I choose to give this product 4 out of 5 Gold Teacher’s Stars!!

We received two of the courses from the Famous Men series from Memoria Press to review in our homeschool.  When I opened the package, I was stunned at how beautiful these books truly are.  They were so inviting and just begged to be opened and perused almost immediately.  I had to eventually pry the books from my son’s hands so that we could still have something to learn about during our school time!  When I did suggest their use during our lessons, I was greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm and a race to retrieve the book of choice.  Not a bad problem to have, if you ask me.

The first book that we enjoyed was the Famous Men of Greece.  This book contains over 30 lessons that range from The Gods of Greece to The Fall of Greece.  Your students will study the lives of men such as Achilles, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Ptolemy and many many others. The text is not boring and is filled with beautiful, color illustrations that accent the stories that are shared in an entertaining way.

Along with the text book, we also received the Teacher Guide and  Student Guide.  The student guide is filled with lessons that include items such as vocabulary words, famous quotes, a drill of key places and people and around 5 to 10 comprehension questions that can make for some great discussions with your student.  There are also some maps and drawing pages included for even more enrichment.

The second book that we enjoyed was the Famous Men of Rome.  This book also contains 30 different lessons that took us on a short visit with famous Roman men such as Horatius, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Augustus, Nero and Constantine the Great, among others.  Again, the text is well written and engaging.  The colorful illustrations are beautiful and well done.  In fact, here are some of the pictures you will find in the Famous Men of Rome book:

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The books can be used as a full year course in history.  Or, if you prefer, you can do what we are doing and using the books as a wonderful supplement to our current history course.  We have been utilizing the teacher guide and student guide along with the text and they have made our history study even better.  Although I refer to myself as an eclectic homeschooler, I do enjoy adding in classical methods at times to enrich our studies.

Each of the books can be purchased individually or as a set.  I prefer the set as you save a little money by buying them together and the workbooks really are great.  But if you don’t want the workbooks, at least consider the text books to supplement your own history program.  You won’t be disappointed.

Memoria Press offers many other great products at their website.  You are sure to find something wonderful to enrich your wonderful world of learning.  The crew all received different items for review.  To learn about other products from Memoria Press , be sure to visit the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

I choose to give this product 3 1/2 out of 5 Gold Teacher’s Stars!!

When I was given the opportunity to review a unit of the new Digital Edition of Tapestry of Grace (TOG) by Lamptstead Press, I was very excited.  I had heard so many wonderful things about this curriculum, and I was overjoyed to be able to delve into it headfirst and find out what all of the fuss was about.  I went into this experience really, really, really wanting to love this curriculum too.  After spending a couple of months with this product, I can honestly say that while I don’t absolutely LOVE it, I do like and appreciate it and I believe I have a solid understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.

TOG was created by Marcia Somerville, a homeschooling mom of many, as an attempt to get all of her kids on the same page with one curriculum, despite their age differences.  Her desire to unify their studies has blessed not only her own family, but also the lives of many homeschooling families through her development of the Tapestry of Grace curriculum.

TOG is a literature based study that is is founded on the classical style of education.  The study is based on history with strong Biblical principles weaved into the tapestry of learning.  The multi-age (K-12) curriculum is devised so that all learning levels study the same period of history, while reading age appropriate books and completing age appropriate lessons.  All learning levels study out of the same year plan, streamlining the teaching process for mom.

TOG  is divided into 4 separate year plans, that each cover a different period of world history.  The lesson plans are set up in such a way that you are able to cover several different subjects, other than just history.  The curriculum covers history, church history, geography, literature, fine arts, government, philosophy and writing.   Each year of TOG contains 4 different units that can be purchased separately or you can purchase the entire year plan.  Each unit lasts approximately 9 weeks.  TOG does not cover the subjects of phonics, science, math, grammar, spelling or foreign languages.  These are subjects that you will have to supplement in order to cover them in your homeschool.

The curriculum plan contains “teacher’s notes” that are based on the World Book Encyclopedia.  These notes are a summary of what the kids will be learning each week through the many literature books and various worksheets that are provided.  The book suggestions are broken out in learning levels, making it easy for mom or dad to choose which books they will need to acquire to complete the week’s lessons.  In the various lesson plans, you will also find lots of discussion questions, hands-on learning activities, writing assignments and worksheets that are designed to go with the recommended reading selections.  TOG does not include the many books that are necessary to complete the study, but these can be acquired through a good library system or purchased for use in your home.

So what do I think about TOG?

I am generally a huge fan of digital products.  I love having instant access to whatever I am purchasing.  However, I found it to be quite cumbersome in a product of this size.  With each unit being approximately 450 pages of material, it was difficult to decipher what I was supposed to be gleaning from the product.  With that said, after many, many hours of wrapping my brain around it, I felt I was able to find a groove that would work for us in our homeschool.  There is a “TOG Fog” that is usually experienced for the first 4 weeks.  I really only dealt with it for about 3, but then I spent hours and hours preparing prior to implementing the curriculum in our homeschool.  Perhaps this would not have been as bad, had I been able to implement the product in the fall, instead of the spring.  I will admit that trying to juggle our current studies and figure this one out at the same time was a tad overwhelming.

Another aggravation was the fact that I do not have a good library system in my area.  It is a very small library.  The inter-library loan program does exist, but I found that the amount of money I would need to spend in order to be able to only get a few of the required books was almost as much as just out-right purchasing them in the first place.  And my library couldn’t guarantee when I would be able to actually receive the books over a six month period of time.  That wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so I purchased the books that I would need to teach the unit we chose: Year 1, Unit 1-The Books of Moses (Creation/Egypt/Exodus).

