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Feature News

Writing Contest Results

I can’t remember the last time I have been so entertained and delighted as I was while reading our Writing Contest submissions, and I decided on the spot to make this—God willing—an annual contest!  C.S. Lewis said that he never heard of anyone wanting to read an essay, but I think it was only because he hadn’t read any of those written by our Tapestry students!  I laughed and learned new things and was deeply moved by one piece in particular.  Congratulations, young people, and thank you.  Your compositions reminded me why I do what I do.  Please write to us via the Help button to claim your prizes!

• $100 Grand Prize: “An American Hero”, by Emma Sharpe
  Miss Sharpe, your research paper on Abraham Lincoln was simply a joy to read.  The structure was impressively strong for such a long paper, and you wove many details, facts, and quotes into your paper without awkwardness or even apparent effort.  Miss Sharpe, reading your composition was like watching an Olympic ice skating performance.  Thank you!
   
• $50 Rhetoric Level Prize: “But I’m Innocent!!! A Literary Response to Harper Lee”, by Adalynn Durant 
  Miss Durant, your literary analysis and personal response composition was clear, well-structured, and personal.  You performed a skilled analysis of three elements in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and also drew a meaningful personal lesson from it.  Well done!
   
• $50 Dialectic Level Prize: “WWI Warfare Advancements,” by Andy Lee
  Mr. Lee, what can I say?  Your composition amused, instructed, and horrified me in about equal measures.  I shall never forget such phrases as “the father of these flying cigars”; I learned a few details I am sure I never knew before about twentieth century warfare; and naturally I was grossed out by the rats, waste, and rotting corpses without which no paper on World War I would be complete.  Goodness!  
    
• A Few Other Notes on Writing
  
  • Writing Samples: I am sure some of my readers are wondering about the writing samples that this contest was partially designed to collect.  Well, I’ve not counted, but I believe we have at least twenty or thirty of them, and special thanks is due to the teaching staff at Lucerna Academy for encouraging their students to participate (and helping them to submit their work).  As noted in a previous newsletter, we plan to make all these compositions available as writing samples on our Writing page for the use of Writing Aids and English Grammar users by September 5th, our official TOG start-of-school date. 
     
  • Rhetoric Evaluations Essay Prompts: Our Writing Aids program calls for the first several weeks of each school year to be spent, even at Dialectic and Rhetoric levels, in a comprehensive review of English Grammar and the Steps in the Writing process.  I think this is a good practice, but I was recently reminded, while in a conversation with a co-op writing teacher, that some of us would like to sink our teeth into essays right from the beginning of the year.  If that’s you, I want to share the solution that she and I worked out!  Each week of Rhetoric Evaluations comes with two essay prompts (and sample student outlines and sample student finished drafts).  Therefore, if you wish, you can use your Evaluations to jump straight into essay-writing with your Dialectic or Rhetoric students beginning in the first week! 
     
  • Chat GPT and Editing Essays: This is just a tip for those who have any idea what I mean by “ChatGPT,” but I’m fresh off a three-hour seminar that I taught for some students last week on ways of using Chat GPT as a tool to improve learning (rather than falling into the trap of letting it do your work for you).  On the teacher end of things, I have found I can use Chat GPT very successfully to find grammatical errors in student work and make suggestions for correcting them.  The prompt I usually use goes like this: “Find all the grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes in the following composition, list them in bullet points, and make suggestions for fixing each one” and then the student composition (which must, importantly, be included WITH the prompt).  Chat GPT usually flags a few “errors” that aren’t actually errors, so the system isn’t foolproof, but it does help me to quickly acquire a list of grammatical errors that I can paste in at the bottom of the student’s paper when I return it, and that leaves me free to focus on the student’s structure and content problems.  It also speeds up the whole process of grading or giving feedback, so I recommend this method for teachers!    

Future Print Options

We have been thinking about printing options as ink and papers prices continue to climb and our copiers continue to age.  For example, we are currently experiencing trouble with our copiers in printing color maps for MapAids and Spools Geography/Full Rack.  Although we have a temporary “fix” that seems to be working for those who have requested it, we know this isn’t a permanent solution, and we will be fortunate if we don’t have to raise print prices again before the end of the summer season.  

