On TOG from the how do you choose curriculum thread...

[LillianinAL]

We have always used Sonlight, from PK through Core 4, which we finished last week. I love SL, love my box, all the books, know how to use it, etc. I'm all set to do Core 5 next year, (supplementing down, plus PK, or with Core 1 and PK also), but for a number of reasons, I think TOG would be a better fit for my family overall. Our dc are 11, 10, 8, 7, and 4. I'm glad I have the background of SL, plus we did SOTW 1 and 2 with Cores 1 and 2. I also have most of the early Ambleside books, since I supplemented SL with AO for my oldest in the early years. I think I'm ready to plan what would be best for us, instead of following the Instructor's Guide. I think with SL, I tend to be more involved in finishing the books for the day/ week/ year instead of teaching and enjoying my children. I love learning along with them and want the learning and loving atmosphere of our home to grow. I also want a more integrated, reformed biblical worldview plus all the great critical thinking and discussions of TOG. And I want to challenge each child appropriately on their level while staying on the same topic.

 

I still have some lingering TOG questions... One thing I love about SL is its international focus, where you learn about all parts of the world. TOG seems very heavily focused on the West, especially America. Is that a correct perception? I could just buy some SL books for them to read for fun from Core 5. Any thoughts?

 

I'm not sure I like the yearly divisions of history. I prefer the WTM divisions for the 4 year cycle. Year 1 is fine, Year 2 covers a LOT, and Years 3 and 4 are only one century each. How do you compensate for that?

 

I'm not sure if we would do TOG writing the first year. Either we'd do Abeka Grammar or R&S with the 5th and 6th grader with Writing Aids, or we'd do R&S with Wordsmith and WA and maybe move into Writing Aids the following year. Do you think TOG writing is thorough enough to follow Susan's recommendations? Is it easy to use?

 

Also, how much time will it take to plan a week with 1 Dialectic, 1 UG/ Dialectic, 2 UG/ LG and one tag-along? How much time would a day of Tapestry take us? We would be doing Year 1.

 

I looked at Karen's notebooks and felt very inspired. I think I could do this, maybe. I really need to decide, to consult with dh and promise I won't keep looking around, order, and start planning for next year. Please give me all helpful thoughts you have.

 

Thanks so much!!! Blessings, Lillian

[Karenciavo]

TOG seems very heavily focused on the West, especially America. Is that a correct perception? I could just buy some SL books for them to read for fun from Core 5. Any thoughts?

Yes, Tapestry is Western Civilization focused, but it does introduce other cultures when appropriate. I'm not sure what Redesigned Years 3 & 4 will look like yet, but if I had to guess I would say the "Worldview" component will be missions heavy in those years. I would ask over at the TOG forum, maybe Marcia can give an answer on that point.

 

I'm not sure I like the yearly divisions of history. I prefer the WTM divisions for the 4 year cycle. Year 1 is fine, Year 2 covers a LOT, and Years 3 and 4 are only one century each. How do you compensate for that?

Many people divide Year 2 into 2 years, which obviously then makes it a five year cycle. What do you see as a problem with years 3 and 4?

 

Do you think TOG writing is thorough enough to follow Susan's recommendations? Is it easy to use?

WA is thorough and incremental which I like. Students first focus on constructing good sentences and paragraphs and there is a good mix of genres cycled through the years. Could you be specific about the goals SWB mentions that you want to follow? I find WA easy to use.

 

Also, how much time will it take to plan a week with 1 Dialectic, 1 UG/ Dialectic, 2 UG/ LG and one tag-along? How much time would a day of Tapestry take us? We would be doing Year 1.

Think of it as planning levels, not number of children. If you go with TOG I would plan on using the first unit as a time to transition the dialectic level student(s) toward working independently. If you decide to make workbooks this will cut down on your planning for them, well all levels really. Most of my planning time is filled with reading the teacher's notes and reserving library books. I skim the notes at the beginning of the week and read them more thoroughly the day before discussion. I spend about 1.5 hours the night before the beginning of the week planning and then 1 hour here or there reading for/planning discussions.

