The goal of this session is to share the joy of designing and teaching unit studies. Learn how this unique approach to teaching uses real-life experiences, books, games, projects, and other resources to encourage students to deeply explore topics and to become life-long learners. Discover ways to integrate subjects to make learning more meaningful and fun. Realize the wealth of knowledge to be gained through unit studies as well as easy methods of constructing them.

In this session, multiple award winning author and longtime homeschool mom of six Dr. Sandi Queen discusses the many facets of language arts - phonics and reading, grammar, handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, writing, etc., and how to teach each of these using the Charlotte Mason approach. Included will be information on how to identify and choose materials that fit into this method.

Math is so much more than memorizing rules and facts. With a unique and humorous approach, Steve demonstrates how to use hands-on manipulatives to illustrate important math concepts such as place value, double digit multiplication, fractions, algebra, exponents, squares, square roots, and factoring trinomials.

What is a “living book?” How can “copywork” really be that effective?” “How do I fit nature study into our day – and why do I want to?” “What about math, language arts, and other ‘core’ subjects?” Dr. Sandi Queen, award winning author of over 400 books for Charlotte Mason style educators, discusses who Charlotte Mason was, and how her ideas for educating children are as applicable today as they were during her lifetime. Come and learn how implementing the Charlotte Mason approach can lighten your load, increase your child’s retention and attention span, and foster a true love for learning. Also discussed will be how to identify curricula that fits into this style of learning in all subjects. For parents of children of all ages.

The goal of this session is to share the joy of designing and teaching unit studies. Learn how this unique approach to teaching uses real-life experiences, books, games, projects, and other resources to encourage students to deeply explore topics and to become life-long learners. Discover ways to integrate subjects to make learning more meaningful and fun. Realize the wealth of knowledge to be gained through unit studies as well as easy methods of constructing them.

Does your son or daughter seem to be faltering in their efforts to learn to read? Is it the curriculum? Is it you? Based on current research, this workshop is designed to help parents better understand the most essential elements of the reading process, along with those critical ingredients that must be emphasized to produce a successful, capable reader.

High school math at home can be an intimidating endeavor. How are you going to teach your kids algebra, trigonometry, or even calculus? Further, will they be prepared by graduation for college level work? In this session Kathryn provides practical solutions to some of the common pitfalls of teaching math at home. She also shows you how to harness the strengths of homeschooling to create a competitive high school program. Whether your child is STEM-minded or focused on the humanities, you’ll leave this session with a concrete four-year plan. Kathryn is a homeschool graduate with ten years’ experience as a high school math teacher; in addition, she has tutored homeschool students in math since high school.

Most homeschooling parents feel uneasy when planning math courses for their children. Lots of parents say, "We learned our math a long time ago," or "We learned it a different way," or maybe "We learned it not at all". How can we know if the methods we are using will achieve the desired results in our students? In this workshop Tom Clark will expose ten common myths about teaching math and then counter those myths with solid, practical help for parents. You will also leave with a checklist of items which can be used to determine the best math course for your students.

What are thinking skills and why all the fuss? This seminar challenges traditional teaching methods head on by outlining the best way to teach so your child can remember and use what he has learned...even when he is an adult. Analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are explained; samples of creative and critical thinking are provided. You will leave with lots of resource suggestions and activity ideas that are uncomplicated, inexpensive, effective, and yet not time consuming!

Language is an amazing grace from God and a gift to steward and revel in. Skill and confidence in crafting words into stories and arguments will open doors for your children and lead them into their futures. Here’s how to cast a vision, encourage and support the journey, capture each child’s unique writer’s voice, and delight in the prose and poetry your kids produce. You may find yourself inspired to write as well.

Are you new to homeschooling or new to Pennsylvania? Are you thinking about homeschooling at some point in the future? Do you have questions about what homeschooling might look like and how to get started? This session is designed to encourage and equip you to homeschool your children. Topics include: Why homeschool?, how to get started in PA, a typical day, curriculum, record keeping, testing, portfolios, and evaluations. There will also be time for questions.

If your child graduates high school with only one skill in hand, it needs to be this one. Academic writing, AKA argument writing, is how your child will engage the culture and the academic community on campus and online. This is what admissions offices scour the student essay for, and this is what scholarship committees prize. Your teens will improve their critical thinking, master subject matter across domains, learn to evaluate and counter other’s ideas, and clarify their own IF argument writing is at the center of your college prep high school program.

