So, this week, most of our moms started school. Oh, the exhilaration and the terror! I so remember it. In fact, tomorrow I get to start my own school year teaching a Writing class to rhetoric students here in MD. A recent post on the Yahoogroups really tugged at my heart. Rebecca was expressing doubts, frustrations, anxiety, and fear that she had made the wrong decision in buying Tapestry of Grace. Firm in her conviction that she was called to homeschool (and starting with children who had been in public schools and were on three different learning levels) she wisely called out for help from veteran moms (and Tapestry users). The straw that had broken her confidence was that she could not find some minute details within the curriculum. Laurie wrote this beautiful response:

I am starting my fifth year of TOG. I still don’t find everything. Sometimes I don’t find it until weeks later. Oh well. But I still love TOG! Why? Because the basics make sense. I do have a layout of world history, from Creation to the present, laid out with book recommendations on every level imaginable. I have ideas for projects, books, literature, geography, philosophy, Christian Worldview, government, fine arts, etc, for me to pull from. I always miss something in my lesson planning. However my kids and I have learned tons about God’s hand in the history of the world from the beginning of time to the present. We have a depth of understanding I never believed was possible.

My dd started this curriculum at age 12 as a slow learning, poor reading comprehension, pathetic writing skills, and poor speaking skills. After 4 years of higher level thinking skill training and teaching with TOG, she is now an independent learner and teaches me a few things, loves Rhetoric literature and is considering a lit/history major in college, writes cohesively, has good speaking skills, great presence and is able to associate with people comfortably. My son started the program when he was 10. Although he was a deep thinker, he was frustrated with history texts that didn’t go into enough detail, was bored with anthologies and bored with typical read the pages and answer the question format of school. Despite his brilliant depth of thought, he couldn’t remember a single detail he read about, which incredibly frustrated him. Since using TOG for four years, he has a powerful depth of knowledge and understanding and renewed fascination for learning. He is now considering a major in history. How did we do this? Basically by pulling out the aspects of TOG that did make sense to us, focusing on the main format of read, think/discuss, and write. That is the core of the TOG program. No matter any confusion I may have had week by week trying to find a specific page here or there, merely by reading books, working through the AQs and TQs as best we could, doing weekly discussions as outlined in the Teacher Notes and then writing about the topic at hand, my kids grew as I previously mentioned.

If only I knew about TOG when they were grammar students (We started at D level.) At Grammar level I would focus on the 3Rs and use TOG to read books and do a few hands on, point out places of importance on a map and save the bigger stuff for the higher levels.

Please do make TOG easier on yourselves by focusing on the parts that do make sense. Ask here for help on the other things. There’s already been lots of great input from the other ladies. But all of us who love TOG learned a long time ago we can’t do it all, but rather to focus on the key points that work for us. None of us school with TOG identically! =)

Beginning any school year is hard. Beginning anything new is hard. It was for me too. I just pulled back and did the basics. As that became easy, I added something new that suddenly made sense. And so on. Even now, I pick and choose from the aspects that work best for my kids. I love TOG because it gives me enough to pick and choose to tailor my own program for my kids. I’d say that the key components are the books for all the levels. The writing and discussion and other written work are key for D and R. Doing a fine arts project makes it fun! The rest is gravy. (yum, yum) I hope this helps! =)

Laurie was not the only one to help Rebecca. There were about eight posts that gave wise counsel and helpful advice, speaking both to Rebecca’s heart attitudes and her actual, practical needs to find what she was missing in Tapestry resources. I find the overall exchange inspirational.

• It speaks of our weaknesses–which is why our parenting and our homeschooling must be bathed in prayer. We need a Savior. We can’t do life without Him. Parenting and homeschooling remind us of this truth daily! Aren’t we really glad that they do, when we come to think about it?
• It speaks of the Body of Christ. Through the Internet, we laboring moms have more opportunity than ever to humble ourselves and receive help from our sisters across the fruited plain who are co-laborers. They understand, they have been there, and they can help. Let’s all be willing to bring our weaknesses out into the light where His body can minister to our needs!
• And it speaks of grace to help in a time of need. Rebecca’s sisters answered her discouraged cry with real help and good counsel. They did so quickly. They did so graciously. How kind of God to provide such support for us sinners in our times of need!

Ladies, we’re at the start of a school year, and that’s exciting. But sin never takes a vacation, and the Devil loves to throw obstacles, real and imagined, in our way. He would love to have all of us give up on training and discipling and teaching our children as soon as he possibly can. Let’s not be ignorant of His devices. Let’s grab of our Savior in one hand and our sisters in the other, and walk through this school year giving ourselves grace and space to fail and to grow.

Love and prayers to you all!

Marcia

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There is something holy and awesome about a hospital waiting room. It’s holy because somehow, in the stress of waiting and wondering if a loved one will be healed behind closed doors where you cannot go, God seems very near. It is awesome because real life is going on before your eyes. You and those around you are being confronted with something they cannot control or fix, and which may result in frightening consequences or real joy. How rare for the average American to be suspended so far out of our depth!

I have been waiting today to find out if my daughter has cancer, or other serious complications from a watermelon-sized ovarian cyst that grew in her abdomen over the last few months. The diagnosis last week was frightening. Surgery! Possibly cancerous! Oh, God!

The waiting room today is peaceful, sunlit, and… as I said… awesome. I am so aware that I am helpless. I am so GLAD that God is here with us. The doctrines of our faith–His sovereignty, so strong and unassailable, His love, stronger than death, His promises, so sure, and His gift of hope through His Son who was not spared for our sakes–these are anchors that hold steady through the storms of life.

