Homeschool Convention and New Curriculum

I was able to attend the Alberta Homeschool Convention in Red Deer, Alberta a few weeks ago.  Rebekah was able to attend as a teen homeschooler as well. Unfortunately, the topics of the sessions were not really anything we were interested in. But, there were a few that we enjoyed. Rebekah joined in on a few of the youth sessions and I sat in on about 4 sessions over the weekend. I took away 2 huge reminders.

1.  Accept the differences in your spouse.  This was important for me to hear, because Larry and I are EXTREMELY different. I think we are from different planets sometimes.  We just see things from totally different perspectives. BUT, this is not a bad thing. It is a good thing.  She reminded us when we are facing a situation when we really think things should go OUR way, to ask ourselves if this is going to matter in eternity, or next month for that matter.

2.  Our reactions show where Jesus is in our lives.  I tend to be quick to react to my feelings.  But, that doesn't show the love of Jesus to my family. 

Anyway, when we weren't in session, we were SHOPPING!  Actually, it got a little boring, but the boys were in the kids program, so we were kind of held captive by their schedule.  I did find some wonderful deals though and here they are.

I bought a few read alouds.  I was wanting to talk about the First and Second World Wars with the kids and a friend told me about the "My Story" series.  I found some at the convention. They are living history books and I hope we can learn a lot about the wars from them.   I also bought a living Spanish history book and a couple others.  Rebekah has been reading the Elsie series and I found one of them at the used book sale.

 

I found this complete Old World History and Geography by A Beka for $30.  It came totally unused with the textbook, teachers manual and quiz and activity books.  History and geography are Rebekah's favorite subjects and she dove into this right away.

I bought a lot of Rod and Staff Curriculum.  We have been using the grade 3 and 5 English and I really like it.  I like that it uses the bible for sentence examples and it is conservative.  I didn't get anymore English, because I think that is enough. But, I bought grades 4- 8 of spelling.  Which looks so awesome. It teaches root Latin, Greek and french words and it teaches some English.  I also bought grade 2 Socials and grade 4 health for Ben and Jacob.  I bought grade 6 history about Latin America. I only bought that year because I have read that they teach a lot of Mennonite history, which we are not particularly interested in.

I  was able to find Teaching Textbooks Pre - Algebra version 2.0  for Rebekah at the used book store and a home economics workbook on top of all that. So, we are pretty much set for the next 2 years at least and I have to keep reminding myself of that. It's so easy to buy curriculum you don't need.  I'd like to really get rid of everything we don't use, so that we can have just the bare essentials, clutter free and fitting in the cabinet we use for our homeschool books. Some day, maybe:)