TOG users.. help please

[4pillars]

Well, after agonizing over what to do for history... sonlight, wtm, ect.. TOG was brought to my attention. I have spent the past couple hours :001_huh: at their website reading and reading. I really liked what I saw, and it seems as if I have been trying to do the same thing myself.

My questions are:

Is there a booklist? How do I know what to buy? I see their teachers manual, but I have yet to find a detailed book list. I really want to have most things on my shelf, because it just makes things flow so much better.

How much am I looking at spending here? I know the TM is $225, but honestly, how much more am I looking at??

How much daily time is spent on TOG? I will be teaching a 13, 12, and 9yo with a 4yo and 2yo.

Any other info would be great.

I have got to make a decision pronto... Hubby wants me to purchase everything I need by the end of the month!!!

[choirfarm]

Ok.. take a deep breath. Ok..go to the Bookshelf. Click on Power Search, it is by special offers. It looks like you would be doing dialectic and upper grammar. So click on the year, the unit, the level and if you do it by bookshelf code, then it will do it by units alphabetically. The other option is to go through the Bookshelf by hand and click on each unit and each level and print the page. I like that because I can see a picture of what the book looks like. All of this said, I STRONGLY recommend not buying everything at one time. The author suggests and I agree that you need to order the year plan first and REALLY look at it. She has suggestions all along the way about how to combine materials and save money at the preview of each week. You really have to look at the week, then look at what is on your shelf and then your library if you have a good system. I had a 7th, 5th, and K this year. I bought all of the dialectic books and a few of the upper grammar as I knew my daughter would use them, but just did a few of the lower grammar with my daughter from the library. It is topic not book specific with the exception of the literature books and even then they have some alternates suggested so if you chose those, you just wouldn't have a worksheet to go with them. You could probably come up with something similar. I'm not sure whether you are thinking redesigned year 1, 2, or 3. For 1 there were not scheduled readalouds, so sometimes I read the dialectic book aloud and had them do the upper grammar as a reader or things from the alternate list. I would buy the muliti-year and multi-unit books, but then really look at what you have. I am planning on doing year 2 and I am not buying nearly as much as I did last year because I have it in hand and am perusing it rather than ordering everything up front. So how much more... it just depends on what you already own. It may not be in your budget but we LOVE Pop Quiz. It is a CD that Mr. Summerville made that summarizes the unit and then each week as well as each level that week with suggestions of questions the dads can ask. I cheat and listen to it before the unit starts and then give it to my dh to listen to in the car so he knows what we are doing. He finds him to be very interesting. Let me know if you have any other questions. It just REALLY helps to look at the two page spread and then your books and think about what you can use rather than trying to figure it out online.

Christine

[M&M]

When you order, you have access to the Loom which has the book list.
The thing I love about this is that it is a chart. It shows you what books are used throughout all 4 years of tapestry, what books will be used multiple times in the year plan that you are using, and what books are used once twice or several times. This helps you to plan what to buy, what you can get from the library, and honestly what you can skip completely.

The beauty of tapestry is that it is a type of unit study. That means you focus on topics for history not specific books. You can use books that cover the topic and not have to find one specific book. I have been able to use our library (which is not the best) to fill in what I did not purchase, and some weeks we just use our spine books. What is nice for you is that you can plug in any books that you liked from Sonlight or anywhere else if you want. I am going to use a landmark book that I picked up for a dollar on Gettysburg next week (we are doing Y3 and starting the Civil War) it will fit right in even though it is not listed on the book list.

Let me say that we have used a lot of books on the list, but as I am doing the Classic there are some oop books that I cannot find. You will not have that problem with redesigned as they will continually update the booklists.

I hope this helps. I have children close to you dc's ages and I know what it can be like trying to get it all together.

[Linda in NM]

I hate to do this to you, but have you looked at WinterPromise? (It's my personal favorite, if I were the student, but my son prefers Trisms.) You could easily use WP with multiple ages, getting the middle-school pack for whichever one you'd purchase. I like it because I like Charlotte Mason; TOG is much more of a classical approach (I used it for two years, WP for one, and, now, Trisms, where my research-oriented 13 yos is thriving...)

[Karenciavo]

Is there a booklist? How do I know what to buy?
As others have said, once you purchase TOG you can see the complete book list which includes the primary readings and the alternate readings. In the mean time, you can look over the books at the Bookshelf for year 1 (http://www.lampstandbookshelf.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=coop1) or year 2 (http://www.lampstandbookshelf.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=coop2) to see the primary readings. You could order the new kit (http://www.lampstandbookshelf.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TOG&Product_Code=PET) they have for year 1 and 2 if you decide on one of those year plans.

How much am I looking at spending here? I know the TM is $225, but honestly, how much more am I looking at?? If you order the kit above you will receive a "Bottom Line brochure" that goes over the costs. If you purchase everything new from TOG you could spend over $1000 per year. You need to weigh this price against how long you would use TOG and with how many children.

How much daily time is spent on TOG? I will be teaching a 13, 12, and 9yo with a 4yo and 2yo.
My rhetoric and dialectic sons spend about 1.5-2 hours on TOG. My 5 yo spends about 1/2 hour on TOG.

Feel free to email me.
Karen

[WTMindy]

One thing to remember is the the TOG books seem to have a very good re-sale value, so when you are done with them, you can sell them. However, it is steep when you first get into it.

What I did was to buy the TOG and then I spent some time seeing which books our library had (about half). Then, I spent time trying to find the others used. Then, I bought the rest new. There is no getting around the fact that TOG is a big investment in the beginning, but if you consider that you will be using it a couple more rotations, it helps.

[Zee]

After buying the Year Two TOG products, I spent a couple hundred dollars on books for the dialectic level. I don't like to think about it. :tongue_smilie: I think because there is a lot of church history in that year, many of the books weren't available at my library. Also, there were several spines and I chose to get the indepth history books that weren't available at the library, also. I couldn't imagine having to buy everything. :001_huh: I will probably buy unit by unit for Year 3 to spread my costs more. Hopefully, more of the books will be at the library since we'll be dealing with more American and modern history. :patriot: I noticed I had less books to buy once we hit unit 3 of Year 2 (beginning of American History). I've decided that this is truly the best match for the education that I want to give my child, so I'm just going to consider it money well spent, even though I just have one student to use the books with. I'll just have to suck up the cost and save money on other curriculum where I can to make the budget work. I've used SOTW, Sonlight, Beautiful Feet, TOG Classic and Truthquest. :blush: They all had their positives, but The Redesigned TOG is everything I want - both for me, as the teacher, and for my student. :thumbup: