The Toolshed is a private social network for TCT moms to meet and discuss all things curriculum-related. When I was choosing a name I wanted it to be meaningful. One of my earliest idea was The Toolshed. Not the prettiest name, surely. But one that is a nod to my beloved C. S. Lewis’ essay “Meditations in a Toolshed.”

“The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”

In a world of modern educators aimed at analysis, dissections, and the bare facts of a thing, what Lewis compares to looking at the beam, TCT families are striving for a participational, sensory-rich knowledge where we look along the beam with our students. “In His Light, we see Light.”

We try to stay away from using the language of "subjects" because it means something to a modern person that is out of step with the classical tradition. It is not that there are not real categories, we might call them streams of knowledge, but we also have to keep in mind that knowledge is integrated, so the streams mingle together quite frequently. One book can be a work of literature that contains history, geography, natural history (science), and more. In light of that, The Children's Tradition covers the wide breadth of knowledge common to gymnastic and musical education.

The curriculum is organized into three knowledge streams.

Knowledge of God: Prayer, the Singing of Psalms, Scripture Reading and Memorization, Devotional Reading, the Lives of the Saints, and Christian biographies

Knowledge of Man: Gymnastics, Folk Songs, Reading, Writing, Drawing, Latin, Poetry, Moral Tales & Fables, Fairy Tales, Myths. Legends, Literary Novels, Shakespeare, History, Plutarch, Geography, Adventure Stories, Literary Fairy Tales, Art Study, and Composer Study.

Knowledge of the Universe: Nature Study, Stargazing, and Arithmetic.

For a more in-depth explanation, read this article.

We do not follow a particular history cycle. Rather we seek to immerse students in the experience of history through stimulating biographies, autobiographies, and historical fiction. Because elementary age children do not think linearly, we do not worry about the order in which we read those stories. Our philosophy is best summarized by Charlotte Mason in Home Education,

“The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn ‘outlines,’ or a baby edition of the whole history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of all the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age. Let him spend a year of happy intimacy with Alfred, ‘the truth-teller,’ with the Conqueror, with Richard and Saladin, or with Henry V.—Shakespeare’s Henry V.—and his victorious army. Let him know the great people and the common people, the ways of the court and of the crowd. Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think that the people of another age were truer, larger-hearted, simpler-minded than ourselves, that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him.”

Despite providing detailed lesson plans for all five years of elementary education, The Children's Tradition was written with curriculum DIYers in mind. We encourage every mother to discern what is best for her unique students and where they are at in their educational journey. You will find that many of the books in Years 1-3 and many of the books in Years 4-5 (which will eventually be Years 4-6) can be easily looped to combine students. We also provide tools in the lesson planning section to DIY the entire curriculum if that is best for your family as well.

A beta curriculum is one that is still currently being tested. The original plan was to launch The Children's Tradition in Spring 2025. After hearing from a number of moms that they were hoping to have it for the 2024/2025 school year, we decided to release a possibly imperfect copy July 1st of 2024. To all the families who are investing in this curriculum before it is done with the final edits, we thank you! You are now an essential part of the TCT team, and any insights you have on ways we can improve it before the Spring launch would be much appreciated. If you notice any errors or have any suggestions, please email amanda@thechildrenstradition.com.

You will need to repurchase the finalized cut in the Spring (if you want it), but anyone who has purchased the beta will receive a $100 discount off that purchase.

The Spring release of The Children's Tradition will cover 1st - 6th grade. Beyond that, I have not decided if I will need to write a curriculum for future grades. When I set out to write TCT, my goal was to outline a path for 1st - 6th with the goal of following the curriculum outlined by David Hicks in Norms and Nobility beginning in 7th grade. Many classical Great Books programs begin in 7th grade. In the future, I intend to do a side-by-side comparison of Senior's list for Adolescence with Hick's recommendations, and I will decide from there. It is possible that I will see value in creating an adolescent curriculum based off of Senior's list, but I will not be making any promises of a curriculum for older students at this time.

We are not able to offer refunds on the digital download since, once you have purchased it, there is no way of verifying how many devices you have saved it to.

I have great respect for the writers of the Ambleside Online, but any commonalities between it and The Children's Tradition are merely coincidental, and there are important distinctions. For a more in-depth comparison, see this article.