Midwest Homeschool Conference Lectures, Part 1

I have nearly 20 pages of notes from the conference and I'm looking forward to going through them all to share with you. This stuff is just too good to leave folded up in a binder on my shelf! I hope you enjoy the wide variety!

1. John Stonestreet, "Making Sense of Your World in a Silly Culture"

This lecture was part of the teen track and the subject was worldviews. I was late getting into this session, but my notes pick up when Mr. Stonestreet remembered how Babylon physically took the Isrealite youths captive. In our culture, people are being taken captive emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. We've got to be taking our own thoughts captive like 2 Corinthians 10:25 directs us.

He went on to teach us that our worldview develops as part of our spiritual formation, discipleship, and education. From our worldview we form our values. From our values come our actions. A worldview helps us know how we fit into ultimate reality. And every cultural expression communicates worldview ideas. As a mom, I want to take hold of this concept because I believe our family culture and spiritual heritage culture can shape my children's wordviews more than the worldly culture.

I liked the mention of Babylon since I'm so deep in my Beth Moore Daniel Bible Study. When Mr. Stonestreet spent time going over birthrates of cultures with differring spiritual agendas I was reminded again how our view on children may not be lined up exactly with the Bible since we Christian Americans so severely limit our family size. And I loved it when Mr. Stonestreet encouraged the audience that fashion and fashion design was important because designers are the ones who gets to promote what is "beautiful". I do enjoy pretty clothes, so I appreciate all the credibility I can get in that area!

2. Catherine Levison, "An Overview of the Charlotte Mason Method"

In this brief overview I got a feel for the general ideas behind the Charlotte Mason Method. Some of the big guidelines behind this method include realizing that the students carry the responsibility to learn. The parent should not be the middleman. I need to give the material directly to the children and stay out of the way so they can learn! First teach broadly, then specialize.

Classics should be unabridged. (A big AMEN to that from me!) Use whole books that carry only one topic. Use living books about real people. That gives you the chance to identify with the characters on an emotional level so you can remember more. All these unabridged, living books clothes the children in literary language.

Doing many short lessons in succession is an effective teaching tool. Short lessons last 10 - 20 minutes for young children and vary widely. If one lesson is writing, the next should be quite different. Narration takes the place of testing. Learn to focus so you and your children can read something once and know it.

Mrs. Levison demonstrated how to teach art appreciation. Hold up a full color page of artwork for the children to look at for a minute or two and tell them the name of the artist. Then the parent looks at it while the children narrate, or tell what they saw. Do this once a week, using a different work from the same artist for six weeks. That's all it will take for the children to get a grasp of an artist's style and appreciate the artwork.

A couple quotes from Mrs. Levison stand out to me in my notes. "The love for learning is the opposite of boredom." "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." "Why do we tell the children what to think when they discover it for themselves?"

I have been so curious about the Charlotte Mason Method but I've had a hard time really understanding it. I picked up Miss Mason's Home Education about a year ago and tried to read it during those early morning and late night nursing sessions. If you've attempted to read Miss Mason's works, you realize that's not the best way to glean her fine points. There was much reading and re-reading, I can assure you! Still, I had a fuzzy idea of the type of education she promoted. Mrs. Levison's lecture made a lot of sense to me and I'm so excited to start reading her book on the Charlotte Mason Method soon! (Yep...should have gotten it autographed!)

3. Stephen Guffanti, MD, "Guffanti, you'd forget your head if it wasn't attached!"

Dr. Guffanti taught a silly way to remember simple everyday lists and numbers that was silly an effective. I'm not sure if I can explain what he taught. I couldn't find a link on the web to help either. It's getting late so I'm going to give up on explaining his system, but you might want to look up his product, Rocket Phonics, if you have an ADHD student or a very active learner. He works with these type of children in his medical profession and his teaching approach is very funny and innovative.

That's a cool thing about this conference. The lectures were essentially given by regular people who became entrepreneurs when they saw a need and stepped up with a solution. Did you see that huge vendor hall packed full of family businesses? Just being around all those people taught me a big lesson in paying attention, taking initiative and working hard.