Looking for inspiration in your study of ancient times? Join Linda Lacour Hobar (author of the series The Mystery of History) to discover what happens when Bible history and world history meet face to face – literally! With a look at Daniel and Belshazzar, Esther and Xerxes, Jesus and Pilate, and more, you will see bible characters and world history figures “meet” on one seamless, thought-provoking timeline. Through stories and activities for all ages, let His-story be revealed.

Need to brush up on art history? Want a better grasp on the classic artworks of the Renaissance? Join Linda Lacour Hobar, author of the award-winning series, The Mystery of History, for a delightful presentation of six major artists of the Renaissance that everyone ought to know. This fact-filled lecture includes beautiful, family-friendly slides of some of the world’s most famous masterpieces and a fun test for students of all ages. This informative session welcomes novices and connoisseurs alike.

With over a decade of experience teaching high school level math, Kathryn Gomes knows the end game. What are the essential parts of an elementary math program that will set your child up for success in middle school, high school, and even college? This session will highlight the crucial skills that must be mastered and the experiences that will shape your child as a future mathematician. Kathryn fleshes out each point with resource suggestions and helpful tips to make math something your child looks forward to each day.

Join Tom Clark as he offers an entertaining and educational session designed to help you discover the reasons behind the difficulty on several of the traditional trouble spots in math. Topics discussed will be determined by the audience and may include division of fractions and multiplication of decimals (using those mindless rules), long-division, story-problems, positive and negative numbers, and numerous others, all of which seem to indicate that mathematics is just naturally “difficult”.

From trenches and truces on the Western Front to famous flying aces in the sky, let Linda Lacour Hobar (author of the award-winning series, The Mystery of History) walk you through an invigorating summary of what tweens and teens should know about World War I through unforgettable stories and Linda’s exclusive “5-4-3-2-1 Countdown.”

Want to better understand the headlines? Planning to teach modern history? Then you need “Modern History That Shook the World!” Join Linda Lacour Hobar, author of the award-winning series, The Mystery of History, as she recounts world-shaking events from the 20th century to present day from a biblical worldview. With vivid snapshots of the Cold War, the Formation of Israel, the War in Korea, the Collapse of the Soviet Union, and more, students and teachers will not only see the past more clearly, but be better prepared for the future!

Personally, I LOVE math. As a student, I would have been thrilled to have 50 or more math problems a day to work. I just loved to write the numbers, and coming up with the right answer was a BLAST! My husband also enjoyed math. I figured that my children would love math, too. Boy, was I wrong! It’s not easy teaching math to someone who just doesn’t want to learn it. Well, our family has been on quite a roller-coaster ride when it comes to learning math, but we have found peace. I want to share with you our journey, and how we came to a place where my children now look forward to math lessons…and I do, too! Charlotte Mason had the right answer for us, and she may just have the answer for you too.

Feel overwhelmed with your child’s unique needs? Think you cannot possibly homeschool with these challenges? This presentation is all about offering encouragement to parents who homeschool (or desire to homeschool) their special-needs children. We will discuss the why’s and how’s of homeschooling our special-needs child, record keeping, resources and planning for the future.

The goal of this session is to share the joy of designing and teaching unit studies. Learn how this unique approach to teaching uses real-life experiences, books, games, projects, and other resources to encourage students to deeply explore topics and to become life-long learners. Discover ways to integrate subjects to make learning more meaningful and fun. Realize the wealth of knowledge to be gained through unit studies as well as easy methods of constructing them.

You can read to your kids about Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press and they might remember it. Or the kids can glue macaroni letters backwards onto their own presses and print Bible verses themselves… and they WILL remember it! Hands-on learning is not simply to keep hands busy, it is a valuable tool to teach children various skills, help them retain information, and relate to the subjects and people they are studying. Linda addresses this issue using humor, anecdotes, and wisdom from her 25+ years of teaching. She is a veteran at keeping her children learning through doing and can show you how to be a fun parent and teacher. This seminar is especially for the mom who feels non-creative, unorganized, and ill-equipped to teach her kids! Don’t fret! You will leave with easy ideas to implement at home.

Science offers an opportunity for your child to explore, wonder, and learn about our awesome God and the order He has placed in our world. Unfortunately, science is also one of those fields of study that many homeschooling parents find extremely intimidating. Dr. Callentine will help you unpack and address your concerns. Whether your student is currently in high school or in the elementary grades, you will be armed and ready.

Find out why Thomas Jefferson wrote at a standing desk, how a whiteboard can turn on a light bulb, and why your son does the things he does. Make school more fun for everyone and equip your boy with the learning he needs for manhood.

