Tapestry of Grace - Review

Tapestry of Grace is a balanced approach curriculum which includes reading, writing, research, hands on projects and more!

Through the TOS Crew, I was able to try out a unit of my choice, in their new digital edition format! So I chose the Year One, Unit 2.

Let me start by saying that this is an incredibly in depth curriculum. It covers from Creation through to 2001 over 4 years. The way it is presented you can use it with all your children at one time also. History, literature, vocabulary, writing, and art appreciation are all included. Really you would need only add your own math, science and optional electives to it. They also provide separate bonus bundles for even more educational value.

It is hard not to be overwhelmed with this when you first look at it. Don't be discouraged! There is so much information and it takes a bit to get a feel for how to use it. That being said, The Loom portion of their website, is an amazing resource. Because we could not find any of the books at our library for the Indus Valley section we used resources entirely from The Loom.

The TOS Crew got to be the "guinea pigs" for the new digital edition format. The customer services support was good. I did have to e-mail twice for an answer, however in their defense they were extremely busy getting the kinks worked out for the many units they sent to the crew. To their credit, when I received my answer, my problem was solved. Tapestry of Grace has now streamlined their download of the Digital Edition, and it is even easier than when the crew downloaded it.

I personally found the digital version difficult to navigate. It is all done up in a .pdf format, but for some reason I found that there was a lot of repetition to what I was looking at. First a student version then a teacher version, and without printing, I was constantly going back and forth, not knowing which one to use. If I were to purchase the curriculum, printing it would defeat the purpose of having a digital over print edition, so I myself, would not go that route. While I'm very technical, and have no problems finding my way around computers or other technology, for schooling I still prefer paper and ink books to teach from.

Printed versions are available for $225.00 per year (as supplies are available), and the digital editions cost $170.00 per year.

It is hard to say whether Tapestry of Grace is cost effective. If you have more than one child perhaps it might be. Purchasing the books that are suggested to compliment the curriculum would be pricey, and since our (what I consider) well stocked library system, didn't have any (seriously, not one of them) of the recommended books in the Indus Valley section of the unit, I was out of luck. You could substitute books, but with teaching only one child that would have been a time consuming process for me, and I was personally unwilling to commit that kind of time to find appropriate substitutes. Another thought to consider, is due to the nature of how easy it would be to copy and violate terms, the digital edition is not re-sellable. So if you would purchase that over the actual print copy, it would be an investment that you could not recoup the cost on.

For me, (and I realize others may see it differently), Tapestry of Grace, is a lot of work for the teacher. It takes a lot of planning. If you are using books from the library, you need to do quite a bit of pre-planning to make sure they're available when you need them, find substitutes if they are not.

I actually have mixed feelings about Tapestry of Grace. On the one hand I think it is a fabulous curriculum, great quality and covers all of the history, geography, and language arts core that you would need to teach your children, and all from a Christian World View. That is invaluable. On the other hand, as a homeschool parent of one, really it is not a curriculum I would choose to use. Parents who don't mind the prep intensive work or care whether or not it can be resold (in the case of the digital edition), may really want to investigate this further.

A free three week trial is available at their website. You may also want to read more reviews at the TOS Crew Blog.