Hospital waiting rooms make it clear that a trial is at hand. I think that one reason that I don’t respond well to smaller trials is that I don’t recognize them as such. The spilled milk again, the phone call that my husband will be home late, or the loud noise of two quarreling children are trials, too. But, somehow, I think I can handle them. I don’t tend to turn to Father and ask for help readily. In the hospital waiting room, there’s very little else to do. I’ve done all I can, and having done all, the only thing left to do is to stand. But, what if I took that truth to the smaller, everyday trials?

What if I looked at the normal, everyday inconveniences of life and asked Father to help me be like His Son in response? What if I knew, daily, my desperate dependence on His grace to do every little thing? What if my efforts–sin riddled and pitiful though they might be–were all that I could do, and so I rested more in the carrying grace of God as a result?

I’m convicted. I need to remember Father more in the daily, and not just in the hospital waiting room. But, for all of that, I’m glad I’m here and that He’s here with me.

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There is a definite step up from the Upper Grammar to the Dialectic level, as kids approach and then pass through puberty. I discuss in detail the stages of learning and ways to approach the Dialectic stage of learning in my Tapestry Teacher’s Training Session #4: “Teaching Grammar and Dialectic Students.” One of the biggest Tapestry-related hurtles that moms and kids face is the appearance of the Accountability Questions (AQ) and Thinking Questions (TQ) in Dialectic Student Activity Page assignments. These aren’t given for Grammar students, so when kids step up a level, they’ve got a new discipline to master.  If we as teaching moms aren’t keyed into the skills that a student needs in order to answer these questions, frustrations can arise on all sides!

Accountability and Thinking Questions are designed for different purposes! Many new moms don’t realize this. In my latest webinar, Session #8 of the Tapestry Teacher Training series entitled “Developing Learning Skills,” which you can download and watch for free all through August, I discuss at length what the two kinds of questions are designed to ask for and produce in students. I also go over the fact that these transitioning students must use summary skills and reading for the main idea in order to find answers to these questions. Unlike text book approaches, AQ and TQ require students to extrapolate factual answers from their texts (AQ) and to associated ideas in the readings with ideas they may have learned about previously (TQ). All this takes practice, so if your student is new to either Tapestry studies or the Dialectic learning level this fall, you might want to give a listen to Session 8!

Here’s a post on one of our yahoogroups from a mom who had an excellent approach to stepping her daughter up from the Grammar to Dialectic level:

What I did was to sit with her and read together the history core book. First we read through the AQ’s and TQ’s so we knew what answers we were reading for. Then we read the book, switching off paragraphs. We discussed as we read. I pointed out when we came to an “answer” and we would mark it with one of those small post it note sticky tabs. My dd even started writing on the tab “AQ #3″ or whatever. When we were finished with each day’s reading, we would go through all the places we had marked and write out the answers to those questions on notebook paper (I am not like some of the awesome moms here who make up notebooks ahead of time! We just write our answers on regular notebook paper), again discussing as we went if necessary. It was important to me that I modeled for her how to do this EVERY DAY and not wait until the end of the week to answer all her questions.

My dd would then do the same with her in depth books, if there were any assigned that week. Sometimes I helped her with the in depth book, but usually it was history core. After about a month of doing it together this way, she was able to fly on her own pretty well. She still needs help with some questions after 2 years at this level, but has her D routine down pretty well. The effort you put in up front pays big dividends down the road!

Our next child will be transitioning to D this fall, so I am gearing up to do the same thing with him. When I pray for him/us, I will pray for you!

Blessings,
Pam in SE MI

http://journeyingwithjoy.blogspot.com/

Preparing for Year 1 with 5 children, ages 13, 11, 10, 8, and 5

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Last week, we put up Session 7 of our summer-long Tapestry Teacher Training (TTT) webinar series, entitled “Holding Socratic Discussions.” This was a particularly fun webinar to produce, because I partnered up with some good friends here in Frederick and we did some videotaping of mock demonstrations using kids in our local co-op. While the Internet-delivered version of this website is a little grainy (’cause we couldn’t use the hi-res versions of the videotape and not crash the system), the DVD version is crisp and beautiful! Next week, we plan to release a compilation 2-DVD set for HALF PRICE with all 8 TTT sessions! I’m excited about this series, called “The Foundational Series” because the feedback that we’ve been getting lets me know that they are truly helping moms be better homeschoolers, and that was (and always is) our goal!

Below is an excerpt from the opening of Session 7, just to whet your interest!

What IS Socratic discussion?

Most simply put Socratic discussion is teaching others by asking leading questions that are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand.

This form of discussion is named for the Greek philosopher, Socrates. Socrates lived and taught in Athens, Greece during its golden age, in the late fifth century before Christ. He was actually one of the founders of Western philosophy. Socrates went around Athens during his life and asked questions of others. When they answered, he asked another question. When they answered that, he followed up with yet another question. In each interchange, the one being questioned had to reconsider his last point in light of a new vantage that the next question gave him. As I said in my definition, the purpose of Socrates’ questions was not only to draw out individual answers, but to encourage fundamental insights into issues under discussion. This is the essence of Socratic discussion when properly done.

What Socratic Discussion is Not

Let me further define for you what Socratic discussion is by contrasting it with other forms of discussion.

