Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
Marcia, we talked earlier this week about academic development as one important concept for large families. Your Tapestry of Grace curriculum is a great example of integrating multi-level learning. Can you explain how multi-level learning can provide a tremendous advantage for families who are homeschooling children at many different places in their academic development?

Marcia Somerville:
Sure Mike, I’ll try. Our Tapestry of Grace curriculum is an example of unit study. In unit study, students of all ages can learn one topic. And in the case of Tapestry of Grace, we take history as our central hat rack, and we hang all the humanities from that: government and philosophy and literature and geography.

And what I find is that when all the students in my home are studying one topic during a week—even if the youngest child might be studying, say Egypt, and learning about the Nile and Hippos, and the oldest may be learning that when God turned the Nile into blood, He was judging the Egyptians, and everything in between—they’re having a conversation. There’s rich family unity that results from families that do multi-level teaching.

Mike:
Thanks so much, Marcia. I’m sure our listeners are going to find this very encouraging and helpful. I’m Mike Farris.