You may have been bored by it in school—just a bunch of names, dates and events. But history is critically important. And when you and your kids learn the truth about America’s past, you will find that it is also fascinating! Today as never before, Americans are ignorant of their own history. And because of this, we are losing the freedom that makes America so exceptional among the nations of the world. By returning to the way your great-grandparents learned history, you can give your children a passion for their heritage and prepare them for the battle to preserve it.

Did you know that Mathematics has parts of speech and sentence structure, just as does any spoken language? Did you know that understanding the “grammar” of Mathematics greatly helps student understanding of problem-solving and applications? In this workshop, Tom Clark, founder of VideoText Interactive, and author of “Algebra: A Complete Course,” and “Geometry: A Complete Course,” clearly and humorously demonstrates this quality of mathematical language. At last, you will truly understand the roles of all types of mathematical symbols, and you will see how easy it is to translate between Mathematics and English, enabling you to improve your understanding, and teaching, of “story problems” at all levels.

Algebra is the study of relations (equations and inequalities). It is therefore essential that students completely and conceptually understand the basic concepts necessary to solve them. In this workshop, Tom Clark, founder of VideoText Interactive, and author of “Algebra: A Complete Course”, and “Geometry: A Complete Course”, will help you to develop an inquiry approach which is applicable to all basic relations. You will discover the analytical questions students need to ask, in order to “undo” all of the complications they may encounter, when solving equations and inequalities.

Homeschooling doesn’t have to cost hundreds of dollars per child. Vicki homeschooled seven at a time while their family was without a full-time income for four years, sometimes spending less than $100 per year.

When you had one child, it seemed easy, but adding more children sometimes makes homeschooling feel like a zany plate-spinning act. Vicki shares ideas for keeping the homeschooling “plates” from crashing to the floor! Practical tips for teaching multiple ages—from a mom of 17 homeschooled students (seven school-age at a time).

This workshop is designed to help parent-educators understand the scope, the sequence, and the logic of mathematics instruction from pre-school through adult. Join Tom Clark, founder of VideoText Interactive, as he takes you on a sometimes humorous journey, describing all levels of arithmetic and all mathematics courses encountered in high school and college. In addition, considerable attention will be given to identifying the “why” of the study of mathematics with an emphasis on the development of concepts, instead of rote memorization. (NOTE: This workshop is especially helpful for beginning homeschooling parents.)

Can your child’s future really be boiled down to something as simplistic as whether they are right-brained, or left-brained? Surely, as homeschooling parents, we want our children to believe that they are capable of using “both sides” of their brains. In this educational and entertaining workshop, we will explore the natural and logical connections between Mathematics and Art. We will investigate mathematical principles, and see how they are related to, and illustrated by, artistic applications. Likewise, we will explore several artistic concepts, and see how they are based on mathematical ideas. Of course, throughout, the importance of language and communication will be stressed, as it must play a key role in the understanding of both areas.

Is your second grader building a fusion reactor in your backyard or calculating rates of speed and velocity? Forrest and Beth Mora’s daughter, SmartCookie #1 received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in three short years at 21 years of age and is a state certified teacher. Their son, SmartCookie #2 and twin to #1, received a 104% in Calculus 2 in his senior year of high school and reads C++ programming textbooks for enjoyment. Join Beth Mora as she travels back through time to when their “smartcookies” were in their elementary years. Beth candidly shares about her journey home educating her two academically advanced children and learn how she kept the wheels of opportunity turning. She’ll also share about the challenges “smartcookies” can present and what you can do to help.

Maybe you haven’t always homeschooled. . . you’re starting a few years in, or even mid-year. Can you really start mid-stream? What does homeschooling look like? Where do you begin? What should you expect? How can you ease the transition for all of you? We’ll cover these topics and more. Q&A time included, so bring your questions.

In a traditional classroom environment, students have an average of eight to ten individual interactions with their teacher each day. In your homeschool, these verbal interactions can number in the hundreds and greatly enhance the education your children receive at home. Zan Tyler shares how the simple and free tool of conversation can help your children replace boredom during lessons with a motivation to learn. Discover why parents make the best teachers and capitalize on these strengths. Explore strategies to minimize conflict in your home and promote camaraderie, enthusiasm, and learning with stimulating academics instead. Conversation is the key! Conversation IS core curriculum.

Whether you want ready-made unit studies or the tools to develop your own, this workshop could be the answer! Come for an overview and explanation of definitions, comparisons, and resources for implementing unit studies into your home. In this workshop, we will also develop your personal Unit Study P.R.O. skills and provide you tools to create your own unit study at home.

