Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Weekly Character Projects

Doorposts, a company who's mission is to supply you with "Bible-based, parent-designed, family-tested products to help you apply Scripture in your home" has a new blog titled Doorposts of Your House.

One of the features on their blog is a weekly character project.  The first project is on How to Develop Patience Towards Others and it suggests a real simple, practical way to work on this.  I know it's something we all need to work on in our family and I'm glad I came across this great idea.  I'm looking forward to future character projects.

TOS Homeschool Expo Preshow

The TOS Homeschool Spring Expo takes place May 16-20, but they have bonus Pre-show nights on March 16 and April 12 for those that register early for the Expo.  Sooooo, last night was the first pre-show!

I almost missed it!  I didn't even realize it was happening until it was started and I was scrabbling to get everything set up so I wouldn't miss it.

The first session was Teaching with Technology: Boon or Bust with Terri Johnson.  I loved a statement she made early in the session.  The gist of it is that the education community is experiencing these "New Revelations" in Education, but in reality they are just learning what homeschoolers already know!  Things like you don't need desks, teacher lectures, peer groups, or classrooms to learn.  She then talked about what technology is and what it isn't and how it's changes over time and shared number of interesting quotes.  My favourite was "In times of change, it is the learners that will inherit the earth while the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists. –Eric Hoffer".  It is important for us to teach our children how to learn and to take advantage of all the tools that will help.  Then Terri introduced us to a number of apps that can help our children in their quest to learn.  Great session!

The second session was Home Business and Homeschooling: The Dynamics of Delegation with Malia Russell.  She made a great point about how important it is to delegate and even pointed out in scripture that delegation was important to God.  One statement that she made that really stuck with me was that if you are over worked you are doing things you shouldn't be doing! - either doing things that someone else should be doing or doing things that nobody should be doing.  Another great session.

Unfortunately I didn't get to take in the last session because I had to put my little one to bed.  I can't wait to get the MP3s so that I can see what I missed.

I'm looking forward to the next pre-show in April!