Well it is Sunday morning and we all feel better after a good night’s sleep in our own beds. Even the dogs seem happier (they did not come with us but they are happy that we are home). Our own coffee is steeping in the French press. Yes, all is normal again.
As you may know already, we spent our Friday and Saturday at the Cincinnati Home School Convention that was hosted at the Duke Energy Convention Center. Along with offering multiple speakers every 90 minutes (there were 15 – 20 choices at any given interval), there was a huge area where the home school vendors could peddle their wares…
These pictures do not really do it justice. It was truly overwhelming. Those of you who have never home schooled or even known someone who did may marvel at the enormity of it all. Trust us, we were and we have done this before. The pressure is immense as you can imagine. If we are to educate our kids, we are responsible for the curriculum. Given all the choices, the pressure to research all of our options is incredible.
To be fair, not all these vendors sell curriculum. Some are colleges wanting to extol the virtues of their particular place of higher learning. There were some vendors that focused on health or other products that might appeal to moms that will be at home full time with all of the kids. I even saw a both for the IRS (not that I ever saw anyone visit that booth).
Along with the booths were the aforementioned speakers. There are too many to mention and every session gave us the quandary of selecting who to listen to and who to miss (they did offer CDs of all the sessions for a nominal price). One of our favorite speakers is Todd Wilson of FamilyMan Ministries. We have heard Todd speak before and he has a sense of humor that only a home school mom and dad can appreciate. His rooms are always packed. We caught two of his sessions and even the kids enjoyed his funny stories.
One session (that only the son and I attended) was by David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association. You may recognize him as he was the lawyer that represented the mother and father of Terri Schiavo. His topic was how the outcome of that case effects us all as US citizens. The hour flew by too quickly.
After lunch (we wandered around until we found a Chipotle’s) we attended parts 1 and 2 of a topic by Sean McDowell called The Devil’s Advocate. It was not as exciting as I had hoped and he really kept it on a level that the home school aged children could understand. The subject matter was atheism and how to answer some basic attacks from atheists on the Christian religion. Though they had sessions that went until 9:30 PM we called it a day after a little shopping in the exhibit hall and headed back for some dinner (Frisch’s Big Boy) and some swimming time for the kids.
On Saturday morning at the 8:30 AM session, the son and I attended the talk called Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned In School) by Dr. Larry Schweikart who is best known as the author of The Patriot’s History. He had me interested until he started referencing Glenn Beck and how a visit to his show really skyrocketed the sale of his books. His talk was interesting but a little biased to the far right side of politics.
We all hooked up during the next session to hear Dr. Jonathan Sarfati (from creation.com) speak on Incredible Designs In Nature. This was more like a 6 week course crammed into a 1 hour session. Information overload are the words that come to mind. He had some fascinating video on the DNA / RNA / etc chain of events that I had seen in one form or another and focused on the irreducible complexity argument for creationism / intelligent design. Fascinating stuff but too much for a 1 hour session.
We opted to go next to listen to the Malley family (authors of a book we own called Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends). I was not overly impressed as their back and forth discussion seemed overly scripted. Ironically enough I was partly distracted by some brothers and sisters in front of me fighting for most of the hour.
We grabbed a late lunch (Japanese for the son and I and Chick-Fil-A for the wife and daughter – at the food court of a nearby mall) and then we shopped a bit more. We attended one final Todd Wilson session, bought some things in the exhibit hall that would have been too heavy to lug around had we bought it sooner and then made the 3 hour trip home.
We (the wife and I) took the last 2 years off from home schooling and for various reasons are jumping back in at this time. The daughter is more pumped than the son. Hopefully this weekend was time well spent and we will be able to make the best decisions for our kids.
Jon
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