Preparing for the NC Home Educators Conference

I have been doing some reading and some homework to prepare for the NCHE conference coming up at the end of May. I have about a month to prepare as I am hoping to be able to purchase some curriculum at the ginormous book fair this year. I have managed to attend the past 2 years without purchasing a single thing. That. Is. Amazing. The temptation is so strong to go ahead and invest in this or that so one feels prepared. I am trying hard to NOT purchase the wrong thing only to have to buy something else later. The book 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum has been great so far. There is a workbook style approach in the beginning of the book so one is really pressed to consider WHY homeschooling is their choice and then sort of forces you to set the priorities for your teaching. Things like budget, how many kids you have, time restrictions, confidence level, philosophy and your teaching style/your learning style and those of your kids. When all was said and done, I scored high marks for Charlotte Mason-style education and the Classical style of education. This was not a surprise but more of a confirmation of the direction I wish to go. Currently, we are using the Calvert School curriculum and while it has served us well, I find that I do not like the rigid structure that does not make it a very individualized course of study. But on the other hand, I am a beginner and I wanted the "hand-holding" that comes with Calvert. The teaching manual is very thorough and I find that each morning I am not scrambling to find the things we need to focus on. However, Calvert is expensive and I would like to spend less. (tuition for the complete Calvert Kindergarten curriculum is $693.00). Now that I have done the "homework" in the "100 Picks" book, I can begin to narrow down the curriculum choices for each subject James will be tackling as a kindergartener next Fall.

In addition to reviewing curriculum in "100 Picks", I ordered The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. They are a mother-daugher team writing this book together, tackling different chapters from their own point of view, and I find they make a great argument FOR the classical education approach. It is a thick book so from now until the conference, I shall be very busy reading. I also have The Early Years: A Charlotte Mason Preschool Handbook and Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education. The Charlotte Mason resources I have help a new homeschooler prepare their lessons/day/week/quarter/year. While there are some books associated with a Charlotte Mason education, I would be free to choose what I wish in order to teach reading, writing, spelling, grammar, math, history, science, geography, Bible, foreign language, etc each day. This would make it possible for me to include concepts of a Classical education.

I will be reporting about any purchases I make at the conference in early June. :) Wish me luck!

Oh Lord, I'm reading again!

It has been so incredibly busy around here lately. We just put our house on the market and keeping it "show" clean is a full-time job in and of itself. With the 3 dogs and James..and a husband, I have been busy. We have had one Open House and an actual showing in the 3 weeks we've had it on the market. The showing went well and I have been praying for not necessarily for the house to sell but for the right timing of everything and a smooth...everything. Our sweet neighbor even gave us a St. Joseph to plant in the yard. I had never heard of this practice before.

 

And in addition to dealing with trying to sell our house, I have been doing some reading about Classical Conversations. I had considered using this method of educating James because it is a rigorous course of study and the children get together weekly for academic course studies as a group. There is a renewed interest in public education in the country for this kind of education. I have gone to the workshop about it at the NCHE conference last year and found it a little intimidating but I can see the value in this style of education. Then, while at work the other night, I was looking at the Hillsdale College website because I have heard radio advertisements about them. It is a small liberal arts college in Michigan that is an independent institution. They don't take a dime of federal money or state-funded subsidies. I was daydreaming about a second career in constitutional law or politics. Anyway.....I saw that Hillsdale College has "Hillsdale Academy" and a charter school. Cool, right? I checked out their recommended reading list and one of the books was about Classical Education: Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. and Andrew Kern. It piqued my interest so I went over to Amazon to find out more. So now I have a book on Classical Conversations being shipped to me. I chose this one: 

The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Bauer 

This Susan Wise Bauer has written a plethora of books on the subject. She a a professionally trained teacher. I was able to read the first few pages of the book and I was hooked. She writes about her personal experience in teaching her young children to read and to LOVE reading when they were 4 years old. Once they started kindergarten, things went downhill. I can't wait to get it and start reading. I also ordered the 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum

Hopefully, I will be at a good place in my reading so that by the time I attend the NCHE conference in May I will be well-prepared to make some curriculum purchases. The book fair is amazing....and completely overwhelming for newbies. Soooooo many choices! And I will be attending workshops on Charlotte Mason and Classical Conversations. :)