However, I did find the content to be solid and I enjoyed watching my son light up as he learned from his Tapestry studies.  He has really enjoyed the many lessons and even the worksheets and activities that have been included.  We also received the lapbook supplement for this unit and he has enjoyed putting it together.  It has been a great reinforcement for the lessons he has learned.

Tapestry of Grace has generously made two 3 week samples available for you to download so that you can see if the curriculum will work for you.  I highly recommend that you do this as once you have purchased this curriculum, you cannot re-sell it if it doesn’t work for you.  The Digital Edition provides you with a limited use license that is only for your family.  You are allowed to print off all that you need, but it cannot be shared outside of your immediate family.  So make sure that you try before you buy.

The Tapestry of Grace website is full of many helpful links and resources.  There you will find such treasures as The Loom, discussion forums and my favorite, their Map of the Humanities, which is a wonderful visual of how TOG weaves the different time periods and subjects together.

So how much will this cost?

I’m glad you asked!  Although TOG can be expensive in the short-term, I would like to point out that the curriculum is set up to be used again and again.  Once you have completed one 4-year cycle, you can start again, only delving deeper into the studies at the levels that your children need.  This is a great way to make a one time investment on the core of the curriculum, with only the new level books needing to be purchased if you haven’t already. I also think that it is more economical in the long run if you DO have several children that will be using this for their curriculum.  It is perhaps a tad on the expensive side if you only have one child.  Also, if you don’t have a good library in your area, the price goes up because you will need to purchase so many books.  If you decide that you will just be using it as a guide for the time period, and use other books instead, you may want to look for another curriculum.  I would consider this to be too expensive for just a learning guide,and the worksheets that depend on certain books become null and void.  I also think if you were to utilize all of the great supplements that Lampstead Press has created for the TOG curriculum, that you will find it to be a little on the pricey side, as the price definitely goes up.  With all of that being said, here is the breakdown:

The Digital Edition plans are available to purchase by year or by unit:

DE Unit price–$45 each

DE Full Year Plan–$170

DE Full Year Plan with Printed copy–$280

DE Bonus Bundle (comes with additional support products for the year plan)–$250

Writing Aids–$50 (one time purchase–can be used all 4 years)

Evaluations–$15  (One year plan)

Map Aids–$24.95  (One year plan)

Pop Quiz–$50 (One year plan)  or $15 per unit

Lapbook Templates–$75  (One year plan)  or $20 per unit

Lapbook Kits (enough to do 1 lapbook)–$55 (One year plan)  or $15 per unit

Overall, I think that Tapestry of Grace will work best for those who are wanting a literature-based history program and have a large family with various age levels.  If you would like to read other reviews of this curriculum, then please be sure to visit the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog to see what others had to say about TOG.

I choose to give this product 5 out of 5 Gold Teacher’s Stars!!

When my son attended public school, one of the subjects that was ignored was science.  When I realized he wasn’t getting anything in this area, it really made me angry.  In my opinion, science is a very important subject and if taught properly, will engage the student and open up a world of learning.  We began homeschooling the following school year.

Our first year, we began with a general science course that covered many of the different aspects of science.  My son learned a lot that year, but I thought that we needed more hands-on activities that were science related.  So our next year, we concentrated on a more relaxed method and I encouraged him to explore scientific topics and he developed a deep love for his microscope.  This was a good year, but I still felt we were missing something in our science program.  Then Apologia entered our homeschool world and I have now found the science program we will use for the rest of our homeschooling years.   My son will graduate high school using Apologia science.

We were sent Exploring Creation with General Science–2nd edition for review.  I was immediately drawn to the beauty of this textbook, both inside and out.  The book is extremely well made and colorful.  However, as beautiful as the book appeared, I was even more impressed with the content.  The text is written in a way that you feel as though you are having a conversation with the author.  It is informative and filled with lots and lots of information, but it is far from boring.  It is also written so that the student can guide themselves through the material and become independent in their learning, if you so choose.

One of the things I liked the most were the “On Your Own” sections.  These sections are highlighted in yellow and ask detailed questions about the current topic the student is studying.  This prevents the student from just “skimming” the text, as they need to actually read it in order to answer the questions.  I also really appreciated the study guides that are located at the end of each module.  These study guides are very detailed and help the student go back over all of the material in order to prepare them for their tests.  The tests are also very thorough and cover each and every chapter.  This enables the student to actually retain the information, rather than just learning it long enough to pass the test and then forget it.

The textbook is broken down into 16 modules.  Each module is set up to be covered in about 2 weeks, if you work on science 30 to 45 minutes every day.  We actually found that we enjoyed having science everyday and it made it fairly easy for my son to remember what he had covered previously.  We also enjoyed the many experiments that were included in the modules that provided hands on learning opportunities to reinforce the learning concepts being taught.  I especially liked that the materials needed for these experiments were inexpensive and easy to locate around the house.

Exploring Creation with General Science–2nd edition sells for $85.00 for the textbook and solutions and tests manual.  However, you can purchase them individually with the textbook only being $65.00 and $20.00 for the solutions and tests manual only. In addition, Apologia offers the entire text on CD-Rom for $65.00 if you would prefer it in that format.  Other additional items are a multimedia presentation CD to accompany the text for $15.00 and an MP3 recording of the text for auditory learners for $15.00.  I purchased the multimedia presentation CD and I highly recommend it.  It is well worth the money!

We are looking forward to completing Exploring Creation with General Science–2nd edition this next school year, which finds us in 7th grade.  We know that by completing this jr. high level science program, we will be prepared for the more rigorous high school level programs.  We are looking forward to the next 6 years of school as we utilize the excellent products by Apologia.