Our Week in Review (and more about TOG)

Last week was packed full, both with extra-curricular "stuff", and with topics we covered in school. We could have spent a lot more time on this week, but alas, time to move on! Before we move on, here is a look back at what we did this past week.

The highlight of the week for all of us was learning about the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804. It was truly amazing in so many respects. The Louisiana Purchase was arguably the biggest land deal of all time, with the U.S. paying what amounted to just 4 cents per acre with a total land acquisition that instantly doubled the size of our country! And the Lewis and Clark Expedition (or Corps of Discovery as they came to be known) was truly remarkable in the scope of its scientific mandate, and in the fact that they covered about 7,000 miles in 2.5 years, through sometimes hostile Indian territory and dangerous conditions, yet they only lost one member of their expedition (in the early months of their trip, apparently from appendicitis).

Our Tapestry of Grace curriculum suggests many wonderful books for each student's level in each week of study. I love that it is laid out so well and so thoroughly. It really cuts down on my planning time! We do, however, sometimes find books that we enjoy as much or more than the ToG recommended one, and this past week we have been enjoying one of these surprise finds as a read aloud. It is the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition as told through the eyes of Lewis's dog, Seaman.

For many years we used another history curriculum, Sonlight, which is also based on great literature and which we loved. But each of their "cores" (a set package of books for any given year) are only appropriate for about a 3 year age spread, so we were faced with the prospect of having to do two or three cores at the same time. And none of them lined up perfectly so that we could all be studying the same time period of history. This was our main motivation in looking for something else, and we are so glad we found Tapestry! During this past week with Tapestry, all of our children were learning about Lewis and Clark with books that were appropriate for their level. We worked on a big craft project all together, talking about what we were learning as we worked. I LOVE this aspect of Tapestry! It allows each of our children to flourish at their own level, yet brings us all together as a family.

Tapestry is divided into 4 levels, lower grammar (lower elementary grades), upper grammar (upper elementary grades), dialectic (middle school) and rhetoric (high school). Our 6 and 8 year old sons are in the lower grammar level together (though at vastly different levels in their reading ability!!), our 9 year old son is in upper grammar, and our 11 year old daughter is a new dialectic student this year. Her workload has been significantly increased over last year, but she has really risen to the challenge and I have been so pleased and so proud of her for the way she has taken ownership of her work! It has been a relatively smooth transition for her from elementary school to middle school!

Every Friday afternoon she and I have a school meeting and plan her work for the upcoming week. She fills out her assignment chart for the new week (all subjects) and can begin her reading over the weekend if she chooses. In addition to learning about the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, at the dialectic level she also learned more about Jefferson's presidency, and about how presidents are elected and the 12th amendment which was passed during this time period. It was alot to cover in one week! Here are some of the books she read from this past week:

Our 9 year old son G has also experienced an increase in workload and expectation this year, and he is also doing well keeping up with his reading. He and I read this book together this past week, alternating paragraphs. This way we could discuss as we went, and I could make sure he understood the themes we were reading about.


Recently he has also enjoyed reading about Robert Fulton (inventor of the steam boat), and Noah Blake (a young man from the early 1800's who kept a diary). This last book took him a long time to read through, as it was chock full of drawings and diagrams of things Noah made for use on the family farm, and our son G is all about engineering and creating and inventing! He loved both of these books! We also enjoyed listening to a Your Story Hour CD on the life of Eli Whitney, who is best known for inventing the cotton gin, but whose biggest contribution to the industrial revolution was his idea of making standardized parts for things that could be interchangeable.

For the first time ever in his school career, our 8 year old son L started reading his own book silently (not outloud with me). He has really enjoyed that this past week! And it was a wonderful moment for me to realize we were finally at the point where he could read on his own and completely "get" it. Yay!! Thank you Lord! This is the book L has been enjoying this week:

Meanwhile, our 6 year old son C and I had fun reading these next two books, both of them full of colorful pictures and descriptive text. Perfect for his level! In fact, they were so interesting that the older siblings had to come over and listen and look too!

Way back last Christmas my parents gave our family this Lewis and Clark game, and being the teacher I am, I put it away until we got to this time period!! I brought this game out this week and we had such fun learning to play it! It's a really fun board game that captures much of the adventure of the expedition through the trading of beads for either a keelboat card, a canoe card, a moccasin card (for walking) or a horse card ~ these were the modes of transportation utilized during the journey, and there were sections on the game board that could only be used if you had the right card first. Then there were encounters with grizzlies, wintering over in forts along the way, trivia questions to answer, and many more things that made it fun and interesting. We really enjoyed this game. Thanks mom and dad!

Our hands on activity this week was super fun. We made moccasins!! Our daughter G made hers first, and then was able to help anyone else who needed help. It gave us a lot of respect for the indians, who sewed with bone needles and thread made from animal sinew. Even Little Man made some, and he actually did much of the work himself! We purchased these moccasin kits from the Corps of Rediscovery website.

Despite some challenges, it was a very good week and we all learned something new! How thankful I am for the privilege to teach my children at home and learn along with them. Happy learning everyone!