Josiah and I went to the Watch convention yesterday and today (Washington Association of Teaching Christian Homes).. We had a great time! Josiah loved the time with me... and he sat through the convention speakers just like a trooper! We had bought pizza two days in a row!!! What a treat! Rod and I were gone last weekend on a business trip, so he couldn't take the time off from work to go the the homeschool convention... but I'm going to see if he can next year. It was great to spend time with others getting encouragement.
We got to catch up with some of the people that we met at the First Class Auction Dinner a month or so ago. Ran into some homeschooling moms that I haven't seen for awhile... Quite a few ladies from our own first class. A couple of the speakers are well known homeschool authors. Steve Lambert (Five in a row) and Diana Waring (Reaping a Harvest) were both there and I had plenty of time to speak with them personally. I also had quite a bit of time to talk to Steve's wife Jan and Heidi St. John. Heidi did a workshop on Marriage. She has such a good heart and really understands marriage. I would like to get to know her better.
Next year I plan on contacting my homeschooling friends to see if it's possible to carpool. It was definatley worth the trip. And the thing is, you don't know unless you go and see for yourself. There were a couple of workshops that touched my heart but Steve Lambert's closing talk last night will hang with me for awhile. We were supposed to come home early, and we locked the keys in the car... (Sent Josiah to the car to get snacks earlier in the day, and he locked them in... I've had him do this many many times... so it was a learning experience for him... and a learning experience for me... how often do you break in to your own car???) So when we finally got things taken care of and then had dinner, it was time for Steve's talk. So we decided we were already late, might as well stay for the last talk. I realized that I haven't locked my keys in the car since before I was married (only once with rod) and that maybe there was a reason that I was still there...
He spoke about many many things but one topic was how much is our kids' homeschool education cost us? My first thought was a few hundred dollars a year. But he was asking something much deeper! How much does it cost?... What did we give up so that we could stay home to eduate our kids...? Well, at the time Josiah was born, the job I had was paying 24K... But he said that the average family... by the time you add up how much homeschooling costs as well as how much of moms income you gave up to do it... cost of living.... over the course of your familys homeschool education... it costs the average homeschooling family a million dollars to educate their kids! Wow, hadn't thought of it that way. The price of a small island! He challenged us.. are we giving our kids a million dollar education? This all really got me thinking and i'm really trying to consider the actual value of our little homeschool.
I guess there's about 3 million homeschoolers and it's growing at about 16% (I've heard varing rates, but none less than that).
I am extremely glad that we went. And it was interesting sitting there in a conference, with Josiah at my side, as my peer, listening to a speaker talk about my job in homeschooling. I really hope that he saw this weekend that this is something much bigger than mommy's idea to just keep him out of the public school system! I really enjoyed the time with Josiah and he's becoming such a good mannered little man. He's such a dear! And a great companion!
Lately, I've really been challenged in finding the value in what we do.. homeschooling. And also finding the value in our friday school co-op (being on the board has caused me to ask questions about the value of friday school)... And my belief has grown tremendously. (Now if I could just infuse that in my home!!!)
Posts
-
