I have not been able to attend homeschool conferences as I would love to during our past 6 years of homeschooling because of the special needs of our boys so to be able to hear these great speakers online is such a treat. I could also get my laundry folded at the same time. ;) LOL
The first speaker this morning was Sheila Carrol, founder of Living Books Curriculum. She spoke on the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling. I can't say that we are a truly Charlotte Mason type homeschool here but I do love her ideas and try to incorporate them into our learning as much as possible. Her words were spoken with great wisdom and a lot of experience and left me with a lot to think on.
The second speaker was Diane Lockman, author of Trivium Mastery and The Classical Scholar. Diane spoke on reading aloud to your children and it's role in language development. She shared a lot of insight into how important reading is even at a young age. I have to admit I was thrilled to hear her reaffirm that it is okay for a child who is a reluctant reader to listen to audio books of good literature. Tyler does so much better with audio books but I always have a bit of worry that perhaps he isn't getting as much as he would by reading an actual book. She did suggest having them follow along in the actual printed book as they listen to pick up more of the sentence structure and such so we will give that a try in the future.
The next speaker was Jay Ryan, author of Classical Astronomy and Signs and Seasons. I have to admit I didn't catch most of what he had to say as it was lunch time here and rather loud and hectic. I will have to listen to him again when the audio for the conference becomes available.
The last speaker was probably the most inspirational to me today. Carol Barnier is the author The Big WHAT NOW Book of Learning Styles. I know her better as the author of How to Get Your Child Off the Refrigerator and On To Learning however. She spoke on learning styles but she covered so much more than that too. She is just an amazingly creative teacher and entertaining and inspiring speaker. Her ideas are ones that will work very well around our house. I also found out she has this great website called SizzleBop that is loaded with ideas to teach distractible people. I can't believe I didn't know it existed before! She shared some of the great ditties she uses with her children to help them remember information also. They are also located on SizzleBop under the ditties section. You really should check them out as they are priceless!
I feel so inspired and renewed today after listening to these great speakers. I can't wait to here more tomorrow! Hope everyone else who is attending the conference is enjoying it as well!
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1 comment:
I am going to a homeschool conference in April and very much looking forward to it. I have given you some blog awards at my place so come look sometime. :)
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