[WTMindy]

OK, I'll try and answer some of your questions based on my one year with TOG. We are just finishing up Ancients this week. I can see why they break up their years the way they do-because there is SO much happening in modern times that you could never get through it in 36 weeks. I probably prefer SOTW divisions, but I just don't think you could fit it all in in TOG. It does have a more Western focus to it than SOTW. (I'm very glad we had 4 years of SOTW first), but again, there is just not time to go that in depth into other cultures in that amount of time. They do have a chapter on China and India in Ancients and I know in year 2 there is a lesson on China/Japan also.

 

It is hard for me to guess how much time it will take you to plan because everyone is so different and I only am planning for 2. The one thing I do that really helps is making notebooks (like Karen's) This pushes a lot of my prep to the beginning of the unit, which takes some time, but then all I need to do each week is to read over the teacher's notes and make sure we have all the supplies. You can look at my magnum opus blog (linked below)because I blogged about all the things we did each week. I also have a post here about our notebooks.

 

About the WA. It is a great reference manual, and I think worth having on your shelf. However, it isn't what I wanted for our writing to be. I don't like how they will take 3-4 weeks for some of the assignments. I would prefer a little more writing for my kids, so I have used IEW assignments instead where I have assigned a topic and had them write a paragraph about it. Next year I'm going to be using a combination of the WA assignments and my own thing using IEW. (You can read about the topics I chose on the blog). I do like how WA teaches different genres of writing (like newspapers, personal narratives, poetry, etc..) but my kids are in a writing class in their co-op and they have a wonderful teacher who does a lot of those kinds of things with them. If they didn't have this, I would probably do more of the WA assignments (they did a state report, a poetry unit, etc...)

 

I have loved TOG and as I look ahead I see that it is only going to get better as they get older. One tip that I might suggest is (since your oldest is 11) using the Upper Grammar history text for all of them and reading it out loud. You can use the different literature selections for each of them. My dd is 11 and a very strong reader and Dialectic is a TON of work. I had her doing UG history and D lit. this year. If you feel that it is not enough for your oldest, you can give the oldest some extra reading, either the deeper reading for UG or the core history reading for D level. The UG reading though should be able to hit all the kids you are teaching and you would save yourself some work on that.

[jananc]

Hi Lillian,

 

I think TOG will definitely give you the challenge and the critical thinking you're looking for with your dc. Especially since you have some in the Upper grammar and Dialectic level. Each level just gets richer and richer for my dc's learning. I was reading through the Rhetoric level questions for my ds for next year, and I'm so excited that he (and I) will be learning so much. And that's after we've gone through the Ancients 2 times already.

 

As to some of your questions:

 

Re: coverage of the world: each year plan incorporates some time devoted to other countries, such as China, Africa, India, Australia, South America, and the Middle East. For example, we just finished Y4, and spent quite a bit of time on the Middle East, as the last half of the 20th century was impacted a lot by the history of that area. I believe there is at least one week in each year plan that is devoted to each of those countries.

 

Re: the division of history -- You are correct that year 2 covers a long time period. And a lot does happen in that time frame, but the other 3 years are by no means skimpy. In Year 3 and Year 4, so much happened in each decade that you really do need to spend an entire year for each century. This is especially true for the Dialectic and Rhetoric levels, as you go into so much more of the political happenings behind the Civil War, women's rights, civil rights, and the World Wars in the 20th century.

 

Re: planning time -- do most of your planning for your Dialectic, and you'll find the lower levels fall into place. I'd say that, on the average, spend 1.5 hrs. on a Sunday to prepare for the upcoming week. That is for all subjects, not just TOG. I planned for 1 D and 1 UG student this past year.

 

Re: writing -- I will be using WA for the first time this coming year, so I can't honestly answer your question there. I hope it WA will suit the bill for us!!

 

I too loved the look of Karen's workbooks, and made ours last week. I'm so excited with how they turned out, and can't wait to see if they answer our problem of papers everywhere :001_smile:

 

Best wishes with whatever you decide!

[LillianinAL]

They are very helpful as I decide. Karen, I have thought about stretching out Year 2. I think Year 3 and 4 would be fine, especially with the older levels. I may just use the writing resources I'm familiar with and transition into Writing Aids, either later in the year or the following year. It does look like a great resource. I'm just not sure I'm ready to jump into everything at once. We probably wouldn't do a lot of projects, just lapbooks for the 7 and 8 year olds and/ or notebooks, plus timelines and maps.

