Why I Love Homeschooling Conferences and Seminars

I was always a bit of a conference junkie. As a Montessori teacher, I attended numerous Montessori conferences. So it was only natural that I would attend homeschooling conferences and seminars when we homeschooled.

Now there are even online homeschooling seminars. Those weren’t available when we homeschooled, but I never felt a lack of ideas and inspiration because of the conferences and seminars I had access to. Here are my three favorite conferences/seminars I attended.

The Big Yearly Homeschooling Conference

When we lived in South Dakota, I attended an annual homeschooling conference with numerous seminars throughout the day. Most of our homeschooling was done in Colorado, though, where we had access to an even larger yearly homeschooling conference through Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC). CHEC had some homeschool seminars at other times during the year, which would have been very helpful as well.

Every year in June, I attended Colorado’s Annual Home Educator’s Conference through CHEC. I only attended one day each year, even though it was a multiple-day conference. I filled that day with seminars. Nursing babies were the only children who were allowed to attend, so my husband took Will and Christina on a day excursion in Denver.

At the conference, I attended seminars on general homeschooling and seminars appropriate for my children’s educational levels. As my children grew older, I attended seminars related to high-school homeschool. I also scoured the exhibit halls to check out the newest homeschool curriculum. I came away from every conference with new information, excitement for the next year of homeschooling, and reassurance that I wasn’t alone.

Jessica Hulcy’s KONOS Seminar

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I love KONOS unit studies. It’s what we used for science, social studies, art, music, literature, reading, health and safety, and religious education from 1^st-8^th grade. We even used KONOS History of the World during high school.

One year, Jessica Hulcy, the founder of KONOS, gave a seminar at the CHEC conference. As much as I loved many of the conference seminars, that one was a highlight. It gave me additional inspiration and insight into using KONOS. Now there are KONOS videos available as well. But attending the live seminar was especially meaningful. If you have a chance to attend a seminar presented by the founder of your homeschool curriculum, I highly recommend it.

Here’s a video with Jessica Hulcy leading some KONOS homeschool co-op activities.

Inge Cannon’s Transcript Boot Camp   

Although seminars at the yearly homeschool conference helped prepare me to teach homeschool high school, the most helpful seminar I attended was a day-long event one October called “Transcript Boot Camp”  with Inge Cannon. (Now you can watch the seminar on DVD.)

I didn’t have the chance to attend the seminar as early as I would have liked (it probably would have been ideal when my oldest was in 6^th grade), but the seminar still gave me invaluable information on how to plan a high-school program and prepare transcripts for college. After that, I felt confident preparing my children for college and using Inge Cannon’s transcript software to create a professional-looking high-school transcript.

Have you had attended a favorite homeschool conference or seminar?

Photo Credit: Photo by Thomas Eagle.