Tis the season... where there are graduating homeschoolers, there are homeschooling conferences. On May 2nd and 3rd, there will be a Catholic homeschoolers conference in Tukwila, and Laura Berquist will be there! Yay! She wrote Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum and started Mother of Divine Grace School. In fact, she is the one who signed the check sitting on my table, waiting for its fate at Wells Fargo. I work for them, but I'm taking next year off to see what life is like with no papers to correct. I think I might like it a little too much. But in any case, I've only met Berquist daughters, not Mrs. Berquist herself, so this will be neat. Here's the website:
http://www.nwcatholicconference.com/
Come join me! :) I don't know how I'm doing it, but I paid for it today, and I plan on going somehow... four kids? Is that torture? Probably. No... definitely. But I don't know which of us will be tortured worse, me or the kids. Flip a coin?
The other conference will be put on at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, the following weekend. It is put on by WHO, at
www.washhomeschool.org.
They are the umbrella organization for homeschoolers in WA and lobby in Olympia for our rights. I have been meaning to go for years, and now once again I cannot go. That weekend is Gabe's 8th birthday and also his first communion. Oh well. Someday I'll go. I'd actually love to go to that one. It's good to get a non-Catholic perspective once in a while, and also a non-traditional homeschooling dose. Unschoolers have a lot to teach people. I know, sacrilege, call the cops, the bishop, you name it. But it's true. A little perspective from unexpected places is often just what the doctor ordered. That's why I read so much.
I've noticed Amazon can't track me, either. See my previous post for a typical sample of what I order. Catholic, computer, psychology, kids books, money books, fantasy, how to books, farm and garden books, and on and on. It's so funny what Amazon recommends sometimes.
Anyway, I hope to see some of you at one or both of them. Peruse websites at will!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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I actually think unschooling has some great ideas. I think it's main weakness is that subjects a person excells in may never come up in everyday life - like Computer Science, higher math, etc. I love those subjects, but doubt I could have self-taught or even realized I loved them without a structure that guided me over the core areas of knowledge. But stuff like how kids really do enjoy learning, how schooling can be very informal and still effective, and more - there are worthwhile lessons there.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear what you learn if we get time to sit and chat sometime. Don't know if we'll do homeschooling in the long run, but at least until kindergarten - no multi-year preschool for us.
Sounds good to me! Yeah, I could never trust myself to unschool mostly for that reason, but it's fun to give it a shot in the summertime, when it doesn't matter as much if it doesn't go the way I think. In WA, you don't have to enroll kids in school til they are eight, anyway! Hooray!
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