 

My oldest boy really would need to be Dialectic. I might just lighten up the required amount of work to transition into it. My next boy will be Upper Grammar except that he would also do the map work and timeline work with his brother. My next two would be UG with read-alouds, etc. I would probably get some LG books also for extra reading for my voracious 7 year old reader.

 

Thanks so much! Any other thoughts?

Lillian

[Staci in MO]

But now that I've glanced ahead to the rhetoric levels, it makes a bit more sense. Not only do you get to spend more time on the history from that time period, but you have more time for literature from that time period as well. The novel as we know it is a relatively new thing, and there's more time to read those great novels from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

We're getting ready to do Year 2 this year, and there is a lot there. But I think I'll be glad to have that extra time for Years 3 and 4.

[Melissa in CA]

I also want a more integrated, reformed biblical worldview plus all the great critical thinking and discussions of TOG.

 

These are the main reasons I decided to take the plunge and give TOG a try.

 

I used SL for many years, and though we did enjoy many of the books, we did not enjoy every single one. Some were, frankly, boooring. We also supplemented a lot...which made for a lot of extra work and planning on my part. I also did not, NOT, care for the set-up of the SL IG. For me it was not user friendly at all. In fact, in my last few years of SL usage, I basically just used the SL schedule for a reference tool in planning out my own schedule with supplements. With TOG, yes I do have to make out my own schedule, but they already did the planning for me...all I do is pick which day we do what. Love it.

 

Long story short, TOG is perfect....for me! :D I love everything about it, and to be honest, have not found a single negative (OK, let me throw a 'yet!' in there. I am sure there will be one somewhere).

 

I, too, love the notebooks I have seen, but I will use weekly packets instead. I print out all my son needs for the week; questions, student activity pages, etc., staple them together, put the weeks packet in a clip board with his weekly schedule on top and viola he is ready to boogie. I personally would not want to make out an entire unit notebook mainly because I like to know I have the freedom to change things mid-stream should I choose too. I wouldn't want to be bound to a bound book, KWIM? ;) That's just me though...I am strange that way.

 

I have also taken the Student Activity Pages and copied them into a word doc. taking out some questions, adding in space for answers, etc. It is nice that TOG gives you a CD-ROM with all these on them so that you can manipulate them should you choose too.

 

TOG is great. I can't answer any of your specific questions so I won't try, but I thought I would give you my take on it.

 

Personally, I think TOG would be easier to use with a large family than SL. I always had to use two SL cores with my boys due to the huge age gap. I didn't find it a huge amount of work, but I did have to re-create three SL schedules each week which got old real fast. I was also very disappointed with SL's upper Cores. I honestly don't know that my high schoolers retained anything they read, and SL offers no form of testing or evaluations....just discussion. But to discuss with them you have to do all the work WITH them, and my boys did not like waiting for mom to find time to do history with them, let alone their Lit so we could try and discuss it as well (ugh!)...by high school, they wanted independent learning. SL is just not set up for that. I think that is one reason you will not find the SL high school boards as active as the elementary/ jr. high ones. There are just not as many people who continue using it past Core 100.

 

OK, 'nuff said! You'll gets LOTS of advice and many different opinions, but I'm sure you'll pick what is right for your family. :D

[Karenciavo]

I'm just not sure I'm ready to jump into everything at once. We probably wouldn't do a lot of projects, just lapbooks for the 7 and 8 year olds and/ or notebooks, plus timelines and maps.

Very wise :)

[LillianinAL]

I see you use R&S English. Do you do their writing assignments, or just read through them and do your actual writing from a different source? I'm trying to decide how to handle this area for 5th and 6th. My boys used R&S English last year and I am very impressed with how much they truly learned, as are they. I was planning to use it again and add Wordsmith and Wordsmith Apprectice this next year. It might be easier to use Writing Aids. Any thoughts? I thought that if we didn't use the R&S writing, maybe I should switch them to Abeka for grammar, which they would like, and use TOG writing. Lillian