• Socratic discussion is NOT lecturing. In a lecture, the expert speaks for long periods of time, and the student listens. The lecturer may use slides, a white board, or other aids, but his basic mode is to teach by means of presenting, and there is typically no active part for the student to play.
• Socratic discussion is also not simply a conversation among peers. It’s not a wandering talk with no predetermined sense of direction. It’s not an “open forum” where equals all throw into the ring what they think on an issue.
• Socratic discussion is not a panel discussion, where three to five experts give their opinions on an issue, and children watch.
• It’s not a debate, where two teams argue a series of points, and a judge (as well as the audience) decide the outcome of the encounter.
• Finally, it’s not “educational ping-pong.” By this I mean the kind of “discussion” – though this is hardly a worthy name for what I’m describing—wherein the teacher has an answer book and the student has a series of questions to answer at the end of the text book and now the teacher and student have a session wherein they go over this material.

Socratic discussion is none of the above: rather, it’s the intentional questioning of a teacher (you) that leads the student through an ordered series of thoughts and ideas. The point of the exercise is to cause him to think about his opinions and ideas more deeply and to give reasons for them. By adopting the Socratic approach, we arm ourselves with a powerful tool for equipping our students to explain to a dying world the hope to which they have been called.

Socratic Discussions within Tapestry

Socratic discussions form the centerpiece of our “READ—THINK—WRITE” approach when teaching older students with Tapestry of Grace. What we encourage is that your dialectic and rhetoric students read independently for information first. Then, they think about what they have read by having you lead them through a Socratic discussion. For dialectics, your goal is to help them see and form new connections. For rhetorics, your goal is to help them analyze the issue at hand and then synthesize their own views on the issue and, ultimately, to form biblically informed opinions and worldviews from these discussions. They then write about what they’ve read and thought about, so that they interact again with the material, and crystallize their own opinions about matters they’ve studied.

Why do we make such a point of helping you to become a Socratic discussion leader?

Well, first, it’s just straight up good teaching. It is effective because questioning retains focus of student. Unlike such methods as lecturing, there is no ohming out while a teacher drones on. Think of yourself during Sunday sermons: unless the preacher’s subject or delivery are of immense interest to you, chances are that during his 45 minute presentation, your mind will wander.  And, even if it doesn’t, how much did you retain from the sermon you heard two weeks ago? While I’m not knocking sermons in any way, most lecturing is not a highly effective method  for teaching content that you wish the students to retain for long periods of time.

Socratic discussion, by contrast, engages the students constantly. Think of your last conversation: you probably remained far more engaged in it (unless you were multitasking) than you did in the sermon two weeks ago, and I’ll take a guess that you retained more of the content, too.

Beyond simply paying attention, people remember conclusions they draw for themselves.  For this, I’ll offer the analogy of four women going together to a location that’s new to them all: say, to a bridal shower. Let us say that the subsequent rehearsal dinner is in the same location. The woman who drove the four ladies to the shower will remember how to get there far more readily than the other three. Why? She was paying attention, remembering the turns and landmarks, while the other three were enjoying uninterrupted conversation. Similarly, the student who is skillfully led through a series of questions that cause him to think about the issue at hand and about his opinions of that issue will remember the insights and conclusions that he draws far more readily than a student who has sat in a lecture and heard the professor’s brilliant insights and conclusions. It’s just how we work: we remember how we got there if we participate actively in finding the way.

Finally, and especially with youths, the Bible tells us that fools delight in airing their own opinions. J Well, I’m not calling your student a fool, but young people seem to delight more in airing their own opinions than in getting wisdom from their elders. This being true, Socratic discussion is tailor-made to harness this tendency. Socratic questioning encourages your youth to express his opinions, and then questions those opinions so that he can examine and modify them to more biblical ones—and then remember and own them once the process is done!

Now, in Tapestry, we use Socratic questioning in different ways depending on the learning level, and maturity of the student.

_____________________

Here, I begin to go into detail. Want to learn more? Go and watch the webinar! It’s a free download or you can have it on DVD for the price of shipping and handling. Go here to find out more!

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This has been a challenging season for me. In the last four weeks, we have moved to a new home (Thursday thru Saturday), unpacked rigorously (Mon-Wed) then taken our scheduled Family Vacation (Wed-Wed) then returned to the boxes and disorder to rigorously unpack completely in short order because my mom came for a five-day visit less than a week after we returned. (Can you hear puff-puff-puff…?) Along with all this, of course, were the ongoing production of the webinars  for Tapestry users, the moving of our warehouse to a new location, and the desires of my young adults to go and do and be outside the home. I knew it would be a busy few weeks, but I was unprepared for the spiritual challenges that I encountered along the way.

I was unprepared for the worldliness and covetousness that were revealed in my heart. Moving (and downsizing) from a typical suburban townhouse to a beautiful third-floor condo in the heart of historic Frederick meant making many decisions about what would go and what would stay. I became excited about the chance to pitch the old and purchase the new! Not only were we moving houses, but Scott and I were transitioning from a season of industrial-strength homeschooling and child rearing to a season of empty nesting. This seasonal change has awakened deep desires to have the “just right” pieces of new furniture, and for my adult girls to let things to stay more or less where I put them, and so on. The move demonstrated new depths of selfishness and self-centeredness in me.

I was also unprepared for the stress of not knowing where things are outside my home. Where is WalMart? Where is there a good doctor? How do I navigate through the mesh of one-way streets and a tangle of converging Interstate highways that is Frederick? Etc. I’ve moved before, but I forgot about this stage of it, where all the old ant trails (in my case, over 15 years old) are erased, and one must start over. I felt weak and stupid a lot of the time, and it was humbling to call local friends here and ask yet again for recommendations or directions.

