Roadschooling

Convention Time

This past weekend was our favorite homeschool event of the year, CONVENTION!!

We attend the Oklahoma Christian Home Educator Consociation (OCHEC) convention held yearly at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

The event takes place, generally, the first week of May on a Friday & Saturday.

It's very exciting for us since there is something for everyone. 

For mom (and dad) there are awesome workshops for various topics of interest and of course vendors in the main area.

For kids there is an outstanding venue called Student Entrepreneur Expo which is open to any Oklahoma homeschooled student between ages 10-18 who owns, manages and operates a business. This area is amazing! I love seeing the growth in this venue every year and what awesome talents and goods these kids have to sale. 

Another great program they have for teens ages 13-18 is Generation Joshua iObject program. The Generation Joshua iObject program puts participants on the front lines of the judicial system, allowing them to actually see the evidence that is used to bring people to trial and the difficulties that face a system of justice. 

For homeschoolers ages 5-12,  Character Focus comes on board with a super fun children's program and each year has a different theme. It's like VBS on steroids. My girls have attended every year and LOVE it. I can not praise Character Focus enough for the fun and care they put into their amazing program.

OCHEC also host an Art & Photo contest open to homeschool students ages 5-18. 

Workshop speakers I truly enjoyed this year were Shelley Noonan and Cyndi Kinney.

Shelley is an author, speaker and publisher who is passionate about assisting parents in recapturing the lost art of mentoring your child, with a special focus on daughters. She was such a blessing and encouragement to me!

You can find more about her books at

 http://www.btwixtandbtweenblog.com/wordpress/ and follow her on Pinterest for craft projects to go along with the mother/daughter bible study she has created as a companion to Beautiful Girlhood.

Cyndi is an author, speaker and publisher for Knowledge Box Central. Her eclectic method of unschooling has made her a popular speaker at many conventions. She also did an outstanding presentation on Color Psychology that was an eye opener for both myself and hubby.

One of my favorite resources she told us about during the Combining Homeschooling With Unschooling Successfully workshop was Teachwithmovies.org (a FREE resource) and Life Learning Magazine. 

John Holt is an author she recommends for unschoolers. Books to check out are; How Children Learn, How Children Fail and series titled Teach Your Own.

If you'd like to see more information about Cyndi and her beautiful lapbooks please visit her at http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/

When people ask me what we do in our homeschool it's hard to sum it up really. We do use curriculum but not what is known as a complete "in the box" method. I'm very eclectic in my teaching style. I believe I have a healthy balance of Homeschooling with Unschooling methods. It works best for us that way!

Here's a glance at what we have coming up this next school year:

We fell in love with YWAM missionary books this school year. I LOVE to read aloud to the girls and these have been so fun for all three of us. So when I was gathering a list of more books to buy from their vendor I discovered they have an overview guide to help parents use the books and unit study guides for homeschooling purposes.  Heroes of History books will be our reading focus next year as we travel around the country learning about our great nation and the founders and settlers who made it. All the opportunities we will have to make it come to life will be the most "Unschooling" fun EVER!

We will continue to use Teaching Textbooks for Math. Our girls have really liked that change this year and we have seen incredible results both academically and in attitudes about completing the assignments.

Easy Grammer and Daily Grams will be another great resource for us as well as Writing With Ease.

Both girls will be using some Dave Ramsey materials. Chloe will be learning with Financial Peace Junior while Lauren uses Generation Change. 

The girls and I will be using Beautiful Girlhood and Shelley's resources for our bible study time. I am really looking forward to those special moments with my girls. I truly believe I have finally found the perfect fit for us!

We have lots of other fun things planned with videos/movies, games and field trips that are just too much to list now so stayed tuned this next year and see what all we're up to!