This post is a repeat with minor changes from last year.
Soooooooooo, in my last post, we talked about becoming spiritually ready for convention.
After that, I’d say step to get ready for convention is to organize, evaluate, and consolidate!
1. ORGANIZE
First of all, do you want to participate in the Used Curriculum Sale? Right now is the time to sign up and get ready! Start pulling all of your “old stuff” together for the sale, and get it priced. Be sure to read my earlier article about getting ready for the Used Curriculum Sale as well!
And then have a little weep over all the curriculum that you have to say goodbye to.
Goodbye MFW Kindergarten Curriculum (and random preschool stuff). Sniff, sniff.
I just want to point out this is the only picture you’re getting in this post, and yes, I did crop out all the mess surrounding this picture!
And this is where I usually just get stuck. I know this all needs to go, we’re completely maxed out already and we’re not going to be using it again. But oh, it’s just so hard to let go! I have such emotional attachment and memory attachment to these books and items!
Last year I honestly just couldn’t handle the thought of the consignment process. If my kids were older, I might assign this to them as a project! 🙂 But, since they aren’t, I decided to forgo the consignment sale route and did a swap with another homeschool mom who needed this and had the year that I needed. Last year, that was just a much easier option.
This year, though? I’m about about getting this nonsense OUT OF MY HOUSE. I’m so tired of all this nonsense taking up space.
2. EVALUATE
Now that the old is gone, evaluate what is left. Have you pre-bought/pre-collected items for next year? Get them together and see where the holes are. Any missing gaps? Make sure you make a note of it for convention.
Have you made your decisions for your curriculum for next year? Where are your continued question marks? Any wish lists?
To add to that list: any questions that you really wish you can ask for help on? Last year there were “Curriculum Doctors” and they were the absolute sweetest ladies on the planet. So calm and so reassuring to this new homeschooling mama, AND they had such great ideas for me – at the time we were stuck at the dreaded “Addition Math Facts” hurdle. To the point where I’d been calling my mom begging her for advice!
(Side note just so you can get that joke: My mother – super-analytical-brained CPA. Me – artsy-creative-thinker, and DEFINITELY NOT a CPA, who still to this day does her checkbook on the computer so she doesn’t have to add or subtract. My mother and I and doing math homework growing up??? Quite a funny picture. I was more interested in the story behind the math problem, asking why Jenny and John wanted to put their apples together in one basket, and my mother would just say, “Just answer the problem already!” Such irony, I not only homeschool but I’m now the one trying to teach someone math! Oh well, guess you had to be there.)
And the rest of the folks at the HEAV convention? From the volunteers manning the “new to homeschooling” booth to the vendors in the exhibition hall? Just awesome. Learned so much that I’m surprised my head didn’t explode.
3. CONSOLIDATE
This is just a simple note to say that this is a good time to get all of this wonderful pondering and prepping organized in one place. In some sort of fashion that would make it easy to carry around the convention hall.
Because you know you’re going to forget something and just want to give yourself a good head-slap. Or you get home and realize you bought things you don’t end up needing. Like a particular book on my bookshelf that I have bought THREE TIMES. Because every time I see it I buy it, forgetting that I’ve done that twice already! Or, ya know, you already have six-zillion different science experiment idea books on your shelf, you really don’t need the five more you impulse-bought at the exhibition hall. Ya know. Or, the REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION about math curriculum that you only remembered to ask the last two hours of the convention, so you have to race around looking for that particular person who is the perfect person to ask, that you already had the half-hour conversation with the day before? Ya know, that sort of thing!
Not that I’m talking from experience, of course. Not at all!
And also, that might just help a little with the house being too complete of a disaster to even take pictures issue. Not that I’m speaking from experience there, either.
Oh, and please, if you haven’t already, STOP RIGHT NOW AND REGISTER. RIGHT NOW!
And then, BOOK YOUR HOTEL ROOM IF NEEDED.
HEAV- Home Educators Association of Virginia – website
Becoming a Modern Proverbs 31 Woman 