Posted in relaxed homeschooling

We're home from an exciting weekend at our state homeschool convention!  It was so much fun getting to talk to so many homeschool families.  We also got to meet the ladies at the TOS vendor booth.  I missed the bloggers meeting - that would have been fun.  Kate, Jen and their crew (I can't remember everyone's names) were still kind enough to give me a Homeschool Blogger t-shirt, which I will wear with pride :-)

Even though we were exhausted after working in our booth, plus set up and tear down, we kept a promise we had made to our boys to take them to the MGM theme park for Star Wars Weekend.  We weren't there long before we met several homeschool families who were adding some fun to their convention weekend too!

While we were waiting for our youngest to participate in a kid's Star Wars trivia event, a gentleman began asking us if we had watched that morning's "Who Want's to Be A Millionaire" at the park.  In this game, contestants answer questions for points, rather than dollars, striving for the 1,000,000 point mark to win the game.  We had not seen it, but our new friend told us about the contestant they chose to play that morning - a homeschooled girl, who had finished her schooling at 11th grade and graduated the night before at the FPEA Convention.  She played the game answering all the questions (the questions were all about Star Wars) and scoring 1 million points to win a 7 - day Disney Cruise for herself and her family!  Of course, we weren't surprised - it seems homeschooled kids regularly achieve high scores in whatever area they pursue :-)

As for our family, we had a great time just being together after a busy weekend serving others.  Now we have the work of unpacking, restocking and getting ready for the rest of our summer.  We've been off from our formal schooling for several weeks and will take the final part of our "break" to go visit my mom next week.  Then we'll "hit the books" for the rest of the summer to finish off our official school year.  I know this kind of schedule might seem strange, but it fits our lifestyle for now.  I love the flexibility that homeschooling gives our family!

In addition to finishing our "regular" studies this summer, we're looking forward to launching a summer of star gazing when we visit my mom.  She lives out in the country and the night skies will be beautiful with no light pollution to cloud our view.  I think it will be a perfect way to kick off our summer astronomy focus!

If I have time later, I'll put together some of the resources I've used to plan our summer Astronomy study and post it here on my blog.