Unfortunately, despite exploring and pricing a variety of options, we find that there are no ideal solutions—none that involve keeping our current prices as they are—because it seems we have been printing at far below market prices.  We have been glad to do that for you, but we cannot go on in the same way as our costs continue to rise.  Therefore, we have been discussing 1) how to minimize the dramatic printing price increase that we know must come, and 2) how to give the TOG community as many options as possible.

We think that one part of the solution, after this 2023 season, will be to offer black-and-white printing again at our cost for as long as our copiers can handle it (hopefully through the 2024 summer season, though the reality may be quite different).  In addition, we hope to establish a list of reasonable options for you to choose among, and one high-quality option integrated directly into our checkout process (pending review with the web development firm that we use). 

While continuing on in the process of evaluating various options, we wanted to introduce you to our new high-quality printing friends—Humble Heart Press—so that you can begin to get to know them and give us your feedback or other suggestions as we wrap up this year’s high season!  

Humble Heart Press is a printing solution by homeschoolers and for homeschoolers.  I’ve been discussing our printing options with them, getting samples, and considering how they might serve our TOG Community, for about six months now.  I’ve been very impressed with their quality and service, and their prices are significantly below some of the other options we have explored.  I also love their binding options—the spiral binding, in particular, makes my teacher heart skip a beat!

Humble Heart Press has graciously offered us a coupon code for this selling season, so if you bought digital and are planning to have your pages printed at market prices, I hope you’ll consider giving them a try!  The coupon code is Tapestry10, and the amount is 10% off.  Please feel free to browse their site and give us feedback about your experiences with them as we continue to consider future printing options for our TOG Community!  

Website and Production Updates

• Master Teacher Training Session 1 Now Available: This particular video has given us quite a bit of trouble because it is too large to upload to our site!  However, we have found a way around the problem by uploading it to our YouTube channel instead, and we linked it to the website in the appropriate places at the bottom of the Year pages and on the Tapestry University page (linked to the Community page). 
   
• Warp Digital PDFs: The digital Warp PDFs that will be available as part of our 2023 Warp Deal are set to begin their rollout by August 5th, four weeks ahead of our supported start-of-school date (September 5th).  On August 5th, you should expect to see at least Week 1 appear under the Week 1 tab of your Unit 1, in the Warp section at the bottom of the page, together with your Week 1 History Sample Answers (which have already been posted there).  Week 2 will follow by August 9th, and so on.  Please note that these digital PDFs will NOT appear on the Online Warp pages; we are grouping them with the History Sample Answers on the Unit pages for the curriculum because that is where they will live when the digital version of the Warp becomes available as a separate product. 🙂  
   
• Upcoming Dialectic Literature Stitches: We will be adding two new Dialectic Literature Stitches this week: a five-week study on English Romantic Poets for Year 3 (we recommend pairing with Frankenstein for a complete Year 3 Unit 1) and a two-week study on Our Town for Year 4 (we recommend pairing with Call of the Wild for the first half of Year 4 Unit 1).  During August and September, we will also be preparing a three-week study on The King’s Fifth for Year 2 (Unit 2, picking up after The Second Mrs. Giaconda), Slave Dancer and Tom Sawyer for Year 3, Unit 2, as well as World War I Stories (one week), Robert Frost Poetry (one to two weeks), Popular Songs of the 1920’s and 1930’s (one week), Black Duck (two weeks), and Glinda of Oz (two weeks)for Year 4 Units 1-2.  It is our expectation that we will continue to work our way chronologically through the Dialectic Literature Stitches studies for the rest of this 2023-2024 season.  We cannot promise to prioritize Dialectic Literature above the development of the 2024 Edition, but we will do our best to make new studies available as time permits!  

Personal Ads

This is our new Newsletter section!  If you send us a personal ad, we will insert it in our Newsletter and/or on our Community page (your choice) free of charge. 🙂

• Lucerna Academy continues to offer excellent paid online classes using Tapestry of Grace materials.  
  
•  Dianne D. Says: I’d LOVE to find a couple of families to start a TOG co-op with me!! We live in Dallas, GA, which is in NW Atlanta in the United States. If you are interested in a co-op, please email rfaith316@gmail.com or text me at 678-524-0265 to chat! 
  
