Tapestry of Grace

for Homeschool Unit Studies

Economic woes affects homeschool curriculum publishers as well as homeschool families. A letter went out from Lampstand Press  in early November, 2008 concerning the upcoming change in the availability of the Tapestry of Grace preprinted homeschool curriculum.. Lampstand Press publishes Tapestry of Grace Curriculum.  In summary, because of increasing costs new Tapestry of Grace curriculum will only be available as digital downloads at a reduced price.  You print out what you need.  See the letter concerning this change beneath the following Tapesty of Grace eBay listings. In the meantime, you might want to check what Tapestry of Grace homeschool curriculum presently available for sale on eBay:

	Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Classic w Map Aids		1	$0.99	3d 2h 24m
	Tapestry of Grace Year One Unit One			$36.75	8d 17h 25m
	WRITE ON TRACK HANDBOOK Tapestry of Grace HOMESCHOOL			$5.59	8d 22h 39m
	Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Redesigned - tons of extras!			$299.99	25d 11m
	Tapestry of Grace Year 2 Redesigned - tons of extras!!			$299.99	25d 15m
	Tapestry of Grace Writing Aids book and CD			$44.99	25d 18m
	Tapestry of Grace Loom CD - Year 2, Unit 2 only			$9.99	25d 1h 26m
	Tapestry of Grace Hybrid Loom CD - Year 2 Redesigned			$24.99	25d 10h 3m
	Tapestry of Grace 32 book lot - Year 1 Upper Grammar UG			$250.65	25d 22h 13m
	Tapestry of Grace 22 book lot- Yr 2 Lower Upper Grammar			$139.45	25d 22h 27m

(the following is only a part of the complete letter concerning the change in Tapestry of Grace curriculum)

October, 2008
Dear friends,

I'm sure that you, just like the rest of the nation, have read about the financial crises that began to unfold on Wall Street a few weeks ago. The prediction was that this devastation would trickle down to Americans across the country as capital assets began to lose their value, and mortgages were in jeopardy. Unfortunately, Lampstand Press is experiencing in real time what you are hearing in newscasts.

The problem we face is very simple--we don't currently have the kind of capital we need to continue business as usual. Our business has always been seasonal, and thus it involves carrying inventory and fronting printing costs through the winter, when, of course, very few people are buying curriculum. Also, we have struggled to keep up with the up-front costs of printing. Each time our sales go up (and they keep going up) we sell out of our existing supply of Tapestry, which means we have to find the funds to reprint thousands more copies in order to supply even one more order. We are ready, willing, and able to keep redesigning Tapestry, but we just don't have the capital we need to print thousands of volumes a year in advance and warehouse them until the orders come in, nor to keep open a bookstore that stocks every resource book that we recommend.

The solution to the problem that seems to have emerged is equally simplestop delivering Tapestry through printing presses. This letter is to inform you that we are exploring a shift from printing year-plans to electronic delivery. If it succeeds, with God's help, we would be able to redesign Tapestry of Grace Year 4 on the same basic schedule as the previous three years. The only difference is that it will only be available digitally. While for some people this may at first seem like a real inconvenience and an added cost because you anticipate printing the entire year-plan at home, please consider that printing really unnecessary in order to use all of the content that you are used to receiving in print. The typical user mom reads Tapestry background materials from the printed manual, and then prints out only the worksheets or maps that she needs for her specific students from the Loom disc. Delivering Tapestry on disc instead of in print is really only a small change for most users. Change is often disheartening at first, but please consider this: there are many clear advantages to a digital version of Tapestry of Grace.

A few of these include:
-All of Tapestry becomes searchable, constituting an instant index feature.
-Tapestry becomes highly portable: just take your laptop and disc wherever you're traveling! No more bulky manuals to lug around.
-Tapestry volumes on disc take up a tiny fraction of the space that printed manuals do in your home.
-The Loom files and the year-plan PDFs will all be on one easy-to-use disc.
-We will be able to offer Tapestry at a lower coast to all customers. This makes us dance and sing, because it has been the increases in printing costs and overhead that has partially been to blame for our price hikes in recent years.
-Shipping costs will also be much reduced for you and for us. Indeed, for those who buy via a new download system that we envision in the future, there will be no wait or cost involved. Shipping issues and expenses will be eliminated altogether.
-You will now be able to print out all the Reading Assignment Charts that you wish to! This has been an often-expressed desire, which we can now satisfy.
-It will be much easier to keep book lists and assignments current. Indeed, one exciting option with a digital delivery system is the opportunity for us to support Tapestry for years to come in an easy and straightforward manner by creating interactive, Internet-based Reading Assignment pages (like the PDFs on the online Loom) that receive digital updates automatically at the click of a mouse via the Internet.
-Electronically delivered Tapestry pages will be immune to damage, and won't need page protectors . Also, if you lose any part of your manual, you'll be able to just print out a replacement copy for yourself!
-If you have PDF writer software installed on your computer, you can easily add digital notes and/or highlighting to your electronic version, just as you do in your printed version, but your Tapestry original files will truly remain pristine in all circumstances. Flexibility is still our middle name, however, and if you wish to print Teacher's Notes or any other pages of your week-plan, you will be able to do so (without a PDF writer), and mark them up with your own notes, creating your own customized teaching notebook.

In the future, we conceive of re-mastering Tapestry so that customers can buy it for specific learning levels. So, for young families, we anticipate selling at a reduced cost the Tapestry materials one needs for just the early years, and then giving parents the flexibility to add in Tapestry materials for older students in later years. This will lower the entry price point, giving moms of younger students only what they need to complete Tapestry studies in the grammar stages with the ability to add upper level materials in later phases of their homeschools. Thus, digital Tapestry can grow with the family, and expenses can be spread out over the years, instead of needing to be a one-time, up front purchase that then lasts for years.

When available, and again, in the future, we will be able to interlink Tapestry sections with our other supplementary products. So, we envision that you will be able, from the week-plan, to click on, view, and/or print associated maps, evaluations, writing helps, etc. that relate to the material in each week-plan.
Also, we will be able to link to online resources, like Project Gutenberg free copies of literary and primary source works, core books that are free online, etc. In looking at the landscape of publishing, we see that more and more books are becoming digitally available at very inexpensive prices. While we bemoan the passing of printed books, the new world with which we are all confronted may soon make these as much of a luxury as hand-written manuscripts became as the printing press came into use in the 1400's. As far as we are concerned, our preference will always be for printed books, but there is no denying that an optional for digital resources will make Tapestry more affordable, portable, and available to a greater number of homeschoolers as time goes on.

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