NWA Homeschool Convention

We had a very busy 4 days in NWA. Besides the Homeschool Convention, we celebrated my nephew's birthday, took all 8 children to have their pictures taken, went to Carthage MO to the Precious Moments Chapel, had a picnic in the park, and went to Chuck E Cheese. Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to load some pictures and do a separate post about the Precious Moments Chapel and our picnic in the park.

This is only the third year of the NWA Homeschool Convention. There is another Convention that takes place in Searcy and it has been going on much longer. I was warned by a friend that the NWA Convention was much smaller than Searcy and was not as good but it is growing and expanding every year. I have to say that even though it was a little smaller it was just as good. I did get there a day later than I had planned (because of bad weather) and because of our busy schedule did not make it to any of the workshops. This year they recorded them and made them available for purchase on CD and Mp3 so I may still buy the ones that I missed. I enjoyed visiting the Vendor Hall and there were quite a few Vendors there. I got to have a look at some books I was deciding on and got to see quite a bit that I never even knew about. For instance, I have used A Reason For Handwriting for several years, but never knew that they also had a fantastic Science, Spelling, and Guided Reading Curriculum also. Check out www.ABeginningAdvantage.com to see all of the wonderful Bible Based products they have available. I also was very pleased to visit the Math U See Vendor. Some of you may not know about the changes they have made to their product. For several years they have been trying to find A USA publishing company that would produce a hard backed Teacher Manual and they finally located one that would do it afford ably. It is a much nicer product and one that will last much longer (the spiral bound pages were always falling out) for only $5 more. Go to www.mathusee.com to see their product list. There was so much to see that for a book lover like me that I wanted to buy one of everything.

At the used curriculum sale, I thought there was a large variety of each age range. I picked up several good chapter books for .50, a complete Abeka Spanish 1 for $10, brand new 1st grade handwriting for $6, a brand new Color the Phonics Computer Program for $10 (I hope it works to motivate Alex) and some other misc books for less than $2 each. Chelsea was very happy to accompany me to the book sale and help me spend our book money.

I thought it was very good and look forward to going again next year.