Tapestry of Grace- Primer Review
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It has been a while since I have done any curriculum reviews. Today I am excited to tell you all about Tapestry of Grace Primer level. If you are looking for a Christian-based program for your 5 to 7 year-olds, you will want to pay attention!
Tapestry of Grace is an award-winning classical Christian curriculum. They have guided unit-study courses for grades K-12 with a 4-year history cycle at the core of the curriculum. Tapestry of Grace has been around for some time now, but the Primer curriculum is a newer addition. The Primer level is geared toward Pre-K-1st grade. I have been using it with my 5-year-old and it has been a great fit for his level of learning. (This is a sponsored review. I received free curriculum and am being compensated for this review. All thoughts are my own.)
What is Included in the Tapestry of Grace Primer Curriculum?
The Primer Curriculum comes with a set of books and activity books.
- Love the Journey: This book is not exactly a part of the curriculum, but more of a homeschooling guidebook to help Mom before starting the program. It is a great addition for new homeschoolers as well as seasoned homeschoolers. It is a stand-alone book, but also a helpful addition to the curriculum. The book was written by Marcia Somerville who also wrote the Tapestry of Grace curriculum. It’s a wonderful book to add to any homeschool library!!
- Primer Guidebook: This book is a valuable resource for the teacher. It is full of supplemental reading for the teacher who is new to teaching the stories of history. It is so helpful because it helps the parent to know more and fully understand the subjects she will be teaching. Â The chapters are brief enough to be able to easily stay on top of the lessons, but long enough to be full of lots of valuable information.
- Primer Handbook: The handbook contains the weekly assignments and content of the program. It includes detailed assignments in history, literature, and geography, as well as suggestions for hands-on learning and memory work. This is where you will turn to most often for your lessons.
- Primer Activity Books:Â These are a set of 12 coloring and activity books that provides follow up activities that students can do while listening to you read aloud about history or from literature books.
- Supplemental Books and Activities:  There is an additional resource/book list needed to be able to do the curriculum. These need to be purchased separately, but they include the list of needed resources. You can also find that on their website.
What Does a Primer Lesson Look Like:
There are 12 mini Units included in Primer. Each comes with a separate activity book. In the handbook, it outlines the lessons within each unit. It gives a list of readings to do together, as well as some suggested activities and hands-on learning to do to supplement the projects.
When we did the lessons, I pulled out the activity book and showed the pages that went along with the lesson that day. I let my son color and complete the pages he was interested in as I read to him from he different book. The activity books have a wide variety of things including coloring pages, mini books, mazes, and map pages.
Then we would go through the list of recommended activities to see which one we would like to do together. My son always likes the ones that include food!
The books we were working through in the first few units included:
Illustrated Family Bible Stories
The Kingfisher Atlas of World History
Old Testament Days- An Activity Guide
The books teach Bible, history and geography and tie it all in together so well. I was really impressed with the selection of books we used. We enjoyed reading them together and looking at the pictures. My son is 5, but the books were all great for his learning level. while he was quite familiar with the Bible stories, he learned a lot of things about history and geography that he did not know.
If you are looking for a Classical Christian curriculum, this is a great one to look into. There are so many benefits! Â The planning is done for you, you can have all of your kids learning the same topics at varying levels, and you have the religion already built in. Â Tapestry of Grace is a beautiful curriculum!
Hello, my name is Cika. I am a home school mom in Indonesia. I just start our Primer this year. I want to know about the planning and scheduling for this curriculum. Which one did you teach first in Mini Unit 1.1. From the beginning to Babel? The history or literature? The history for Mini Unit1.1 is The First Towns, while the literature list assignment starts from God makes the world, Sin spoils the garden and more.
My understanding is that we will present the curriculum from the beginning, starting from creation until present days. If I teach history first, it feels like I don’t present the lesson from the beginning which is the creation.
Is it a common practice for using TOG if I start from the literature “God makes the world and Sin spoils the garden” then continue with History “The First Towns” then go back to literature to finish the rest of the assignment?
Thank you so much.