Never too Old to Learn Something New

I recently had the privilege of attending the OCEANetwork Conference in Portland. It was a wonderful two days of speakers who were all so very down to earth. Everyone loves listening to Todd Wilson, http://familymanweb.com/blog/ and http://familymanweb.com/. His wit and true life experiences as a homeschool dad are spot on and his encouragement to homeschool families to stop comparing ourselves to others is so timely for me.

I chose to focus my two days on Child Training workshops. I feel like I am in this funny, starting over phase of my life. Having raised our first set of 6 children to middle school on up to graduation, I am refocusing on training younger ones again with our second set of 6.

The first day I went to a workshop by Vicki Bentley, http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=479057 and https://www.hslda.org/speakers/speaker.asp?s=29 on getting our children to help out at home. Now my kiddos already help out at home, quite a lot actually but as the title of this blog post says we are never too old to learn. Mrs. Bentley had several good things to share. She has some books available for purchase as well. I really love her reminders that we need to teach our children what we expect of them. She talks about having cards made out with all of the steps necessary for our children to clean an area or do a chore the way we want them to do it. I found that to be a wonderful suggestion for my boys. It seems like inevitably when it comes time for them to clean their room they can't remember what needs to be done. So I came home and made up a card for the things they need to do in their room. I won't say that it helps them to stay on track but I can at least go in there and point to the card to see what they need to do next.  I believe that she has cards already made up in one of her books for you to use if you choose to.

She also had a workshop on being a Joyful Mother. I didn't make it to that one but did buy the MP3 of it to listen to. I know that is something I need to work on. I can easily slip into grumpy mother mode whose main focus is the laundry monster that needs to be slain on a daily basis.

I spent the rest of the day roaming through the Exhibit Hall looking at all that the Vendors had to share and spending a bit of money shopping for school items. There was also a Used Curriculum sale where I found a few things. I took the baby and B# 6 with me the first day so I didn't try to cram too much in that day.

The second day I went by myself and thoroughly enjoyed not having to share my hummus with the baby! I chose to go two workshops by the same speaker, Pam Forster who writes and publishes so many good things for child training. One of the workshops was actually called "Child Training Bootcamp". You can peruse her items HERE.

Mrs. Forster also spoke about things that we do that can actually lead our children away from Jesus. What I really took away from that session and the whole conference in general was that as a parent if we are not in God's Word then we do not have anything to pass on to our children. So I am determined, with God's strength, to be in THE Word everyday and find as many ways as possible to pass on to my children what I am learning in Scripture.

So why am I writing all of this to you today? Well, to encourage you to never think you are too old to learn something new or that you know it all already. And to encourage you to check out the OCEANetwork homeschool conference next year. We all need some encouragement.