Well, I went to the big homeschool conference in our state yesterday, and I am still a little wobbly.
I have never seen so many people in the same place in my life. At least that's what it felt like. Indoors, I've probably seen 12,000. But all in identical red-upholstered chairs, paying attention? Never. It was... Odd?
Anyway, I went to three of the lectures, of which I enjoyed one. I spend hours in the "Exhibition Hall" -- the mall of madness. I was approaching claustrophobia by the time I managed to escape.
I enjoyed flipping through the materials that I've admired from afar (online) and decided to buy some of them. I dropped $250 on Excellence in Writing. I dropped $100 on Critical Thinking books. (I've been told their software is junk.) I dropped $50 on paper and white boards. I spend another $65 on Memoria Press for The Trojan War and for The Courage of Sarah Noble.
But I didn't discover anything new and exciting. I was looking for some science or something for The Girl. I was also hoping to find some crossword puzzles for The Girl.
I was hoping that the lecture called "Building a Language Program for your Children" wouldn't end just before the "What questions should we discuss about the books?" answer. Seriously, he just stopped and said he'd continue the next day at 3pm. Naturally, the applause for his presentation was not exactly thunderous -- especially for the people who were only planning to come Friday. Jerk.
Best presenter? The founder and CEO of Excellence in Writing, Andrew Pudewa. Awesome speaker. His talk was "Teaching Boys & Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day". Apparently, it a book now as well. He references Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax quite a bit, so I'll probably run that one down as well. It was awesome. Almost made the 200 mile round trip worth while. Almost.
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