•  Joelle Umandap Says: If you are looking for an online co-op for year 2, our co-op, Tapestry Weavers, will be covering Year 2 this coming school year (2023-24), and we still have openings. We offer Grammar, Rhetoric History and Literature, and Dialectic History and Literature. If we have enough participating families, we also offer Church History, Philosophy and Writing. For more information, you can see more about us at https://tapestry.lustrat.us/ or email Jessica Black (jesablack@outlook.com) or Joelle Umandap (umanjoelle@gmail.com)
  
•  Myndi Lawrence Says: Celebrating our 15th year as a Tapestry-based co-op this year, ISI Community is open to new families! We meet Thursdays during the school year in New Brighton, MN, exploring history, literature, memory, hands on history, writing, science, and theatre together! If you are interested in more information, please email Myndi Lawrence at joelandmyndi@yahoo.com.
  
•  Mrs. Saucedo Says: We are looking for other families in the Kansas City area who love Tapestry of Grace as much as we do!  We have students on all learning levels and would like to get together to do crafts, have Socratic discussions, and go on field trips!  If you are interested in a co-op, please email saucedohome@hotmail.com or text 816-352-4028 and let’s talk!
  
• TreasureLife Says: We are moving to the San Gabriel Valley, CA, near Azusa Pacific University, and are looking for like-hearted TOG families. We will be doing Year 4 and have 2 high schoolers and one 5th grader. If you are interested in a co-op, please email me at treasurelife@protonmail.com to chat!

30% Off Print Primer Package

Many have asked, “Does it make any sense to buy Primer this year if I plan to buy the new edition of Tapestry of Grace for my Lower Grammar students next year?”  Our best answer so far is “Yes, we think so.”  The next edition will offer products that cover many different aspects of the existing Primer (parent-level overview of history for each week, student-level activities for each week, reading lists, topical threads, etc.), but it will also quadruple the amount of material found in Primer from 36 weeks to 144 weeks.  Therefore, if you choose to try Primer this year, you will still receive a good sampler of Tapestry of Grace topics at Lower Grammar levels, plus an introduction to Tapestry learning rhythms.  Because Primer overlaps so much with Year 1, we might recommend you dive in to the next edition at Year 2 after completing Primer this year, but we do think it is still a good choice for this school year if you really want to get started with Tapestry now instead of waiting an extra year!  To make this easier on your budget, we are doing a big sale on our remaining Print Primer packages.  We have about 100 copies left, and when the printed books are gone, this sale is over!  (NOTE: You will still be able to purchase Digital Primer packages right up to June of 2024.)

60% Off Dialectic Literature Stitches

This sale is designed to make it easy for you to purchase any complete year of Dialectic Literature Stitches for the same price you would pay to buy Year 1 Literature Studies for Young Adults product. This sale will be good through June of 2024.

In Celebration of Warp—Free Access Gifts and the 2023 Warp Deal

“Warp is a big deal, a game changer!”  You’ve told me so many times, and I agree with you!  However, I don’t think I realized just how much of a difference it would make until you began to buy it and find creative new ways to use it.  I’ve been surprised, impressed, and even amazed by your ideas!  In celebration of this new Tapestryproduct that we will be working on together as a community for some time to come, I wanted to offer you two free Warp access gifts: one for those who don’t own Warp, and one for those who do! 

• Free Access Gifts for Those Who Do Not Own Warp: We are excited about moving on to a new edition in 2024, but we also want your year with the 2020 edition to go as smoothly as possible!  While doing corrections, we noted some cases in which Dialectic or Rhetoric primary source History books have gone out of print since 2020.  As a special gift to you, we will grant free access to selected weeks of the Warp for this school year so that you can be sure your students will get the readings they need for those few weeks.  You do not have to own Warp, or be planning to buy Warp, to receive this free gift.  We just wanted to bless you.  To obtain this special access, please send a request through the Help ticket.  There are three “out of print” books covered by this offer (Ancient Times: The Story of the First Americans, by Strauss; In The Land of the Jaguar, by Gorrell; The Vietnam War, by Kent), and, after checking your order history to confirm that you purchased either the Integrated or Spools from us for the weeks in question, they will grant you a temporary access to the Warp for the affected weeks—for free! 
   
