I have two daughters in the D stage right now. Each week I peruse the reading for the following week and make their assignments. The problem is ALL the reading looks good to me! I'm so afraid they'll miss something really great/important if I leave anything out. So what usually happens is they work their little tails off to get the Core and In-depth assignments done and there's not room/energy left for Lit. or anything else for that matter. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is not the way it's supposed to be. I know we only have to do Core but I have this great fear that they will miss out if we don't do the In-depth as well. But I don't want to squelch their love of reading by expecting too much. Can someone offer some advice/wisdom? Thanks so much.

Hi Martha!

Are you new to Tapestry? Or are your girls new to the dialectic level? If either of these is yes, it's understandable that it will take some transition time to get used to everything. I've found that everything always take A LOT longer when we are getting used to something new. We never start out with a full load in all subjects but gradually ease into them.

If newness isn't a factor, how much of the accountability and thinking questions are you assigning in writing? I always start that off very slowly -- nearly all of it is just aloud in our discussion time at the beginning. Then I gradually start asking for more written answers. By the way, the in-depth readings are needed in order to fully complete the questions, charts, or other history assignments at this level. If you back off on reading assignments (which happens in our house, too), be sure to back off on the rest of it, as well.

I'm guessing here and trying to cover all the bases, but if your girls are struggling with the reading portion, you may want to try easing them into that, too. Read some portions aloud to them, use a few UG resources instead. Assign some of the reading over the weekend.

Hope something helps!
Blessings,
Monica

Hi Monica,
I should have given more information in my initial post. No, we're not new to Tapestry - on our 3rd year now. This is the second year of D for one of my girls, the first year of D for the second. I think I wonder if I'm too ambitious when I make their assignments. I do incorporate some of the UG assignments instead, sometimes and I like the "feel" of that.

Maybe what I'm wondering is if we sometimes do the in-depth readings but usually not, how much of the "big picture" will they miss out on? We're in Year 3.

Which part of the assignments is the biggest struggle? Is it getting all the reading in by the deadline? Is it completing the questions? Is it pulling it all together for discussion time? Are you including geography, writing, and worldview in your schedule? (You mentioned rarely having time for lit.)

If you skip the in-depth reading, you could always just fill in during your discussion with mini lectures from mom. Some weeks it wouldn't be much, other weeks more. Remember, they'll get this again at the R level.

I wish I could respond specifically about year 3 but the last time we did that year plan, we used classic. There are enough differences and reshuffling in redesigned that I'm not sure if my experience is relevant or not. I do know we loved year 3.

Blessings,
Monica

We include geography and worldview when we can but they seem stretched to get the core and in-depth readings done. I give them 3 days to read and then we discuss after that. Getting the reading done by the deadline is what concerns me.

We're enjoying Year 3 as well. I do remind myself we still have the R level yet to go and I take comfort in that!

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Monica.

Martha how old are your daughters? What else do they do? Outside the house? Do they read other books?

When do you give them their assignments?

quote:

Originally posted by Pat not Pattie:
Martha how old are your daughters? What else do they do? Outside the house? Do they read other books?

When do you give them their assignments?

They are 13 and 11. I give assignments on Mondays and tell them to have them done by Thursday at lunchtime. We are out on Monday afternoons and Tuesdays afternoons - home all day Wednesdays and Thursdays and most Fridays. My plan is that we discuss on Thursdays and Fridays and that they do a narration of their reading on Friday. They are free to read other books at bedtime but not usually during the day. As I'm praying about this, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should plan our week a bit differently.

quote:

Originally posted by Martha in VA:
As I'm praying about this, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should plan our week a bit differently.

I think you hit the nail on the head. We also do our planning and make assignments on Mondays and have discussions on Thursday, but we only "on the go" Wed and Fri afternoons. When we have co-op on Mondays, I push everything back a day so we have time for everything. We've never managed to make Wed discussions work -- we actually did them on Fridays for the first year or so.

One thought I had was I wonder if you did planning and made assignments on Friday, would the girls be able to get some of the reading done over the weekend? My D daughter devours her lit book over the weekend and then concentrates on the rest of the stuff during the week.

Blessings,
Monica

Martha! My TOG buddy! Your title was what got me- I'm wondering how you are breaking it all down? Maybe we have more time for the assignmts, as I go Mon-Fri (mostly off Tues, I assign lighter rdg that day)and we discuss Fri around 2pm. They read it all (M and J) and do acctblty/some thinking ?s and often other assigned things like a lit wkst or Church Hsty ?s in writing. One thing I do is break out each assigned rdg every day for the 4 or 5 days we will have that week- some of ea title for as many days as it takes, vice read all of 1 title 1 day, another the next, etc. Maybe that twist would be useful.

My ? is how to manage mtg w/ mine better! Can you tell more about your narration time? I just feel like the discussion is laborious and would like to add some other time w/ them to recap in a "happy" way-hahaha!

Will you please update how you change anything, if you do?

Love ya! Kel

quote:

Originally posted by Renaissance Mom:

One thought I had was I wonder if you did planning and made assignments on Friday, would the girls be able to get some of the reading done over the weekend?

I love this idea. I think I'll give it a try for next week. Thanks for helping me think through this. Sometimes it just takes another brain to help get to the root of the problem!

quote:

My ? is how to manage mtg w/ mine better! Can you tell more about your narration time? I just feel like the discussion is laborious and would like to add some other time w/ them to recap in a "happy" way-hahaha!

I'll reply here and you can email if it doesn't make sense. I've done our discussion times differently at different times. The younger two will get LOST in the discussion time if I don't make a very STRONG effort to include them - and they usually want to be included. Some things I've done: write key points on a white board for all to see once one of the older girls has discussed them, toss out appropriate level questions to each one and reward with M&M's (this is by far the most effective technique so far! ). When I use the white board, I leave the outline on there for all to see for a couple of days and sometimes even let them draw from it for the narrations. You could even let them do the white board writing when they get a question correct.

Martha, I do think you may have hit something when you suggested scheduling different. I'd start by trying to change that.

What I do is at the end of Friday discussion time, I give my D guy his readings. He records them on a schedule I made for him. He then records all the stuff he has to do for TOG. At the bottom of this page is a daily schedule that he notes when he will do things. He does not generally record when he is going to do his readings, but he does record his other TOG assignments like history and literature. I've noticed he understands that in order to do literature on Monday he's got to read it over the weekend. He also does not record his daily work like math and grammar.

This has worked well for us. He began by needing a lot of help last year when he was 11 and we started this, but now he needs no help at all from me.

I have my scheduling sheet posted in my file sharing group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Myvariousfiles/files/

You'll want to look in the "Organization" folder.