Heart of the Matter Online Conference Day 2

I had another wonderful experience today as I listened to the speakers at the second day of the Heart of the Matter Online Conference.  All the speakers today were down to earth people with practical advice.  It was very informative.
The first speaker today was Joyce Herzog.  Joyce is the author of Learning In Spite of Labels, the Scaredy Cat Reading System, and many other books.   She spoke on teaching struggling learners which is for obvious reasons a subject near and dear to my heart.  She was a wealth of information on catering our teaching to the individual child.  She also explained her reading system which I am interested in trying with Christian.  Her website is  http://www.joyceherzog.info/Joyce_Herzog/Welcome.html .
The second speaker today was Katie Kubesh of Hands of a Child.  She spoke on lapbooking which is a favorite learning activity in our house.  She spoke on the different ways that you can use lapbooking in your homeschool.  She also spoke on modifying lapbooking for individual ages and abilities.  We have already used several Hands of a Child lapbooks in our school so we didn't need to be sold on their products as we know how fun and useful they are.  It was nice to learn some things I didn't know or hadn't thought through before however like typing out the words onto the minibooks instead of writing.  This would be a great help for Tyler with his fine motor issues.  She was delightful and informative.  I enjoyed her presentation a lot.
The third speaker was Dari Mullins.  She is coauthor of Galloping the Globe and Cantering the Country.  She spoke about those times when we are just not happy homeschooling.  I think she was a lot of encouragement to everyone as most homeschoolers have been at that place at least once.  I know she was encouraging to me.  A couple of inspiring thoughts she left us with were "Accept where you are and trust God for the rest" and "Homeschooling is not a sprint, homeschooling is a marathon".  She was just full of practical Godly wisdom!
The last speaker today was Jim Mueller of http://www.sciencejim.com .  He spoke on the need for hands on science instruction.  I definitely would agree with that.  Science is my personal favorite but a tough subject for my boys.  Jim has a curriculum available as well as online webinars if anyone is interested.  He does believe in teaching physics as a first science curriculum which was interesting but I feel would not be a good fit in our home.  He was informative and I can see that his animation would appeal to children.
Tomorrow brings more great topics.  I can't wait.  I am glad that the audio of this conference will be available afterword because I know I will never remember all this great information.  I'm off to get some sleep!  Goodnight!