Part of the HEAV exhibit hall as seen from a balcony in the convention center.
My son, Iain, and I sent to HEAV 2011, probably the biggest homeschool conference in the country. It was held in Richmond, Virginia earlier this month. I've been going every year for quite a few years now since Iain is almost 18 and we've been homeschooling quite a while. Probably the biggest reason I go is because of what you can see on the left here; the huge exhibit hall. There are many companies now, selling curriculum and books to homeschoolers. This gives me a chance to look over curriculum and talk to the vendors about it. That's a huge help to me in deciding what to use. Most vendors have websites with some sample pages, but I find it much more helpful to see
When Iain was younger, he would go along with me and attend the children's program. He enjoyed that a lot, but in recent years, he's been old enough to stay home. I had invited him to come with me when he first got too old to attend the children's program because teens are allowed to attend sessions and go in the exhibit hall. He had absolutely no interest. I probably asked him another year or two and had stopped.
This year, I decided to ask him if he wanted to go with me; he was a little indecisive about it, but then he decided that he did want to go. I'm glad he did go. I did encourage him to take something to do in case he got bored, but he really didn't. He looked at the schedule and picked sessions he wanted to go to and went thru the list of exhibitors and picked out booths he wanted to visit. After he did that, I handed some cash and gave him a spending limit so he could get things that he was interested in. Most of the money disappeared, of course, but I'm glad he had a chance to pick some books he wanted to read next year.
His biggest interests seem to be history and politics. He takes after his parents in being very conservative, perhaps even more conservative which might be a little scary to some of our more liberal friends. I'm just glad that he's found some things that he is interested in. He hasn't really decided what he wants to do after high school. We hope he will want to go to college, but at the moment, he really doesn't like academics much so I don't know if that will happen.
I've also posted a photo album here with pictures from the conference. Enjoy!
