Skip to main content

Reflections on *Teach Them Diligently*

This past weekend my husband and I were privileged to attend the Teach Them Diligently homeschool convention in Nashville.  I have to say, I was pretty excited about going!  And my hubby was generous enough to come along, keeping me company while also enjoying some workshops himself.  

The convention was held at the beautiful Gaylord Opryland hotel although we didn't stay overnight there.  Since we live just an hour from Nashville we commuted instead.  The first couple of days we left the kiddos with the grands, but decided to take them with us on the last day since we wouldn't be there the entire day.  

If you've never been to TTD, or any homeschool convention for that matter, I would highly recommend going!  Until this convention I had only attended a couple of other state level conventions.  TTD has done an amazing job of putting together a well-thought-out, God-honoring event that they are bringing to 4 different cities in the US this year.  The atmosphere of this convention and it's attendees was so refreshing.    

I was super pumped to see so many familiar faces from favorite blogs, websites, and books as speakers for this event.  While it's impossible to attend every single session (my husband and I often would go to different sessions to make the most of our time!), you can always get the recordings ...or simply choose the ones that seem the best suited to your needs and interests.  I thoroughly enjoyed each workshop session I attended and was able to have nuggets of wisdom to take home with me.  The workshops were well-planned and included powerpoint presentations and some handouts as well.  You can take a peek at the session schedule here.  

Some of my favorite workshops were:

I can assure you that I will be reviewing my notes a lot in the near future!  

And, of course, I had an amazing time browsing the vendor hall ...off and on for three whole days!!  Bliss!!  My poor husband could hardly drag me away.  It's just always so helpful to be able to look at curriculum up close and be able to ask questions about it.  I definitely found some new things for our upcoming year that I'm excited about!

The only real disappointment of the weekend was that James Dobson didn't make it.  Apparently he was snowed in where he lives with all flights cancelled.  So that was a bummer.  

But it just meant more time in the vendor hall for me! ;)

If you've never been to Nashville and visited the Gaylord Opryland hotel, you really must!  Even if you're not staying overnight.  They have the most gorgeous conservatory areas!  Plus there are shops and restaurants, too (I recommend the gelato!).  Below are a few pics that we snapped while showing the kiddos around.




So ...all that to say ...if you get an opportunity to attend a Teach Them Diligently convention this year you should totally go for it!  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will clip on the right direction.   The left

1st Day Back to {home}School, Among Other Things

We did it! We finally got unpacked enough and got our new learning room organized enough to start back to school! Frankly, I was starting to get worried...ha Today went very well though. So far I am extremely pleased with our new curriculum choices for math and language arts. Now, if I could just actually get some lesson planning done... And get the finishing touches done in the learning room, so I can blog it! In other news, it has been a bit of a traumatic week...pet-wise. Last weekend a sweet friend (who had asked my permission beforehand) brought the kiddos their very own little fish tank with two goldfish. Well, on Sunday we noticed that The Princess' fish was pretty lethargic...dead, actually. She was sad, but she handled it fairly well. And we went to the store that evening and let her pick out a new goldfish. Well, today during our school time~the fish tank is in our learning room~we noticed Mr. B's fish was acting funny. And then he was dead. It was a