Monday, March 29, 2010

Our Local Homeschool Heritage Fair

There were a number of interesting presentations in our local homeschool Heritage Fair today.  A primary age student explained a display she had put together about a relative of her's who was a well known midwife.  She spoke clearly and with confidence and was quite interesting.  Another primary age student told us about the birth provinces of his parents and shared memories his father shared with him about growing up in another province.  One junior high student explained his display about the Tsunami of 1929.  Another junior high student clearly explained the proper naming of distant relatives as he pointed out names and pictures from his family tree, which he has traced back many generations.  A couple of senior high students shared their grandfathers' stamp and coin collections and explained how and when stamps and coins first came into use in Newfoundland.

This is the first time we held a heritage fair and it was a learning experience for all of us.  I am fairly certain that we will do it again.  It was a great experience for the children to put together and to do the presentations.  They did a great job.  There were presentations other than the ones I named above but I felt these best embodied what a heritage fair is all about.

I learned about the Heritage Fair program from a fellow homeschooler's blog a year or more ago.  It sounded very interesting so I decided to check it out.  This was the first year that our local homeschool group expressed an interest in participating.  When I went searching for the information again I was disappointed to discover that the Heritage Fair program was going through changes and I had trouble finding information on local fairs and the national fair.  I finally found out that there was not going to be a local heritage fair in our area this year and I'm still not sure if there is going to be a national fair or not, but we decided to go ahead a hold a heritage on our own anyway and I'm really glad we did.