Also, I posted on the FAQ page about using lettered workbooks with numbered books and vice-versa. http://barefootmeandering.com/site/faq/#eltlworkbooks

Okay, good. :-) I'll see if I can make the link more obvious. It's hard because we all tend to skim. LOL With Lulu, I can make all of the original books available only by direct link. In other words, people will only be able to find them if they have the links to the pages on Lulu. I think I'm going to leave the books on Lulu, along with the workbooks, permanently. People will have to go to that special page in order to find the links, so there will be no confusion about having different versions on Amazon and in my Lulu store. Presumably, anyone who is on that special page will be there on purpose. ETA: The links between the two pages are now large and bold. :-)

Quick update: Levels A and B are now available on Lulu. They should be available on Amazon within a week. http://barefootmeandering.com/site/bookstore/#eltl

I hope things start to improve for y'all as well! And I don't mind the question at all. ELTL was really our only Christian program. RLTL and HLTL have always been secular, though I may add a HLTL copywork book of Psalms or Proverbs in the future. 50 States is secular. Primal Kids and Primal Teens are both secular. Quark Chronicles is very intentionally remaining neutral about the origins of life and the universe--so, secular. Wayfarers will remain as it is, most likely. Nobody does everything in Wayfarers--not even us--so skipping the religious portions should not cause anyone any problems. And if it did become an issue, like with people using state money to purchase curricula, then I probably would publish two versions of it. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that with ELTL becoming a secular program, any new products we develop in the future will likely be secular and neutral in nature as well. I read a book once that used an onion to demonstrate the life philosophy of a number of different groups of people. When the narrator got to his own group, he said that his group didn't really care because "we're just here to sell onions." :-) I want to sell curricula, not push forward a particular religious or political ideology. I originally wrote ELTL in the way that WE intended to use it. I'm updating it now to be more useful to all people. I'm going to be frank for a moment. :-) I've been homeschooling now for 15 years, and I've been visiting the WTM boards and homeschooling blogs for almost that long. I've seen a lot of discussions. :huh: These discussion have occasionally strayed from "that's a Christian program" to "what kind of Christian" the author is. I've seen SWB being asked to defend her decisions as a Christian rather than as a curriculum developer on the old boards. And while I haven't had to deal with such things, exactly--generally speaking, people don't worry about how my beliefs on the Trinity affect how and what I teach about indirect objects--I was once called a fundamentalist and a feminist in the same week. :lol: I'm just not interested in going there; it's a no win situation when I'm just here to sell onions. So we'll develop inclusive curricula--I think I like that word better than "secular." And I'll continue to support my Christian customers by offering at least some of the religious material from the original series as free downloads.

I don't mind. I've subscribed to this thread so that I'll continue to be notified of new posts. No, there's not currently a 4 day schedule for Wayfarers. We do it 4 days per week, but we do it year-round, so we complete all 180 days. And I know of others who just carry it over to the next school year. I may consider a 4 day schedule next year since many people have asked about it. I'm glad that the change will help. :-) Rainbow Resource has considered picking up the workbooks in the past, but Lulu is the only print-on-demand company that I know of who does spiral bound books, and it's cost prohibitive to buy from them for a retailer. I have considered selling ebooks from my own site, but so far, the idea of dealing with state sales taxes has kept me from it. (Is it wrong to admit that?) That might change in the future, especially since we hope to be living in a different state by the end of the year. So it's a definite, "Eh, maybe." :laugh: Sorry I can't be any more definite than that right now. Once I know for sure where I'll be living in a year, I can do some research and determine the feasibility of it (i.e. find out how many hoops that the new state government will make me jump through). I COULD make them available through Amazon, but it would be a perfect bound book, so you'd really need to cut off the binding and have it spiral bound or three-hole punched. But I'd be willing to do this if there is a demand for it.

I don't have any firm dates yet. Sorry. "This summer" is all I can say so far, though the changes are going quicker than I expected. I have Level 1 completed, and now I'm working on Level 2. I'll publish them and their workbooks before I begin Level 3 edits. Level 5 will have corrections made, Bible dictation passages changed to literature passages, and some religious poetry and artwork changed. And thanks! Not everything has been bad this year, for the record. I don't want to make it sound like it was. :-) But the reality is that I didn't cope well. LOL! I LOVE the idea of putting the dictation passages in the workbooks, and you timed that request perfectly since I haven't worked on the workbooks yet. I added it to my list of things to change. Thank you!

Thanks! That's from before I had to move my website. I didn't even notice it when I updated my signature.

I'm a graphic artist by training, so it doesn't sound silly to me. :lol: And thanks! I'm glad you like them.

Sorry! I actually agree with you. I prefer the 6x9 size, and that's what they all originally were, but the 8.5 x 11 seems to be more popular overall, especially the spiral version. I don't actually have print copies of any of our books, though, since we have everything on our tablets. The problem with having multiple sizes is two-fold. First, when people report errors by page number, I have to know which version that they're talking about, and the new way solves that problem. Second, maintaining and correcting multiple versions, and having to upload multiple sizes at two different locations when I update, is hard. I generally do a lot of updates at once, so it's really... Well, I'll stick with "hard." On the bright side, your first four and your last four will be two matching sets... :001_rolleyes:

Yes, they're pretty minor changes. You certainly won't have any issues moving from the old versions to the new. Here's a list of the changes that I'm working on: I'm replacing the Bible copywork with maxims and/or copywork from the literature. [Edited.] I'm replacing some artwork and poetry that are religious in nature, so some of the poetry copywork will have to be updated as well. Level 1 had Five Little Peppers replaced with The Box-Car Children, The King of the Golden River, and a few more stories from The Orange Fairy Book. The new print books will all be 8.5 x 11, perfect bound as well as spiral when possible. The 6 x 9 size is disappearing completely. The new ebook size is a little strange, but it keeps the page numbers the same as the print books while keeping the page size narrow enough to look good on small tablets. The pages are have an inch wider than before and two inches longer. And like I said, I'll be posting a FREE download with the Bible copywork from the first five levels. I'll also leave the original free art files for those who want the religious paintings--most levels don't have any religious paintings, but a few do. I've considered making a file of the religious poetry that I'm removing, but I'll probably only do that if a lot of people ask for it. I think there are probably plenty of sources for Christian poetry that are readily available, though I could be wrong.