Anyways, to sum up: this morning, I became dismayed to the point of tears at the wicked cravings to spend the Lord’s money lavishly on worldly possessions. I would have said that I “wasn’t that kind of person.” Having six kids has always mandated a tight budget and lots of “make it do or do without.” I’ve been cheerful in that setting, and comfortable. Now, with a little extra money to spend and a new house to set up (so we have to spend it, right?) I really began to see the covetousness and worldliness that have been there all along. I also became aware of my various weaknesses, as deadlines pressed at work and I stumble to find everyday necessities in my new city, and my crying need for more fellowship with the Lord and His people has become obvious. I’d become dry in the month or so that we’d been so busy, despite doing regular Bible readings the whole time. but it wasn’t only that. The new season and setting were bringing out new sins that have always been resident in my heart, and that God knew were there, but that I was unaware of and not addressing as a result.

I once heard a beautiful illustration of this particular way that God sanctifies us. The preacher told of a European wine–I think it was a German wine–where for centuries the winemakers had created their masterpieces by pouring the fermenting wine into vessels of various shapes. First, for instance, they’d pour the young juice into wide, medium-tall vats, and skim off the dross that rose to the top. Then, they’d pour this skimmed liquid into a tall, skinny vessel, and let it sit. Different dross would rise to the top and be skimmed off. Next the liquid was poured into shallow square vessels, and again, dross would rise to the top and be skimmed off. With each new stage, the wine grew more pure and full bodied, until at last, it was an award-winning vintage.

God has been pouring me into new vessels, and I shouldn’t be surprised that new dross has come to the surface. Nor should I look within for the strength I need to fight yet another set of sins. I don’t have what it takes to battle yet again. The Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me is still and always my only hope. As I am poured and repoured, He holds the flask. He knows just the right shape, just the right size, and just the right timing of each of the settings and seasons of my life. My job is to look to Him and know that He loves me and is working all things together for my good, so that I can become just like Him (Romans 8:28-29).

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Lately, I’ve been producing webinars. The process has taken me down Memory Lane and its many byroads. Most of the memories are sweet, but some constitute a cautionary tale. It’s about one of the latter ones that I feel impressed to write about today.

As I was producing the Socratic Discussion webinar that is due to go online on August 1, I got into the topic of how important it is to give students the dignity of allowing them to honestly question, disagree, and make mistakes aloud. It’s been my observation that many Christian homeschooling moms (and dads) seem unwilling to allow their older students to challenge, explore, and think their own thoughts. Their impulse is to rebuke, repress, correct quickly, or deny spoken thoughts or opinions that would challenge Christianity, or doubt God or the Bible. What I’ve observed, over the years, is that this squelching approach to the teen years can have sad consequences. Repressing our teens’ doubts and questions concerning Christianity during these crucial years, or feeding them too quickly with stock theological responses to what to them are deeply emotional issues, may silence teens’ mouths, but it won’t answer the cries of their hearts, or stop them from continuing to ponder. In fact, repressing teens’ verbal expressions is one of the quickest ways to lose their hearts entirely, and by extension, our ability to influence them.

For Scott and me, job #1 of the adolescent years was winning the hearts of our teens. We reasoned that, if they trusted us and loved us, they would bring to us their most treasured thoughts, and then (with God’s grace) we could help them navigate the turbulent waters of the teen years and on into young adulthood. If, on the other hand, even our most well-meaning actions drove them away from us, causing them to secret their hearts’ thoughts and seek others who might seem more accepting for wisdom and advice, we would become powerless to help and bless them during this crucial phase of life.

My guess, from my experience with many moms at conventions and several good friends near to home, is first of all that this repression is largely unconscious. Moms who consistently and instantly correct, adjust, and challenge their teens’ comments think of themselves as continuing a process of teaching and training that began when their children were born. Moms are of course concerned that their teens embrace the truths of the Bible, which they know to be authoritative and true, as well as the source of blessing and wisdom for an entire lifetime. It’s easy to continue tried-and-true methods and approaches to our teens that worked well when they were young kids, even as they are outgrowing childhood. We can miss that a change is occurring. We can disrespect our teens because we are in the habit of treating them like children. “Do what I say, because I say it, and because I’m your mother, and children obey their parents in the Lord because this is right!” Our goals are good, our desires are fine, but when good desires turn to bad demands, we can actually end up working against the Spirit.

To gain our teens’ trust, I believe, a parent needs to focus on two crucial things: 1) trusting God–and thus not giving way to fears that will tempt us to err–and 2) giving our children the dignity of allowing them to form for themselves their own worldview.

Let me hasten to add that I don’t believe in a total “hands off” approach. We need to walk with our teens closely every day of their lives, and daily set before them our example of a vibrant, growing, authentic (but not perfect!) Christian. What I’m getting at in this post is something deeper than mere biblical instruction: I’m addressing the change in your relationship with your son or daughter during this season from one of benign dictator to one of fellow pilgrim on the road to the Celestial City.

The first of the two that I list above is crucial: we simply must grow ever deeper in our trust of God. I believe that the primary reason that most of us moms lose our kids’ love and disrespect them during the teen years is because we fail to trust God moment by moment. We so easily slide from gospel-centered thinking (where we remember that God alone determines who is saved) to believing that our words/actions during parenting primarily determine whether or not our child will be saved.

