Next year we will be using Tapestry of Grace as the backbone of our homeschool curriculum. As we have dug into the newly updated and redesigned curriculum, Mindy and I have just fallen in love with it.
The big things that come to mind in making our decision:
- Our major hurt in the old curriculum (How on earth are we going to homeschool five at the same time?!?) seems to be all healed up here. This curriculum was designed in the trenches of a homeschooling family of six. And we can actually see how it works.
- This curriculum is very Gospel-aware. We need all the help we can get to “keep the main thing the main thing.” There are lots of pointers to the Gospel along the way.
- This curriculum is theocentric, Bibliocentric, and biblically intentional, framed around three four-year chronological cycles through world history.
- The approach to learning history is through “living” books and projects. This is someting we liked about our old curriculum, but couldn’t quite get clicking the way we wanted. Here there is a ton of pointers and helps, and a much better organizational approach.
- This curriculum gives us a vision for what “homeschool senior high” might look like. And it’s a much less scary vision than what we’ve had in the past.
- There are hooks in the curriculum to help me be involved as a “busy homeschool dad.” It was so easy to lose sight of what was going on in the old curriculum.
- There is a vibrant local community of curriculum users. This means lots of co-op opportunities, and lots of help.
- The nice folks who write and publish the curriculum go to our church, and the warehouse is all of two miles from our house. We get to see the fruits of their labors in their kids! And don’t pay shipping!
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