Since I'm a newbie in home education, I have not been priviledged enough to attend a Home Schooling Conference recently. My husband and I did attend one once back in 2006, when we thinking ahead of what we wanted for our family's future. We were just a family of five at the time and our eldest had always attended Catholic school all of his educational life. Never did we know that we were "opening a can of worms", sorta speak, when we went to this conference.
As a teacher in both Catholic and public schools for 12 years, I attended several conferences and loved how neat it was to be able to fan through the books and see lots of goodies we yearned to have in our classrooms. The difference between the Catholic Homeschooling conference my DH and I attended and the ones I've been to in the past on my own (yes even the ones while teaching at a Catholic school) was the spiritual component. The atmosphere was very different and it is was drew us closer and opened our hearts and minds to home educating our children. With all of this in mind, I want to direct you to a list that Catholic Homeschooling Support has created for home educators of upcoming Catholic Conferences in your state. In my case, a group of home educators will be traveling to DC as it is the closest conference to our state. Here is the link to the list they have create.
If you have attended a home educating conference in the past, please leave us a comment of your experience at these conferences. Also, let us know why you would recommend that Catholic home educators attend these conference. By the way, a lot of these conferences are FREE of charge! :) Who can resist that? LOL! Don't forget, leave us a comment with your experiences.
I;ve not attended a homeschool conference, but am interested in reading comments from others who have. thanks for "following" me.
ReplyDeleteGood Morning! I am delighted to have found your blog.
ReplyDeleteThis is my 4th year homeschooling and I do go to 2 conferences every year, one in NJ - http://www.chaplet.org/ and the biggie in VA/DC - http://www.ihmconference.org/national/
I love to hear the speakers and open and peruse many books, talk to vendors and see things I would not have seen otherwise.
Best of all, you're in a setting with "your people!" Every year these events give me so much encouragement to continue. If you search IHM on my blog you'll be able to read my conference notes.
So nice to find this resource.
What a beautiful blog! And it's pack with information. I'm looking forward to following you.
ReplyDeleteThis is our 6th year homeschooling, and I can't think of a better way to raise our boys!
Thanks for putting together this terrific blog. I'll link you at my blog, too. May God bless your work!
Here in Mass we only had Christian or secular conferences which served a purpose but just were not enough. Four years ago 3 friends and I drove down to southern NJ for the CHAPLET conference to figure out if we could start one. Last year was our first and our second was just this weekend.
ReplyDeleteWhy go:
You get to pray and think about what to use for each child as an individual.
You get fellowship. Maybe even meet people who live near you.
You show your children you value their education enough to re-evaluate the plan annually.
You show Catholic Vendors you support them and want them to survive this tight economy.
Keep in mind -- they are not all free. Many people were upset that ours was not but we had no start up funds and no home parish that could house something like this.
However the cost is usually less tahn you would spend on shipping and includes talks, vendors, fellowship, Mass, Confession etc.
How to help them survive: register early and offer to help for an hour or two while there. The number of people Registered early is the number vendors use to decide if they'll come or if they'll send all their materials.