Homeschool Conference

This past weekend (Thurs-Saturday) I attended the annual homeschool conference at the Shingle Creek Convention Center. It is a fun-filled packed weekend full of awesome workshops, curriculum fairs and getting to know other homeschool families that share common goals. I actually attended this workshop two years ago, but since I'm seriously homeschooling next year everything just hit home better. I couldn't get enough of it.

When you walk into the curriculum section you can't help but feel overwhelmed. There are over 1000 vendors there for you to look at, review their materials, and try to decide what is best for each individual kid. Will you do unit studies? DVD work? Internet correspondence? Abeka? Sonlight curriculum, etc...and the list goes on and on and on. You talk with one person and they say "Children shouldn't even be writing sentences out until they get to the 2nd grade" the next person will say "No, they should learn cursive before manuscript, and should be able to write sentences that way in Kindergarten!"

It is quite confusing, and what I gleamed the most from this experience is that there isn't a wrong answer. The right answer however depends on the learning style of your child and what YOU as the teacher are excited about teaching.

I got really excited about the Unit Study approach. With this module we can take any subject the boys are interested in (ie. dinosaurs) and jump into it with fascination and excitement. For spelling we can incorporate words like fossil, eggs, bones, etc.. Ethan can practice his handwriting by giving me short book reports on the great books we read on the subject. Ashton can fine tune his motor skills with color, cutting and gluing art projects around the subject. We get history lessons from studying the prehistoric times. We can take field trips to Dinosaur World over near Tampa to get hands on experience. See...isn't that awesome????

But that brings me to my latest "change" in our plans. While visiting the different vendors I was able to take a look at the curriculum that International Community School uses. Boy, am I ever glad I did this prior to signing on the dotted line with them. I do NOT like their curriculum at all. For example, they are using a phonics program called Veritas Press Museum. This program uses classic style literature to help kids learn phonics, etc...B O R I N G. The very first assignment in the workbook was for me to read this story and then Ethan had to look at the pictures on his page (all in black and white mind you) and write the first letter of the name of each painting. Okay, this was boring for me, how in the world is this going to excite my 6 year old son??? Give me frogs, snakes, race cars, etc...this is what is going to captivate my child, not a trip to the fine arts museum.

Don't get me wrong...I love learning about all this stuff, and want my children to also have a love for the arts, etc...but I could think of much better ways to get my child to build a love for reading.

As I sat there reading this manual I had tears in my eyes thinking "what in the world have I set myself, and Ethan, up for." The beauty of homeschooling is you can build your learning around things that excite your kids, creating a passion for learning that goes beyond the classroom or the work book. This wasn't going to accomplish that. So...after wiping my tears, and calling my dear friend Jenny who was also at the convention to come to my aide, we walked around and looked at other vendors that might suit Ethan's needs better.

And now I'm on fire again, and TOTALLY excited. I am going to find things that interest Ethan and we are going to explore the heck out of it. We are going to fill our day with wonderfully juicy and interesting books, we are going to dissect that snake that we find dead along the road, we are going make beautiful pieces of artwork together, add our way around town as we learn about math and how it's everywhere!

And we are going to do it on our own!