of questions. Friday is geography day. Lit is just spread out over the 5 days with one day usually reserved for the worksheet and a discussion at the end of the book.

 

We have done a couple of the evaluations and I hope to use them a bit more as we find what works for us.

[tonya in sc]

but here goes:

I have UG-R kids. The UG and D kids are given their assignments daily in workboxes. It makes them accountable without overwhelming them. We have been struggling with these 2 finishing work, and this setup helps. The 2 Rs are given their entire week's assignments on a sheet, and they figure out how to break it up into daily chunks in their planners.

We do some things together every day:

Monday - map and geography work. I like them to have an idea of where all the places they read about actually are beforehand. I also read the Introductory information to them very first thing.

Tuesday - borrowed the Tuesday Tea idea from bravewriter.com. We get together first thing in the morning for coffee and pastry and I read their fine arts material to them. They then pick out a poem or two to read aloud, and explain why they chose that poem.

Wednesday - web links posted on the Loom. Lots of good info here.

Thursday - I help them with their SAP questions and literature worksheets.

We discuss on Friday.

 

My tweaks:

I don't do TOG writing. My kids are VERY weak in this area, and we are remediating.

I make the kids identify the people listed in the week plan using the people glossary on the Loom. They must type out the information, not just copy and paste.

I write out the timeline information exactly as listed in the overview, leaving blanks for the kids to fill in. For example: 1922 _______________ secures dictatorial powers in Italy. Or ____________ (date) Coolidge is President. They file the sheets in their notebooks.

On busy weeks, we don't discuss. I give them the week's Evaluation to fill out, and they can use their books, but no internet.

For government, they just look up the information about the referenced material online, and find the answers to the SAP questions.

Hth, and wasn't overkill...=-)

 

Blessings,

tonya

[momee]

I've gone back and forth so much I don't know that I'm any help.

Here's what we DON'T do now -

 

Preplan the whole year over the summer (too much comes up, ideas change, kids loose interest, gain interest), this also is expensive and I realized I don't have to buy all the sources at once (why it took so long to figure that one out, I don't know)

Now I take it one unit at a time, look at what library has, what we have on hand, search Netflix and make a list of books we'll need, then if money allows, buy from Bookshelf. No moola, which is usually, search the alternate lists to find substitute or look for used (my least fav. option).

 

Print out a notebook.

This now happens one unit at a time, depending on my children's reading ability and their progress in keeping up with all the work that goes with that level. Middle Ages is tough reading on some weeks and printing a bound notebook to change worksheets is frustrating when you find the book is too hard.

I print each subject's stuff and put in file folders - geography listing and maps for ug, lit worksheets dialectic, overview sheets, etc. stuff my kids need copies of as they do their weekly work.

 

Make a long detailed assignment grid only to have to change it. (THIS is my biggest time waster in years past.) Every Sunday afternoon/evening or if a bad week, Monday morning, I would have to sit down and decide which stuff goes in what grid, how many pages to read each day, etc.

Now I use this ug dialectic assignment chart (the Word side of the choices let's you modify it)

http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/loom/year-all/assignmentcharts.php

and let my kids do their own planning! Again, why it took so long to do so, I don't know. Control freak I guess. Makes life MUCH simpler. Even the 8 year old can do it.

 

Hunt and stress over the exact book. No more worries. I adapt the worksheets if we have to sub a book or make a line through the question if it's not addressed in the reading choice we settle on. It is very expensive to be tied to specific rec's for books, money necessitates we no longer HAVE to have TOG rec's. It's nice, the books are wonderful, but a sub will suffice most times.

 

No longer add in a bunch of other curricula. Using Marcia's program and adding in Susan's rec's. What about Sally's art and Lisa's music? It gets to be too much. We dropped WWE and exclusively use TOG WA. That in itself saved me time. It's all in the same spot and using TOGs recs brings into play how much work TOG is. Make sense? If you're using a history intense program and a writing intense program (CW) and an intense spelling program, and an intense literature style, it's pretty intense for mom and the kids. We stopped a vocab program and actually do TOG's vocabulary. Math, latin, grammar, spelling, science and bible study are all I have them do other than TOG most weeks.

 

I also stopped thinking my children couldn't handle stuff that they really could with a bit of help. My 8 year old is doing wonderfully at the ug level (the history is tough so we read that together) and my 6th grader is thriving with the challenge of dialectic. She is a much better worker than my older son was, so this go round is a snap. She actually wants to do the work (resulting in a very differnt homeschool experience that's for sure) so this may need to be considered when choosing how much of TOG to do. If your child isn't highly motivated, lit and history may be all that happens in your home. Looking at someone's blog of how they do EVERY unit celebration with homemade costumes might make you feel a bit inferior :)

 

Hope this rambling helps. I've tried so many different ways, I know so much about how others use it, only to realize I know what's best for our family after all :tongue_smilie:. I've made at least 10 different styles of weekly work grids to find out Marcia actually knew what she was talking about when she said teach the kids to schedule their own work.

 

Enjoy the ride!

Edited November 2, 2009 by momee

[Mom22ns]

We'll be starting D level history after Christmas, so we're not doing the history questions yet.

 

I break up the readings over the week, trying to finish everything by Thursday. Fridays are for finishing the literature worksheet and timeline work. We use the History Scribe notebook pages throughout the week for written narrations. For activities, I'm trying something new this year. I made up a system of activity points. The link is to a blog post I wrote explaining it. I've had mixed results so far, but I'm sticking with it.

 

Rhonda,

I looked at your blog and I have a question. Can they get points for reading or activities that combine? In other words, can they do either one, extra reading or activities?

 

This is an interesting concept for me because I was planning on my younger doing activities while my older added in extra reading assignments (catering to the way each child will absorb more information). I like assigning each points so that they can see the totals equalling out when they are doing different things.

[Rhonda in TX]

Rhonda,

I looked at your blog and I have a question. Can they get points for reading or activities that combine? In other words, can they do either one, extra reading or activities?

 

This is an interesting concept for me because I was planning on my younger doing activities while my older added in extra reading assignments (catering to the way each child will absorb more information). I like assigning each points so that they can see the totals equalling out when they are doing different things.

 

The idea is that they need to accumulate a certain number of points in each area, but after that, they can earn the rest either way. So, they need 7 points in activities, but after that, they could earn the rest in reading if they want. Make sense?