• 2023 Warp Deal for Those Who Own Warp: I will probably never repeat this offer, and I feel a little crazy for doing it, but I’m so enjoying your enjoyment of Warp, and I want to magnify it!  Therefore, this is the deal: for any year of Online Warp subscription that you purchase this year (up to Jan 1 of 2024), you will receive not only access to the Online Warp for a full calendar year, but also the permanent digital downloadable PDF version of the Warp for that year.  (Normally, you would pay for a digital edition and online subscription separately, and the digital edition would cost more than the one-year subscription.)  Not only that, but we will post the digital pages week by week as we complete them, so you can begin accessing them immediately.  We plan to support a September 1 start date, per usual, and we are trying to stay four weeks ahead of that date.  Therefore, at any given time, in addition to the online text and other resources, you should have four digital downloadable weeks of Warp materials available in the year you are using.  (Personally, given this deal, I would run to buy an online subscription for all four years so that I can get permanent digital versions of all four years as they come off the presses).  Enjoy!

• Booklists: You can find our Booklists on your Loom if you have already purchased, but if you are just browsing, you can find all the books available on Amazon grouped by Year, Level, and Subject at our Amazon Store.
  
  
• Paying with a Credit Card: We have added an article to our Knowledge Base to help guide you through the process of paying for Tapestry products with a credit card or debit card! 
  

• Phone Options: Please contact us using the small yellow “Help” button in the bottom right corner of any page on our website.  There, you can now open a ticket to schedule a phone call or even an online meeting!  
  

• Work/Study Program: If you have skills that we can use, and are able to offer sufficient time to offset the investment of training, we would be delighted to consider an exchange of brand-new curriculum for labor.  (For any in need who cannot offer labor, please know that we continue to offer our Scholarship Program just as before!)  You can use this program to earn any product we sell, including upgrades to the next edition.  At present, we are actively seeking book reviews.  Here are a few examples that we received recently from members of our TOG community:
  • God King by Joanne Williamson:Daughter’s reason: “The book taught about friendship no matter how different the people were; it was suspenseful; and Taharka set aside his godly position and rescued the man from the crocodile and then that man ended up saving Taharka in the end by acknowledging that he was the real god king.”Mom’s reason: I thoroughly enjoy the fictional approach to teaching history for this age. It was very easy to engage her attention (and keep it!) and we actually finished the book before scheduled because neither of us could wait to know what happened next! I also really value Williamson’s level of detail and care to historical facts and features of the time. The story helps us truly imagine what life may have been like for the different characters and their class status. Very well written!
  • Twice Freed by Patricia St John: We just finished reading this book in our Upper Grammar Literature class. Such a great book to discuss with upper grammar students. Not only does the book help connect the book of Acts to life under Roman rule, but it also has so much you can discuss about the characters’ thoughts and actions. The book highlights themes of freedom and forgiveness and helped our students think about the changing work on the gospel. Looking forward to reading this again when my younger kids are in Upper Grammar. 

• School Choice: Did you catch the news about school choice?  We are now approved on ClassWallet for both New Hampshire and Arizona, and we are working towards more states.  To become an approved vendor in any state, we need our customers in that states to send a request to ClassWallet so that we will be added as a vendor.  If that happens, you should be able to use tax dollars to purchase TOG products!  School choice is only becoming more of a thing in 2022, so even if your state does not offer school choice options now, it may do so soon!  This independent website, EdChoice, can tell you about the options in your state.   
  

• Teacher Training Resources: If you look on the Tapestry University page (just scroll to the bottom of the homepage and look on the right), you will see all our teacher training resources neatly lined up and free to all comers.  Some of them will also be added to the Planning page.  A few need revisions to reflect the new interface, so we will gradually be working on those as well.  Thank you to those on Facebook who brought up this suggestion!  We can’t afford to make a habit of permanently free products, of course, but in this case I think it is the right answer!  
  