We homeschooling mothers easily slide into such legalism, pride, and self-sufficiency because we have taken on such a huge role in our kids’ lives. From birth, we’ve fed, clothed, and schooled them. We’ve minutely directed almost every aspect of their daily lives, for their good and for God’s glory, and have rejoiced in the flowering of little hearts that open wide to drink the delights of a Christian home. We’ve stayed up late and gotten up early to learn the ways of academic teaching, and have diligently sought to provide the best balance of educational opportunities that we can.

How disheartening, after all the investment, to hear our young teens begin to question Christianity, or to see them begin to respond differently to family, to friends, and to us than they used to. How downright scary to think and believe that our teens are drifting from Christ, and destined for misery on earth and in the life hereafter. In these situations, we are so tempted to clutch, to cajole, to require, to demand, to plead, to whine, and to redouble all our efforts to that our precious sons and daughters do not slip away.

Yet, it is this very reaction, which has its basis in a lack of faith and trust in our good God, that can cause us to lose the young hearts for which we have labored so long. In my experience, this is a normal, common reaction, and the only effective response to it is to reaffirm to ourselves the truths of the gospel: God, the loving Father, alone saves sinners through the power of the Holy Spirit based on the atoning death of Jesus Christ. All our love and effort (even if we were perfect, and we know we’re not) cannot do it. During the teen years, we again come face to face with our powerlessness to move hearts. We must turn to our Savior, grow in trust in His finished work, and bring our requests to the Father, Who is always wise, good, and loving. The antidote to fear is to meditate on the character of God: His compassion, sovereignty, power, and love. God, who made your son or daughter, loves him or her far more than do you yourself. He alone has the power to save; in the final analysis, your only role is to trust Him. And, as Spurgeon so rightly said, “When we cannot trace God’s hand, we must learn to trust His heart.” Thus are we further sanctified through the teen years.

Such trust of God then becomes a solid platform for an ability to allow our teens to choose God (or not) for themselves. It allows us to not freak out when our teens question, “How do I know that God is truly there?” or “Why do we pray if God already knows all that’s going to happen?” or “If God is loving, why did my childhood friend just die in a car accident?” The teen years are the ones during which the world begins to intrude on our safe home environments, and they encounter the world more and more as they venture into situations where we cannot be constantly on guard, or control behaviors. Logically, teens begin to ask real questions that take us out of the simple, childhood world of clear cut, black-and-white answers and into the realms of misty gray. God is still there in these moments, and we need to reach out for grace to become increasingly honest about what we don’t know about life, the universe, and Him. Our honesty about what we don’t know will touch our teens’ hearts far more than pompous posturing or overworn platitudes that we ourselves do not really believe. What we need to do when teens begin to struggle with life is to, first, trust God and second, enter the struggle with our teens. Thus do we respect their need to grapple and their right to decide for themselves what to believe.

What we need to face is the bald truth that, in the end, we will have to let them go, and that they will, in that day, choose their own way. You did it; why should your sons and daughters be different? Though they may, in the process, choose different expressions of faith than we ourselves have adopted, if we give them room to question and to probe, it is far more likely that they’ll reach towards us for guidance than run away.

Below are simple ways that parents can show our teens that we respect them as people, and affirm their right to come to their own convictions about God and life issues.

• Begin to consciously treat your teens as you treat your peers: your best girlfriends. If you wouldn’t jump in with a correction or rebuke with a friend, don’t do so with your teen. Do more listening, wait for the right moment to bring an observation, and seek to be as gentle, kind, and respectful of their opinions as you would of a peer’s.
• School yourself to remain calm and kind when your teens say outlandish things, things disrespectful of the faith, or simply become theologically inaccurate. We attain this calm by working to remember, in such moments, that we, too, have questioned God’s wisdom and love, and that we, too, have needed space and time to process the bigger questions of life. We respect our teens by giving them the courtesy that we would want, were we they.
• Recognize that, in most cases, silence is golden: count to ten before you answer your teen’s disquieting utterances, and then work to answer them briefly and gently. In fact, the best way to respond is usually to give no answer at all, but to begin to your teen a series of leading questions that cause them to define their terms. But first…
• Seek to identify with your teen. Remembering that Jesus took on human flesh and thus identified with us for all eternity, seek a way to make yourself like your teen. When they struggle, tell them of a time when you felt the same way that they do now or acted in a similar manner before you attempt to instruct or impart wisdom to them. Such a response encourages humility on your part and helps teens to feel that you are a fellow pilgrim with them, rather than their judge and jury. It tends to engender sharing in us, rather than lecturing.
• Some teen questions are tough! Admitting the we, ourselves, are unsure of an answer, and offering to search out such questions with our teens by means of bible studies or questions of learned pastors is one way of giving our teens the dignity of a truthful answer.
• Are your teens developing troubling patters of life? We both model good behavior and access the power of the Holy Spirit by asking them to do independent Bible studies that speak to the questions and doubts that they voice. Give them a deadline–like a week–to do the study, and then gently ask them to share what they’ve learned. So often, the Spirit who speaks to us when we seek Him also speaks to them as they wrestle alone with Scripture!
• School yourself to regularly “take a walk” with your teen. Do these when things are not stressful. “Walks” are free flowing conversations about God and life that begin with no agenda and need not end with any set conclusion. They are verbal journeys of exploration and observation, just as one might take a real walk down garden paths to simply enjoy the flowers and vistas as they appear. Walks are “safe zones” where emotions, doubts, fears, and questions can be explored without condemnation, correction, or challenge. To do keep it a walk, you have to fight the tendency to instruct, share, and dominate an agenda-driven conversation. It’s hard at first; it takes the help of the Spirit and real humility, but the fruit is the beginning of a wonderful, lifelong friendship with your older kids that is set on the level ground at the foot of the cross.

