Thursday, January 6, 2011

Home Education Super Summit--My recap of day one


I've been "attending" (if you can attend something that is a teleconference) the Home Education Council of America's Home Education Super Summit the I mentioned a few days ago.  I could call it the "supper" summit because it comes on at 6 PM Central time which is when we've been eating or cooking supper!

It's been "ok" so far.  Nothing mindblowing, but somewhat informative.  Of course, each speaker is promoting their own product/website, so it's somewhat of an extended commercial, but some of the things are useful.

The first day was Donna Goff.  Her topic was "First Steps and New Beginnings", and that was pretty much what it was.  She gave guidelines on how to prepare your family before you start homeschooling in PreSchool or start homeschooling period. 

She shared a few websites.  First was her own, which is The Princess Academies.  Its purpose is to encourage woman and their daughters as they grow from princesses of God into queens.  The website offers various things, but the idea is that you form groups of "Princess Circles" where mothers and daughters meet for "Princess Training."  Their focus in training is:
Painting: Le Gouter by
William A. Bouguereau





Beautiful Girlhood
Equipping through
Love and Learning
Ladies of
Eloquence, Generosity, Comeliness, Grace, and
Sisterhood
(taken from the website)

Donna Goff began this whole idea in 2006 with her daughter in mind.  She wanted to develop something that would assist her helping her daughter become a godly woman. 

This sounds interesting to me.  I'm going to find out more about it!

Another website she mentioned was Living Math.  If you are familiar with Charlotte Mason and "living books,"  you have the concept of Living Math.  It suggests books and activites to use to teach or reinforce math concepts. They are integrated with history, science, and art.  There are even lesson that can be purchased.

Apart from the lesson plans, I find this site rich with ideas and information.  I'm probably too "old-school" to use "Living Math" exclusively to teach the subject, but I definitely like the resource of ideas to add to my teaching.  It saves this old brain from all the work!

In fact, I found about it Monday evening, I went to the site and looked up multiplication since I just introduced it to my daughter, one of the first things listed was "Play Yahtzee," so that evening we did.  My daughter got the thrill of playing a game with the family AND reviewed some skip-counting/multiplication skills. 

So, while I didn't necessarily gain a lot of new information from day one, I did gain two new websites to explore and use!




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