Curriculum Review/ Homeschool Convention

We are winding down our "school year" although we all know learning doesn't stop. This past year Jonathan and Madi's curriculum involoved studying the time period of Exploration through 1850 for History. Science was animals for the first half of the year and plants for the second half. Next year our History will continue with 1850 through Modern Times and Science will be Chemistry and Physics experiments. Jake will be doing My Father's Worlds First Grade next year. Jonathan and Madi both do "Singapore Math" which are work books and text books based on the way they teach math in the country of Singapore (where they are significantly ahead of Americans in math). This past weekend was our Homeschool Convention. We have attended every year since I was pregnant with Jake. This year we didn't all go (Jake had preschool--and it is almost over, and Jonathan and Madi had an important Theatre rehersal--Willy Wonka is this week!). I went down (and back) on Thursday night with some friends. We had a nice dinner and I bought most of our curriculum for next year. The exhibit hall is filled with literally hundreds of vendors. Friday morning Mike and I headed back down there and had a day long date. The convention is held at a huge resort (and I got another nice meal for lunch). We only listened to three speakers (there are about 8 sessions each day), but they were all really great. Some of the biggest reminders I got were...people were created for relationships (not diagramming sentences for example), education is not filling a bucket, it is ignighting a fire, and no one loves our kids like we do and even if we're doing this (homeschooling) pretty bad, we're still doing good. About half of my blog readers are living this same kind of life, and the other half probably can't picture what Homeschooling really looks like and what a Homeschool Convention might be like, but let me tell you it can be extrememly hard, but it is even more rewarding!