Want me to put feet to this? I’ll try! Let’s say that you suggest that your teen pray for the evening meal, and he bursts out in frustration: “Why? God never answers my prayers!”

Your best first response might be to allow a moment of silence while praying silently for the Spirit’s help and guidance for both you and your child. This will calm your spirit and also help you deal with the shock as you wonder, “Where did that come from? Oh, no! Is he losing his faith??!!” (These kinds of thoughts can race through out minds in a split second of reaction, but what we must do is to remember God in the moment and take hold of our trust in Him and invoke His help with our response!)

Then, take a moment to identify with your teen. “You know, Son, I’ve felt the same way. When Grandma died of cancer last year, I sure felt shaky concerning God answering prayer.” Or some such. Find a way to identify with your teen. Give him the dignity of being a fellow human creature who is much like you, the grown adult.

Next, begin to ask a series of leading questions, such as: “What did you mean by the word, ‘never’? I mean… do you not remember any times when God answered one of your prayers?” (Now, note, this needs to be an honest question. The teen should have room to say, “No. Not a one.”) Respond with either, “Do you remember that one time when you were hunting for your glasses and we prayed…” (gently, now!) or “Boy, I’d be pretty discouraged, too, if I truly felt that God never had answered one of my prayers. That’s tough.”

Then wait, to see where it goes. Eventually, you’ll be able to share biblical truth (God hears our prayers and answers them) and gospel hope (because of Jesus’ death, we have a loving Father who delights to meet our needs). Watch for the right time to do so, and don’t rush. At the right time, the fruit of these truths will be as sweet to your youth as they are to you, but it may take more time for him to struggle towards those truths than it now takes you as an adult. That’s OK… remember again how hard it was for you at his age, and be gentle.

As you draw out your teen with respect and with care, you’ll find that they open up to you slowly and share deeper doubts and fears than you ever imagined were there. “Well,” your teen might get around to saying, “I guess He has answered a few prayers… but not the ones that matter.” You might pause. Then ask gently, “Like which ones?” “Oh,” he might reply,”Like for Mikey (his childhood friend) to be healed of diabetes so he can be normal. Mom, his whole life is ahead of him and I’ve been praying and praying! It’s just not working!!?”

And so now you have the chance to encourage your child about God Himself: His sovereignty, His wisdom, His love–the very things that you have fresh-perked insights for because you’ve been holding on to God recently much more yourself, because of your teens! When you do get around to supplying what might be considered an “answer,” make it brief, make it sweet, and make it real. Little else will penetrate. Platitudes won’t help your struggling teen any more than they help you when life gets hard.

The key words are: gentle, kind, patient, loving, and respectful. Teens need our care, and they need it in new and challenging new ways as they enter this crucial season. If your teen has been a submissive child, and suddenly changes his ways, think about the fact that he’s encountering a whole new world of possibilities! He needs time and space to process them biblically. Before he even gets to that point, though, he may need you to help him by just being a friend: listening, caring, identifying, and asking lots of questions. Though we never depart from the revealed truths of the Bible, and never tire of offering that truth to our youths, we must allow our teens grace and space to thrash their way through to faith by God’s enabling grace as we also hang on tight to our Father’s hand and trust in Him.

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Let’s focus on lap books for a few minutes!

Maybe you’re a new homeschooler, and aren’t familiar with the concept of lap books. Or maybe you’re a veteran homeschooling mom, and lapbooks have always looke like a lot of work, or mess, and you’re not sure what good they are, anyways.

There are several reasons that we include lap books as key (but optional) supplements to the Tapestry curriculum, and I love how Bonnie captured some of them in her post during a discussion on the Loose Threads Yahoogroup recently. She was kind enough to let me reproduce her post.

I wanted to put in a plug for lapbooking for those of you who may be “on the fence.”

My kids have done lapbooks through our six years so far with TOG, although we’ve never used the kits. We’ve just used lapbook techniques (mainly gleaned from Dinah Zike’s book, and some directly from the suggestions in TOG Classic) to summarize some of the information we were learning.

What I’ve noticed is that as a result, some of my kids have really improved in their summarizing skills, in a way that they found fun and a “break” from regular school stuff. For the younger ones, this was often “bullets” of information done on mini match books, or tri-fold shaped books, cut-outs, or as a caption for pictures. As they got older and more familiar with some of the “foldables,” they would get pretty creative on their own, and often would do more full sentences and/or paragraphs as the written part.

The result either way was very fulfilling for them – a creation all their own that they liked the look of (they liked to decorate with colored papers, borders with markers, etc.), an easy-to-store project that recapped a lot of what they’d learned about the topic, and – a thrill for me – they had to learn to summarize what they thought was important (with more prompts from me when they were younger and more decisions from them as they got older).

I don’t know whether the lap book kits have this same benefit since they are more directive about what to include (they may be – I just don’t have experience with them), and I realize that making a lap book from scratch could be a very overwhelming thing for some kids and moms. Just know that, as long as the expectations are kept very low at the beginning, it can be basically glorified draw-and-caption, and it can be done at a very simple level by the youngest who are interested in making a project. If they can use scissors and glue stick (tape runner is even better), and dictate bullets to you, they can do a simple lap book.

Again – I’m NOT saying everyone should do lap books ) But for those who are looking for reasons to do it, I would encourage you to give it a try!

