Heart of the Matter Conference

I finally got the links to the MP3s for the conference I virtually attended a few weeks back. I still haven't managed to listen to every session but, to be honest, many of the sessions were rather fluffy. It was good for creating some overall motivation and maybe some cute ideas but not a lot of real beefy content. The entire conference was only $13 so I'm definitely not complaining. If anything, it motivated me to seek out some Catholic home school conferences that I could possibly attend in the future. Some of the sessions got pretty intense, in the way of faith based content, and it didn't quite line up with what I believe, as a Catholic. It was pretty easy to sift through it and get what I wanted out of it so it wasn't a complete disaster or anything. I thought I would give you a run down of my favorite sessions and some links that I found helpful.

Carol Barnier: "What Are You Thinking? Learning Style and Beyond"

This session stood out, ironically, because the learning style topic is talked about over and over in homeschool books, web sites, etc. Carol addressed this up front. She talked about how, as a homeschooling mom, we are told to identify our child's learning style and then teach to that. "If your child is a visual learner, teach visually" and then we are left to our own devices. She has written a book called "The Big What Now Book of Learning Styles" which is supposed to give us methods of teaching all sorts of subjects to each of the different learning styles. Unfortunately amazon doesn't have an option to "look inside" the book. Boooo. I always like to read the table of contents to get a feel for a book and if it is right for me. Her hour long presentation was pretty interesting and gave a lot of ideas. I actually listened to that one live so I plan on giving it another listen and taking some notes.


Katie Kubesh: "Beginning Lapbooking"

Somehow, I had never even heard of lapbooking until I listened to this session. After it was described, I then turned around and explained it to my husband. I kinda think of the lapbook as a miniature version of those big awkward foam board projects I was made to do in middle school. I did one in sixth grade on Paul Revere and then one in seventh on Joan of Arc. Basically, you pick a topic, your child does little mini book and different projects around this topic and puts all of the new found knowledge into a lapbook. It's kinda awesome because I am, naturally, not very artsy and crafty but I want to be for my kids. The lapbook really speaks to my crazy organizational side. You get to research a topic and then organize all of it in these adorable and crafty lapbooks. And then you can reference the lapbook over and over. And you can store them pretty easily because they don't take up much space. I was pretty impressed. Katie explains in her session how to create your own topic and come up with the minibooks and such for the lapbook or you can let her do all the prep for you. She has a company, Hands of a Child, that creates the outline for the project for you. It's really hard to explain so you'll just have to check out the site. The kids and I always seem to do our craft projects based around whatever we're studying in religion or coinciding with the liturgical year so I wanted to find something more Catholic specific. I found Lapbooks for Catholics and purchased "The Things I See In Church" lapbook. We just started working on it today. I was getting a little bored with the Who Am I? curriculum that we've been working through this year so I thought we would take a break and work on this instead.

Jim Mueller: "Essential Science"

This guy loves him some physics! You must check out his web site. He was very captivating. He basically talked about ways to engage kids in learning about physics. What I found pretty interesting is he made it clear that you don't need to do a whole bunch of math to study and enjoy physics. He has a bunch of his own curricula for sale on his site and he actually teaches classes for a really reasonable price that your child can attend via the internet. I dare your kid to fall asleep. He totally reminds me of Bill Nye the Science Guy. I just find science nerds (ie: my husband) adorable. He mentioned that kids don't really need any formal teaching, involving experiments and whatnot, until they reach the age of 8 or 9. Up until that point, it's just about observing and learning about the world we live in. This totally falls in line with the classical model of education, which we use, so I do think I will revisit his materials when it comes time to find a science curriculum in a few years.

There was also a session that addressed teaching kids with Sensory Processing Disorder (presented by Heather Laurie) so, of course, I was interested. But, because I have already read a million books on the subject and been seeing an occupational therapist, I was already pretty familiar with the material that was presented. Still a good listen though.

Here's the site for the conference, if you wanna give it a look.