• Fee for Late Upgrade from Locklizard: Over the last two years, we have been glad to bear the costs of free upgrades from Locklizard for all comers!  However, now that we have lost access to our Locklizard licenses and records, it is more difficult and time consuming for our staff to look up latecomers’ records and help them make the transition.  The good news is that it can still be done!  The bad news is that we will now charge a $15 “Lookup Fee” for an upgrade from Locklizard to our new watermarking system.  If you have not yet transitioned, click here to learn more about this process, or simply use keyword “great transition” or “account” to search for articles in our Help button knowledge base!
  

• Retiring Products: I have a short list of products that we prayerfully expect to be phasing out in 2023, and retiring completely in the spring of 2024.  They are:
  1. Planning Aids
  2. Tapestry Primer
  3. Poetics
  4. Literature Studies for Young Adults
  5. Map Aids
  6. Big Story Game   
     
     If you own digital versions of any of these products, don’t worry!  They will always be available to you as downloads via your account (at bare minimum), and most (if not all) will be available via sections of TOGO that will only be visible to owners of these products.  Also, be assured that we are not retiring these products because we don’t love them as much as you do!  Rather, we love them so much that we are integrating them into the 2024 editions of our main curricula.  That’s right: starting in 2024, you’ll have all the useful content we can find from these seven products incorporated into our core products and supplements! 
     
     You will hear more details about the future of each product and the transition of content to new places in the 2024 editions in future newsletters, so keep an eye out! 
     
     Finally, one important note: we have a few copies of the print version of Primer left, and after that we will only be selling digital versions until June of 2024.  Therefore, if you (or a friend) really, really wants a print package copy of Primer, grab it soon!  The same applies to printed copies of Poetics (digital versions will continue to be available up to June of 2024 at least). 

Writing aids products by level

New Writing products that allow you to purchase digital access to Writing Aids by learning level are now available in the store!

The Warp

• If you haven’t yet heard, you can now purchase a one-year subscription to the Online Warp in our store!
  • $25 for a one-year subscription that will automatically expire twelve months after the day you purchase it.
    • Includes not only our new spine text for Dialectic and Rhetoric History, but also sample answers for D/R History Accountability Questions and Thinking Questions! 
    • For 2023 Only: Purchasers of the Online Warp will also receive the Digital Warp PDFs as it is completed.
    • You can chose Text Only or Text + Media (same price)
      
    • Use it as …
      • Heavy Use: Go bold and also use the Online Warp as your online spine text for the entire year, filling in only the other D/R History books from our booklist that you want for your library!  (Note: in the present edition, you will need to modify or skip some student History questions if you want to use the Online Warp as your spine.)    
      • Medium Use: Also as a replacement for a few of your Dialect or Rhetoric student’s one-week History books that you would otherwise have to purchase
      • Light Use: Your own teacher background notes, media links (optionally) and student History questions sample answers cheat sheets
        
    • We welcome you to go to this sample Year 1, Unit 1 Online Warp page and poke around Week 1: Egypt: Gift of the Nile.  If you want to get back to the Year 1, Unit 1 Warp page later, go to the Year 1, Unit 1 page and look at the bottom of the sidebar on the right for a link that says “Unit 1 Warp & Weft”!  You can also check out the colored sample weeks in Year 2, Unit 2; Year 3, Unit 2; and Year 4, Unit 1.  Check out the History, Geography, and Literature in each one to get a good idea of the range of materials (including primary source links!) that we expect to include in the Online Warp.  Also, don’t forget to watch the video on the Year 1, Unit 1 page!  You will see that we already have rough content loaded for all weeks of History, and we have added information for Literature across all four years as well.  We will continue to refine, adding details in the text and interesting media links/primary source links—across all subjects—for the rest of the year.  The Online Warp may be the most important and generally helpful resources we have produced in the last decade.  I hope you will enjoy it!

Dialectic Literature Studies  

Below is the complete list of Dialectic Literature Stitches book studies that are already available in the store. Please note that the content of these Stitches is different from the content of Dialectic Literature in 2020 Edition Integrated and Spools.

Many (but not all) of these Stitches studies will eventually be incorporated into the 2024 editions of Integrated and Spools, but we will also continue to make them available separately as Stitches even after the release of that 2024 edition because we think there is value in allowing people to mix/match/switch/design/customize their Literature studies if they wish.  Also, there are simply too many good books available to fit everything into the Integrated and Spools year-plans, so making individual book studies available for summer study or substitution even after the 2024 edition is released seems like a good idea!