Here are the new rainbow-order covers, if anyone is interested in seeing them. :001_smile: I may need to tweak them slightly, but I'm pretty happy with them right now.

I don't have any plans to change Wayfarers. Between the Bible reading plan, optional readings from other faiths for the younger children, and comparative religions course in high school, I feel like it does a good job already at offering options regardless of one's faith. It wasn't where I originally planned to take Wayfarers, but I'm happy with where IT took ME. :-) Yes, I will leave both the print manuals and workbooks available through the summer. And they will remain available as PDFs even after that; those who are interested can just drop me an email for a direct purchase.

You've got some time. I'm thinking that once the updates are finished, both versions will be available through this summer--as long as I don't start getting tons of emails from people who bought the wrong version. :closedeyes: There's a temptation to leave the original versions available as print books, but I'm afraid it would end up causing confusion unless I actually changed the name. I will still sell ebook versions of the originals to people after that time. The Bible copywork from the originals will be available as a FREE download on my site, formatted as copywork as they are in the workbooks.

LOL! Thanks, Silver. :-)

I tracked this down after hearing a rumor that we're out of business. :huh: We are still in business. But we've had a rough time over the past year. I was out with an ear infection for about four months last year. So far this year, I've had another ear infection, got rear-ended, caught a really nasty cold, and sold our house. Now we're preparing for a major move at the end of this year. It's an incomplete list, but those would be the highlights. :laugh: We're still writing. Ernie is working on Quark Chronicles Astronomy. I'm working on updating ALL of ELTL--it's becoming a secular program now, and the levels will have letters instead of numbers. You can see more about it on our site. I'm also writing Level F (6 under the old levels) which I plan to publish this summer. I do apologize for being so out of touch. We're currently caught up on emails and plan to stay that way, so drop us a line if you have any questions for us.

An actual email to me, or a post on the Yahoo group, would have made sure I saw it. I know I'll never please everyone, and that's okay. I have been ridiculously accommodating, though, to many customers. If you'd like a refund, I'll give you one. And if many of my customers would like me to swap that fable in future editions, I'm happy to do so. Insight? I guess I simply don't see Aesop's fables in the same way that you do. And, I figure that since there are 70+ fables in the book, parents can quite easily choose another if the one scheduled for narration day isn't to their liking. Please email me if you'd like that refund.

:iagree: Or: "is a big fat honking lie, a pretense meant to convince people that Amazon gives a rat's backside about what their customer's think." Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Sure, but I don't think I'm going to be much help. 50 States is my United States geography program. The only additional reading for it is a page from a Holling C. Holling book. It's more about the map work. When we're in years 3 and 4 of the history rotation, the reading leans very heavily towards American history. I don't necessarily try to fit in both.

:lol:

Thanks! My boys have a special sketchbook for drawing and writing about their studies. Like free-form notebooking. :-)

Marie, we've never done lots of experiments, just lots of reading. When we do experiments, we usually do 3-4 at a time since it's the set-up that I hate. Anyway, I don't think it's done us any harm. I'd like to do more experiments--in theory--but it just doesn't happen that often for us. ETA: We never used a curriculum for this, though.

Chelli, I just bought the Sassafras Zoology book and we started reading it. I have a question. I bought it with the intention of just reading the book, then adding in some library books. The boys will narrate, draw some pics, maybe do some copywork, like we normally do. With that in mind, would you consider the zoology guide and the logbook to be essential, or just fun additions? Are the experiments easy to do, and worth doing? TIA!

I am happy to say that I've NEVER read SOTW aloud. :-D We have the first three on audio. Littles listen to the audio while doing the student pages. From about 4th grade and up, they read it themselves, though that often depends on the age of the littlest little. For instance, Eli is 7.5 and we're doing Volume 4. He doesn't need in-depth modern history, so his brothers read it themselves. But if we were in Volume 1, then the older boys would have the option of either reading it themselves or listening to the audio. I've gotten better over the years, but I still struggle with doing lots of reading aloud. I factor in my weakness. So, for books like SOTW that need to be read on a schedule, we find an alternate way. I read aloud books that are fun-ucational: Burgess, Simon Bloom, and our geography through literature books right now. We handle those in a more relaxed fashion.

Completely opposite opinion. :-) We go through SOTW twice, once for elementary and once for middle school. My oldest used SWB's History of the (Whole) World as his history spines for HS. SOTW is a well-written, narrative spine. *I* enjoy hearing the stories. My children enjoy it more than many of the other ones out there, though we have also used the Guerber books for middle school. They were in addition to, not instead of. Neither of my older boys has been a big fan of the Genevieve Foster books which forms part of the Beautiful Feet line-up. They started off liking them, then put them aside in favor of SOTW and Guerber.

I don't like them, either. We love the books of myths, though.