Have you ever been to a homeschool conference? If not, then you definitely should! Here's what I got out of it:
Time away to focus completely on your homeschool planning.
While many homeschool families bring their entire family, I preferred the time away from mine so that I could browse, and consider and debate without any distractions! There is nothing around you but homeschooling stuff, so you can really dig in and get things figured out!
So many options!
HS Conferences are a great place to find new ideas and look through curriculum. I found so many different books and subjects that I would not have ever thought of if I had not been there. It is SO overwhelming (but I love it!). If you aren't sure what you are going to use for each subject, it begins as a very daunting task. There are so many ways that you can go about things! I stayed up all night the first night, lying in bed with books and books floating through my head! I woke up the next morning without any decisions made. The great thing though, is that you can flip through the books right there! You can put them in your hands and see exactly what you will get if you use that material. That is a huge bonus! I think it is so cool to see that homeschooling is such a wide spread thing, that there are so many hundreds of things to choose from.
Words of Wisdom
This was my first year to go to the conference and attend the sessions. I got SO much out of them! The speakers were wonderful, animated, funny and so wise! There were many great truths that I walked away with this weekend from these wonderful individuals. I will share some of these with you in later posts. I and the ladies with me found that these words spoke, not only truth into our hearts, but also encouragement and confidence about our choices and methods. It is something every HS mom needs!
A Vacation in Disguise
So I told my husband that I had to go and "work" on finding all of our kids homeschool materials and "learn" more about homeschooling during the sessions and "spend money" on all of the things that our "kids need." What I left out was the part about staying the weekend in an awesome hotel and eating out with friends for every meal! Or the part about cruising the city with all of us stuffed into my friends VW Bug while giggling like school girls. OR the part about staying up past midnight every night talking and sharing stories. OR just the plain fact that I LOVE BOOKS and I love buying them even more!!! This is what I foresee as being a cherished ritual for us moms, a time that we need in order to refresh and fill us back up.
Next year, you should definitely save the money and block out time in your schedule to attend a conference in your area!
Do you have a conference story to share?? COMMENT BELOW!!
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