Our goal for this year, while the 2024 edition is in development, is that a full year of these Stitches Dialectic LIterature studies will cost about the same amount as the Year 1 Literature Studies for Young Adults product. To that end, we have a 60% off coupon available to help ensure that the total costs of a full year’s Dialectic Literature Stitches do not exceed the cost of Year 1 Literature Studies for Young Adults during this 2022-2023 school year. Please note, however, that purchasing even a full year’s collection of Dialectic Literature Stitches will not entitle the purchaser to copies of 2024 Spools or Integrated products containing the equivalent content. Those must be purchased separately as they become available, or received as part of a 2024 Edition upgrade.

Finally, please note that our standard copyright rules for group use do apply to this product: if you are using one of the Dialectic Literature Stitches studies to teach a class, then the family of each student in your class must own a copy of at least the student materials. You may not purchase one student copy plus one teacher copy and distribute copies of the student materials to your entire class; you may only distribute student copies to your own children in your home. Thank you for your faithful adherence to copyright law, which helps to keep us in business.

• Year 2 | The Sword and the Circle | 2 week study | $0 (free sample)
• Year 2 | Arabian Nights (full Text of the stories included) | 1 week study | $3.50 – $8.00
• Year 2 | Legends of Charlemagne (full Text of the stories included) | 1 week study | $3.50-$8.00
• Year 2 | Northland Heroes (full Text of the stories included) | 1 week study | $3.50-$8.00
• Year 2 | Canterbury Tales | 1 week study | $2.50-$5.00
• Year 2 | Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! | 1 week study | $2.50-$5.00
• Year 2 | Dante’s Divine Comedy | 3 week study | $5.00-$10.00
• Year 2 | The Second Mrs. Gioconda | 2 week study | $4.75-$8.50
• Year 2 | The Witch of Blackbird Pond | 3 week study | $5.00-$10.00
• Year 2 | Olney Hymns (full Text of three hymns included) | 1 week study | $3.50-$8.00
• Year 3 | Frankenstein (full Text included) | 3 week study | $6.00-$11.00
• Year 4 | Call of the Wild (full Text included) | 2 week study | $4.75-$8.50

UPCOMING: 2024 Edition release dates and upgrade costs

Our adventures with the rolling release of Spools Teacher have made us doubly cautious about setting release dates, but, if the Lord wills, we prayerfully hope to release 2023 Tapestry of Grace Integrated and Spools samples in December of 2023, and we hope to release the edition itself on June 1, 2024.

Final new prices for 2024 edition products have not been set across the board, but we are fixing the 2024 upgrade cost at $50 per year plan for Tapestry of Grace Integrated, and we expect to make a (proportionately smaller) upgrade fee option available for Tapestry of Grace Spools. 

If you purchased Tapestry materials after December 30th, 2020, or plan to purchase between March 1 of 2023 and June 1 of 2024, you may be wishing you had some way to get an upgrade to the 2024 Integrated or Spools (or both) without having to pay money for it.  Well, wonder no further!  If you would prefer to exchange materials or labor (figured at $15/hr), rather than cash, you can explore any of the following options:

• Student Writing Samples for our Writing Page: We are working to build our library of Writing Samples (samples of student papers completed according to the Writing Aids genres and TOG  writing assignments).
  
• Book Descriptions and Reviews for our Booklist: We need thousands (literally) of book descriptions and reviews for the new Booklist Tool.  These reviews will also help us to select the very best books for the 2024 Booklist. 
  
• Product Developers in These Areas of Interest:
  • Greek and Latin vocabulary root lessons 
  • Art appreciation lessons
    
• Other: Any idea you’ve had that you would love to contribute… just open a ticket and we’ll have a conversation about it!  We can’t guarantee that we will say “yes,” but we’ll be eager to explore the possibility. 🙂

Please note that this production calendar is an approximation only and subject to continuous change. The planned products and elements of new editions listed below are subject to change throughout the design process. Also, product development routinely runs two to six months late in “real time” due to a variety of factors, including unforeseeable circumstances. We urge you not to plan your school year around the expectation of having certain products available within the exact time frame described on this calendar.