My first convention

I read several articles about being prepared for your first homeschool convention, but I ignored them.  I’ve been to conventions before, so I thought I knew what to expect.  Not so.  I printed out the convention schedule, circled the classes I thought sounded good, grabbed a book to read in case I had free time (yeah right!) and walked over to the convention center.  As soon as I walked into the exhibit area, I was overwhelmed.  I really underestimated the amount of shopping that was going to be available…

I have already picked out my curriculum for next year, but I wasn’t planning to buy it since we are supposed to be moving to Japan sometime soon (the date is still up in the air).  Well, actually I was planning to buy Right Start Math after becoming frustrated with Horizons and hearing so many good things about RS, but I wanted to wait for the convention and see it first, and I did end up buying that.  I also bought ETC, Book 2, since we are about to finish Book 1.  We are moving along with that faster than I expected.

I also bought some Handwriting without Tears stuff, which was a change from my original plan of using Horizons handwriting.  I was able to look at that and decided against it.  There was a very large Rainbow Resource booth where I was able to see HWOT, along with almost all the other handwriting programs I had considered, and decided to buy HWOT.  I didn’t need to buy it now because I don’t plan to start it till fall, but I got caught up in buying stuff.  That’s ok.  I might decide to start it sooner.  We are on a little different school schedule than most other families right now because we started preschool in December, and I haven’t really decided when we are going to transition to Kindergarten.  I am waiting to see how the Japan situation will pan out.

Some other stuff I bought that I did not plan to – a skip counting CD from Math-U-See, which I plan to incorporate in Madison’s memory CD when I update it (hopefully soon), a Kumon cutting book (just for fun), and (my favorite purchase), a poster with the genealogy of Christ.  It is one of the coolest posters I have ever seen – I am excited about it for myself, not just for school.  Here is a link – check it out – really!

There were a lot of classes available too – some were just ok, but one I really enjoyed was about Classical Conversations.  I would really like to find out some more information about this program – from what I can tell, it is like a homeschool support group for classical home educators. They have a free 3 day program that I am going to attend in June, and they have them in several states, so if you are interested in classical education, I would recommend checking out the website and seeing if they offer the free classes in your area.

Matt came with me on Saturday, but we only made it till lunchtime when we met up with some friends and went to lunch with them.  That was the end of his time at the convention, but he was good company.  It’s probably good that he didn’t come with me on Friday.  We have a tendency to make each other spend more money when we are together.

Unfortunately, I think this is the only convention I am going to get to go to for several years – unless there are conventions on Okinawa I don’t know about!