In His Grace,
Bonnie

Lap books are, as Bonnie mentioned, for any children who can handle scissors and glue sticks. They can dictate written portions that are too hard for spelling, or when spaces for handwriting are too small for their fine motor movement to handle. The learning is in the doing, not the writing! Lap books function in many of the following ways for kids using Tapestry:

1. They are a tactile approach to solidifying what the student has recently learned.
2. You can also use lap books to evaluate how much your child remembers from his learning, especially if you are using the templates or kits that Lampstand Press offers. These are custom designed to work exactly with lesson contents as assigned in Tapestry year-plans.
3. As Bonnie mentioned, they help littles to summarize, or to select, important ideas from the week’s lessons.
4. Kids enjoy having a keepsake of their unit’s work. You can use these as a fun way to review the year’s work, or go back a unit or two to remind students of related lesson contents, such as using Reformation Age lap books to relate to the study of the Pilgrims.
5. Lap books can be done independently by Upper Grammar students once they are trained. This is wholesome, educational fun for such students!
6. Kids enjoy the bright colors: these stimulate the learning and can add to memory retention.
7. For moms who are not “crafty” lap books offer a nice alternative. They are, on the scale of crafting possibilities, contained, neat, and simple. One needs very few materials and they keep kids interested and engaged for weeks on end. As Bonnie mentioned, they’re also easy to store!

We offer the lap books that we sell as either kits (the components are printed on sheets of colorful paper, and your children cut them out and assemble them onto the included stiff paper backings according to detailed directions, and then fill them out from their lesson contents) or as digital templates (all components are assembled into easily printed sheets, but you find/choose the colored papers and stiff backing papers). We recommend one kit per student, but the templates will serve all of your students for your whole school career.

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Today is an exciting one for us, personally, and I thought I’d share. We are moving!

Note: This is not really us moving. It's just a nifty picture.

Two years ago, the Lord led us to sell our house, partially because of the economic downturn and also to enable us to finance the completion of the Tapestry Redesign project. It was somewhat hard to sell our family home, where I’d raised my six children through their adolescent years; but in truth, we also knew that we no longer needed the big, six-bedroom home that had blessed us for so long. With faith and love, my daughter, Marjorie, then sixteen, and two of her younger teen friends, packed, painted, and organized our home for selling and moving. I was so busy with writing Tapestry Year 3 that I could hardly help her at all. God gave her and her friends amazing, special grace. Amazingly, we sold our home.

We moved within the same city to a townhouse, which is perched on the edge of a 24-acre park. The view out my back window is of a primeval forest, which has been a stunning, refreshing view in all seasons. I have loved tending a smaller home as I finished up the Redesigned project, and our much smaller family (since kids have been getting married or moving out) has enjoyed a sweet time here.

Last August, Scott and I felt strongly impressed to move north to Frederick, MD, where our church had established a new church plant. We became very excited as God strongly confirmed our leaning, and as he called two of our grown daughters to live there as well.

Interestingly, we were also somewhat at sea. We were no longer hemmed in before and behind (as I’ve written about here) and it was a real open-ended question for us: what do we do now that we’re grown up? The kids were all young adults, our business meant that we could live anywhere, and there was quite a wide and varied region covered by the young church that we were moving to become a part of. We’ve been searching for the Lord’s will for us, partly as defined by the home we choose, and our options have ranged from townhouses to single-family homes to 75-acre farms!

A quiet street in downtown Frederick

I’ll end your suspense: we’ve been led to move to a third-floor condo in the middle of historic Frederick. City life is a new twist for us, as is living up high in a condominium! Who would have guessed? Yet, we’re so excited and happy! The condo is beautiful, and we’ve got a two-year rental lease. We’re sure that adventures await us on the other side of these two years, but for now, God seems to be sending us rest, meaningful ministry in a baby church, and an exciting new environment that we are eager to explore.

He is so good to us, and so gracious. If you think of my family this weekend, would you please pray for all those moving details—especially for God to hold off the thunderstorms until late afternoon—so that we can move as peacefully as possible?

Thanks in advance!

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At this time of year, we often hear voiced the recurring question of whether or not to start Tapestry when all of your kids are little people. Here, I mean situations where all of your children are non-reading, Lower Grammar kiddos. Should you use Tapestry of Grace in these years?

When I first wrote Tapestry, I wrote primarily for the busy mom who had multiple levels to teach, and said so in my introduction to each year-plan. I reasoned that the biggest strengths of Tapestry were the discussion outlines for moms of older students and the sanity that having all students on multiple levels on a similar historical topic for each week-plan brings. Knowing that there are a variety of fine programs out there for littles, and that moms with only littles to teach may not feel the tensions that moms of older, multi-level families experience led me to recommend that moms hold off on Tapestry until their oldest was around 5-6 grades.