How to develop an educational plan for your student with dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, and other special needs. Beth Mora brings her background as a registered nurse, case manager and certified rehabilitation specialist (C.R.R.N.) to this workshop. She is a student of her patients and has learned a great deal from the families she has served. In this workshop, Beth will introduce the S.O.A.P. method to help you develop an educational plan for your child with special needs and help you locate that missing puzzle piece. Plan to leave this workshop feeling strengthened and empowered to continue your special needs journey.

Teaching reading is as easy as A-B-C…or is it? Join us as we examine the popular approaches of teaching children to read, current research on reading success and provide an overview of the wide range of available curriculum. Pre-reading exercises and tips designed to develop reading fluency and comprehension will be shared to equip your emergent reader.

Welcome to the digital age. What does the future of education look like, and how can the homeschool community take advantage of this? Here's a look at free tools and free content sites online that can make your homeschool more efficient, more economical, and more powerful. Harness the educational advantage of online learning and give your kids a jumpstart on their future. We will look at how Web 2.0 applications are changing the definition of education - blogs, wikis, Google applications, Skype, VoiceThreads, open courseware, YouTube, Facebook and even Twitter, when used appropriately can really help kids learn.

What are thinking skills and why all the fuss? This seminar challenges traditional teaching methods head on by outlining the best way to teach so your child can remember and use what he has learned-- even when he is an adult. Analysis, synthesis and evaluation explained; samples of creative and critical thinking. And lots of suggested resources and activities that are uncomplicated, time-saving, inexpensive, and effective.

Overlooked! That's what often happens to foreign language instruction. And yet, the "language window" is open and waiting in our children for only a short period of time. Sara Rask, Rainbow consultant and former, High School French teacher, encourages homeschooling moms to introduce a foreign language to young children. She walks through the transition to formal language learning in middle school and addresses the high school credit dilemma. Throw open the window and let foreign languages carry your child to fluency!

Creating a high school transcript is easy yet a vital part of your child's high school records. In this interactive, practical seminar you'll create a transcript that can be used as a pattern when designing your own. We'll guide you through transcript essentials, evaluation of credit, grading guidelines and scales, and calculation of grade point averages (GPA's). In addition, you'll receive sample transcripts depicting other formats for you to consider.

As your child grows older, you may be considering high school at home — but you've got your doubts! Why is homeschooling high school a crucial decision for your teen? How is it possible? What help is available? We'll answer your questions; but more importantly, we'll encourage and challenge you to explore the steps you should take as you weigh the possibility of teaching high school at home.

Have you wondered, "How can I afford to homeschool" or "Am I capable of teaching my children?" You and thousands of parents these past 30 years have wondered the same exact things and have homeschooled their children successfully. There are so many options today, so where do I start? You can homeschool on one income and do it very well! Homeschooling is a journey for the whole family, one in which you will all grow individually and together. Come and glean from the 30 plus years of experience as Renee Miller shares hundreds of ideas to save you money as you teach your children and raise them to love the Lord with all their hearts.

In this session, a robotics team of homeschoolers from western Pennsylvania will share their journey and give you hints on how you can start your own robotics team in your local area. They will share about their experience in the BEST Robotics program which includes aspects of designing and building robots, programming, technical writing, and marketing.

Are you new to homeschooling or new to Pennsylvania? Are you thinking about homeschooling at some point in the future? Do you have questions about what homeschooling might look like and how to get started? This session is designed to encourage and equip you to homeschool your children. Topics include: Why homeschool?, how to get started in PA, a typical day, curriculum, record keeping, testing, portfolios, and evaluations. There will also be time for questions.

Art is the forgotten subject for many families. But what has been missed is not just the "Art Lessons". Come learn why art is important, how to incorporate it into core subjects, and how to make learning fun! You'll leave with hundreds of ideas to make learning more enjoyable, refreshing and fulfilling. Best of all they will retain what they learn!

Whether you want ready-made unit studies or the tools to develop your own, this workshop could be the answer! Come for an overview and explanation of definitions, comparisons, and resources for implementing unit studies into your home. In this workshop, we will also develop your personal Unit Study P.R.O. skills and provide you tools to create your own unit study at home.

Picking curriculum can be an overwhelming, confusing, and a surprisingly expensive venture. If you are starting out on the homeschool journey, or if you are a curriculum junkie who has struggled with completing curriculum, this talk might be for you. Sarah Mae gives you the confidence that you can give your child a wonderful education without spending hundreds of dollars.

Food engages the senses and intrigues our minds, so why not add it to your curriculum! Join Sara Rask as she offer suggestions and resources for incorporating cooking into your classroom. Learn how to make your curriculum truly multi-sensory in this tasty workshop!