Convention Follow-Up

Well it's been a week since the convention.  I've had some time to ponder and reflect.  Riley and I enjoyed our time together.  Although, it felt good to leave the hustle and bustle of the city and come home to wide open spaces and the frogs singing.  We both decided we're country girls.

Thursday evening, as a convention kick off, we watched a movie called Indoctrination: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.    I highly recommend this film if you get the chance to watch it!  It really hit home as to why we choose to homeschool.  

Friday morning, with excitement and lists in hand, we headed off to the used book sale.  I was disappointed to find mostly book dealers and not the usual homeschooling families selling their curriculum.   The used book sale seemed smaller.  We didn't spend as much time there as usual, but headed down to the exhibit hall instead to research reading programs.  Ruben's been struggling with reading and I feel like I'm struggling to find the right program fit for him.

Later in the afternoon, upon talking to another homeschooling mom in the exhibit hall, we discovered that we missed part of the used book sale.  Apparently, it was divided into two separate rooms and we missed the second room.  So we hightailed it back up to the used book sale, but unfortunately, by the time we got there, we missed out on some of the used deals I was originally looking for.  It was a real bummer!

Saturday, we headed back to the exhibit hall and spent some more time deciding on a reading program.    After much research and prayer, I purchased All About Reading, Level 1 for Ruben.  Riley is currently using All About Spelling Level 1 and it's going great!  I really like the Orton Gillingham method Marie Rippel uses in her spelling and reading programs.  Ruben and I have been trying All About Reading this week.  I like the program, but time will tell how it goes for Ruben.  I plan to write about it in another post.  

I also purchased the next Explode the Code books and Getty Dubay Italic book.  Since Ruben had success with these, I wanted to have them as a back up plan.  Sonlight uses these for their Language Arts program so I may incorporate them next year.  

I ordered the next levels of Math-U-See for Riley and Ruben.  They should be arriving any day.  Riley will continue with Pictures in Cursive by Queen Homeschool.  They arrived yesterday.  She was very excited!  

I found some Master Books science books on a close out for a great price.  I'm so excited about these.  I plan to read through them this summer and see how I can incorporate them. 

I purchased the first two levels in the elementary series of Life of Fred.  Ruben will be done with his math next week so I wanted a little something to round out the school year.  When I read an excerpt online, he enjoyed it.  Hopefully, it's a fun way to end the school year!  

I didn't find many things for Angel, but hope to at some used curriculum fairs coming up.  If not, I usually place one large order from Rainbow Resource before the start up of the school year.  I will finalize curriculum purchases at that time.  

One last note regarding the used book sale, I was excited to find some of the regional books by Lois Lenski.  I plan to use them when studying American History with Riley and Ruben in 2 years.  They are hard to find as many are out of print.  They look like great living books! 

Overall, the convention was a success in spite of our used book sale mishap.  I look forward to starting our next school year strong with our new resources.