I was also concerned for moms who were just starting out homeschooling. The most important aspect of the K-1 or 2 years is to ground little students in the 3 R’s and to establish order, homeschooling rhythms, and our approaches to teaching as moms. Tapestry presented so many choices to moms in its Classic format that I was concerned that young, inexperienced ones would burn out trying to do it all, or because they did not have enough homeschooling experience to really know how to tweak Tapestry and make it their own.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when moms of younger families chose to use Tapestry and flourished! As I interacted with some of these moms, good reasons for using Tapestry in the younger years became very clear to me, and when we went to revise Tapestry for the Redesigned version, I embraced the vision that Tapestry would be for all levels of homeschooling. Here are the reasons why someone with only non-reading littles would be well advised to buy Tapestry Redesigned:

1. Tapestry (especially in DE) is an investment that will last through all of your homeschooling years. It will not wear out or become outdated, thanks to our ability to electronically update the program. When you buy Tapestry as your first homeschooling curriculum, you make a smart financial decision, because if you start with another comprehensive program and use if for a few years and then switch gears to buy Tapestry, you’ll need to resell or dispose of the first curriculum you buy.
2. If a young mom starts with Tapestry, she can establish routines of planning and teaching for both herself and her little students that, again, can be carried through in a consistent fashion for the rest of her homeschooling days.
3. MANY younger moms have written to tell us that Tapestry Teachers’ Notes form a WONDERFUL tool for moms who are weak in history or literature from their own backgrounds to learn their history or literature for the first time. This thrills us, because we know that moms who feel well taught will be confident homeschool teachers! (For those who have a stronger history/lit. background, we also hear that Tapestry Teachers’ Notes give them fresh connections with biblical teaching and church history that they were lacking, as well as providing them with a comprehensive review!)
4. Another surprising but exciting development among those using Tapestry in younger years, when things are less hectic than they will be later, is that the moms themselves are reading about a third of the high school literature and/or history assigned in the year-plans that they are teaching to littles. Again, they are getting a head start on the high school years by familiarizing themselves with the Great Conversation ahead of time. We especially encourage this activity for literature studies, since the plots and stories of these classics are wonderful in themselves, and the hardest to bridge with moms as teachers who have not read them.
5. Finally, our younger moms tell us that the interesting history and literature readings assigned as read-alouds for their young students in history and literature and the many the hands-on projects constitute the educational “dessert” after the meat-and-potatoes of the 3 R’s. They say that Tapestry studies are therefore the pith of delight-directed learning for their littles, and give them a great start into loving learning and becoming lifetime learners. Whether it’s lapbooks, crafts, great read-aloud stories, or the grand drama of history related for the very first time, there’s lots to love in using Tapestry in the younger years!

What’s the result of all of this? We no longer say that Tapestry is best bought in the Upper Grammar years, but are thrilled to find that families of all ages are enjoying the rich experience of Tapestry of Grace. If you are a younger mom and just reading this, I so have one parting word of caution before you run out and buy Tapestry.  It’s this: keep it light! You will burn out if you try to do it all! There is a ton of online help that you can access if you need to in order to make Tapestry your own, so please, please don’t do all that is written and burn out. This the only remaining concern that I have for young families who begin their homeschool journey with Tapestry of Grace, but it’s easily overcome if you follow the many suggestions of other veteran moms.

I’m hoping that some of you veteran moms who’ve bought and used Tapestry in the early years will comment with your insights and experiences!

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Here’s another GREAT testimony that dovetails perfectly with the soon to be released Session #6 of our Tapestry Teacher Training series: “Tailoring Tapestry Plans to Fit.” Erin did naturally what I’ve always envisioned for moms. She took our curriculum plans and trimmed and recombined them to make them perfectly fit the unique members of her family. We want allof our moms to feel positively invited to do this at all times. Tapestry is a guide on the journey, but it shouldn’t become a task master! You are in the driver’s seat and choose the destinations that your family will visit as you travel the homeschool road. Please be encouraged and envisioned by Erin’s account!

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I thought I’d chime in here with how I “zig-zag” through TOG. Last year my oldest son was Rhetoric and my youngest Dialectic in Yr 3. So here’s how I’ve used it:

Literature:

My oldest is not a strong reader, so he did all the Dialectic literature instead of Rhetoric– this made it easier for me for discussions anyhow. BUT, I utilized the Literature [Anthology] CD and substituted the Rhetoric poetry for the assigned Dialectic poetry. Also, I had my Rhetoric son do more in-depth answers for the literature that modeled the Rhetoric literature questions but for the Dialectic book instead of the simple worksheet Student Activity Pages for Dialectic work.

History:

My Dialectic son reads all of his assigned reading as listed in Tapestry Reading Assignment Charts. For my Rhetoric son, I zigzag between the Rhetoric and Dialectic reading schedules–and there’s really no set standard for how I’ve chosen to zig-zag other than there are sections that contain more detailed accounts of the event in Dialectic than Rhetoric and that’s the time I’ll move him down to Dialectic reading. I haven’t pulled my Dialectic son up to read any of the Rhetoric work at all this past year because I have felt the Dialectic reading was a little more “full” for the historical details. Again, my Rhetoric son did his Rhetoric-level SAPs and my Dialectic level did his Dialectic SAPs, but in some cases I had to eliminate a few of the Rhetoric questions since he didn’t spend a lot of time (or no time) in one of the books referenced in a question.

Government/Church History/Philosophy:
These are areas I have always zigzagged even since I had Upper Grammar and Dialectic students. For instance in year 3, Rhetoric was assigned to read Communist Manifesto for Government. I had my Dialectic read it as well so we could have a group discussion. He wasn’t too young and really enriched the week’s lesson surrounding it. Church History and Philosophy are the same- if you see a topic you like or a more thorough presentation of a topic/person in another level- just move them up or down for the week and adjust as you need to.

The advice I give to all the new TOGgers I’ve mentored- TOG is not a checklist or a set schedule to fulfill in order (or column). Imagine it as a huge, overflowing buffet table. If you try to take everything off that buffet table your kids (and you) are gonna explode (drown)! Look at all the amazing opportunities presented to choose from each week and see what fits you and your student best each week and feel free to move around and explore all the levels and options!

Hope this helps! Blessings!

Erin in San Diego

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