How to Create Morning Time Plans with Tapestry Of Grace

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please read my disclosure policy.

Have you wanted to create morning time plans with Tapestry of Grace?

Tapestry of Grace sponsored this post. In the interest of disclosure, I purchased all 4-year plans of Tapestry of Grace, and I’m in my 6th year of using Tapestry of Grace to teach my own children history. All opinions are my own honest opinions. For more information please read my disclosure policy.

I loathe adding more and more curriculum, especially when I can use a curriculum that is already on my shelf. That’s just what you can do with Tapestry of Grace and morning time. Tapestry of Grace can form the backbone of your morning time plans!

As a heads up, my family isn’t actually on Week 20 of year 2. I’m using the free sample Week 20: Sail to the New World as an example of how to create morning time plans with Tapestry of Grace. This way you can follow through with my exact process!

What Subjects to Include in Your Morning Time Plans

Morning time is a time to cover those forgotten subjects, the ones dropped on a chaotic day, so let’s take a look at what the subjects Tapestry of Grace offers.

• History
• Writing
• Literature
• Geography
• Fine Arts & Activities
• Church History
• Philosophy
• Government

A simple morning time can be memory work and the current read-aloud, before covering one subject in depth each day.

• Monday – Geography
• Tuesday – Fine arts & Activities
• Wednesday – History
• Thursday – Church History, Philosophy, Government
• Friday – Literature

There’s actually a method to my madness. Geography should be scheduled at the beginning of the week because geography affects history. Kids won’t understand Hannibal marching his elephants over the Alps unless they look at a map. Geography helps history make sense.

Secondly, Tapestry of Grace follows the Read – Think – Write method. This means kids spend Monday and Tuesday reading their history assignments. Wednesdays are spent thinking about the history they learned through discussion, so they can write about it on Thursday and Friday.

Literature tends to be a long reading assignment that needs a full week to complete.

Let’s face it, art’s a messy subject. Later in the week, I’m simply too tired to deal with the chaos. But on Tuesdays, I have the energy!

That leaves Thursday for everything else.

Before you begin planning the week’s morning time, thumb through the pages. You’ll get a good idea of what you and the kids are studying this week.

Read Aloud

Tapestry of Grace recommends a good family read-aloud for lower grammar through the dialectic (middle school) years. If you’ll take a look at page 4 of week 20, you’ll see the suggested read-aloud under the history assignments.

For week 20 it’s Colonial Living. A book that gives you an in-depth look at exactly how the colonials lived.

The books chosen for reading aloud vary throughout the year. Sometimes they’re insightful biographies and nonfiction books. Other times the books are wonderful historical fiction and literature books to share with the kids.

Monday – Geography

At the beginning of the week plan, you’ll notice 3 pages listing the teaching objectives for core subjects.

Turn to page 2, the geography section.

You’ll see that you’re studying the major landforms of North America, particularly the East Coast, and beginning to memorize the location of the original 13 colonies.

Make a note on your morning time planning sheets to work on memorizing the original 13 colonies every morning this week. You can simply chant and point at the colonies on a map or print up enough blank maps for the week. Map Aids provides the needed maps. (Look on the right-hand side under supplements.) Just remember that when it comes to memory work, repetition is your friend!

The upper right-hand corner tells you what pages to look at for more information about geography in the Teacher’s Notes.

Turn to those pages now.

The teacher’s notes give you information directly from the World Book on geographic features of the East Coast of America and the Appalachian Mountains. This is the information you’ll be covering with the kids during Monday’s morning time.

You can pick and choose the information you find most important with your kids or cover the entire section. With my littles, I pick and choose. The teenagers can handle all the information.

Tuesday – Fine Arts & Activities

Let’s look at the teaching objectives for fine arts and activities. You have several choices. You can choose a craft to complete with the kids or do an overview of the Baroque period as advised at the rhetoric level.  Before you decide, turn to the teacher’s notes on p. 62. You’ll see a brief blurb that basically says the Baroque period will be covered in more depth in later weeks.

The activity I’m interested in using is to have the kids draw a picture of Pocahontas and John Smith. I can check out books from the library on sketching and find pictures of Pocahontas and John Smith online.

Go through the long-term projects on p. 12 as well. You can use Tuesday morning time to work on the project each week of the unit.

Wednesday – History

As you look through the teaching objectives for history, you’ll notice that in the grammar stage children are only learning about Jamestown and its founding, the Powhatan Indians, and the relationship between the two. Dialectic and rhetoric kids are covering quite a bit more information.

Reading a chapter or two from Story of the World (see p. 5) is popular with all my kids. They adore the book, it gives information not always covered in the main readings, and provides unity to our history studies.

Work on the lapbook with your grammar stage kids. I found chatting about the week’s readings while we wrote, cut, and pasted lets me review the material with my grammar stage kids.

Other weeks it works best to jump straight into the dialectic discussion questions. (p. 44) Some elementary kids enjoy listening and coloring while the week’s studies are discussed. Since they’re studying the same information, they may even join in the discussion.

My high school teens and I finish with the rhetoric discussion.

Thursday – Church History, Government, Philosophy

As you glance at the teaching objectives for church history, government, and philosophy you’ll notice that all the suggestions are for the dialectic and rhetoric levels.

If you have just grammar stage kids, use Thursday to keep working on Tuesday’s activity. Don’t make your life complicated.

But you also have another option. The philosophy section mentions Galileo and the new Copernican theory of astronomy, so chat with your grammar stage kids about the new Copernican theory of astronomy and how it differed from the old theory. Schedule the Story of the World chapter on Galileo for Thursday.

Go into more detail about the tension between the church and the new theory with your teenagers.

Friday – Literature

Turn to the teaching objective page for literature. Each level has its own area of study for literature. The lower grammar kids are studying fiction versus nonfiction, and biography versus autobiography. The upper grammar children are learning about setting and characters, and the dialect kids about circumstances the main character experiences. The rhetoric level includes characterization among its many learning objectives.

As you make your plans, plan to quickly review fiction versus nonfiction, and biography versus autobiography with the kids before moving into defining setting and characters.

Use examples from fairy tales, movies you’ve watched, and books you’ve all read instead of the literature assignments. This allows everyone to follow your examples. Once your kids are solid on setting and characters, the younger kids can wander off to complete their worksheets while you and the teens discuss Don Quixote.

Tapestry of Grace provides a wealth of options. Kids can use the curriculum independently and only meet up with you for class times. You can focus on projects or read-aloud.

Or you can use Tapestry of Grace to provide you with a rich and satisfying morning time routine.

Learn more about Tapestry of Grace and the benefits it can offer your family!