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*LAST DAY!!* Teach Them Diligently Homeschool Convention Takeaways (Part 3)
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Jun 19, 2024
Do we look exhausted?? We are!! What a few busy, full, encouraging days at the Teach Them Diligently Homeschool Conference. Join my husband Josh and I as we recap our favorite notes from our sessions at the homeschool convention! So many good takeaways, these are the ones that stood out to us the most after our final day of sessions. IMPORTANT LINKS: ⭐ Get a ticket to the Teach Them Diligently Convention! https://teachthemdiligently.net/invite/homeschoolstyleco/ ⭐ View all the books I grabbed at the vendor hall HERE: https://amzn.to/3USM0JM ********************************************* Hey there! I’m Sara, and I’m a teacher-turned-homeschooling mom to 4 kiddos (including a set of twins!). I balance homeschooling while working full-time from home, and am so thankful you are here. I love sharing about homeschooling on my blog, Blessed Homeschool, where you’ll find tips, resources, and curriculum reviews. Whether you are a newbie or a veteran, I hope you will leave inspired and equipped with what you find. ⚡DISCOUNT CODES ⚡ • 20% off Homeschool Hall with code BLESSEDHOMESCHOOL — https://homeschoolhall.com/activity-journal?aff=blessedhomeschool
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Hey you guys, welcome back to my channel for another video. We are done with the Teach and Diligently
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convention. Today was day three and the final day of the sessions and of the entire convention
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Saturday night. So we are just getting together for one more final video to kind of share with you
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some of our big takeaways from the sessions that we attended today and hopefully just give you guys a little
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piece of encouragement and maybe some different resources and things like that that we have enjoyed
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from the Teach Him Diligently Convention. All right. So in case you don't know me, my name is Sarah. This is my husband, Josh. We are
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homeschooling parents, obviously. Our oldest son is 12. We've got twin daughters who are 10
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and then we have a little five-year-old. And this is our eighth year, attending the Teach-Im
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Diligently Convention, which I cannot believe. And I'm going to get it right tonight. This year we
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were in Branson, Missouri, not Branson, Tennessee. I don't know what I was thinking. Well
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what I was thinking is we typically are in Tennessee. So like the first years we went, we were in
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Nashville. And then and then we were in Pigeon Forge. And this is the first year in Branson. And we
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really like it. Having been to those other locations, we had a great time
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We thought the location was great. Yes, it was a little bit smaller
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Vendor Hall was slightly smaller, but I think it still worked out very well
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It wasn't quite as overwhelming. Better food here. Lots of great food options
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The speakers, I thought, were phenomenal. There was not one session that we wanted to leave or we wanted to skip
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And so that was great, I thought. We got our money's worth this time
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Got our money's worth this time. If you are considering attending a convention like this
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out my other videos that I have shared our other recap so you can get a kind of feel for get a
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feel for what it's like and then grab a ticket I'll leave a link in the description below so you
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can check it out. Teaching diligently is going to be in Pigeon Forge next year and Branson again. So
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definitely consider attending. We are leaving exhausted. It is really late tonight. Another
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long day. We had sessions and then went out with some friends so we're exhausted but also really
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excited to get back to our kids and I'm excited to get back to our kids. I am too. Yes
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Start. I miss our kids. Start implementing some of the things that we have learned and I don't
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know. You just get refreshed and rejuvenated excited about homeschooling and it's just really
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imparted to you from lots of different people poured into you just what an amazing blessing this is
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and also a very, very important job that we are doing as homeschooling
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schooling parents. I have a list of things I can do to be a better husband and dad
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So let's get into some of our sessions and talk about some of our big takeaways. The first one that
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we went to today was Heidi St. John. If you're not familiar with her, definitely go look her up
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She just amazes me with how bold she is in speaking truth, speaking just wisdom, truth about
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politics, truth about what she sees going on in the world today. Her ministry is faith that speaks.com
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I think it used to be becoming mom strong. So I don't know if the name changed, but I wrote down
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Faith That Speaks.com. And our podcast is Get Off the Bench. We listen to that one. Often, I love
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listening to it when I'm out running. So definitely check that out if you like to listen to podcasts
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And her session was on biblical discernment in an unbiblical age. She's very, very
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bold. Well, and that's, you know, her main thing is, are we living unafraid to tell the truth? Fear is a
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spirit, but that God, it's not a spirit that God has given us. In that verse, God didn't give us a
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spirit of fear. He gave us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. And that is really encouraging
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me. We can be bold. We can know truth. We can speak that truth, even if we're scared, right
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The Bible tells us that we are, as Christians, we're to be set apart from the culture
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And what is a big way to be set apart nowadays? It's to tell the truth
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We have to be in the word, right? I mean, that's a lot of encouragement throughout the weekend is getting in the word, getting in your Bible
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And she said so often we put pressure on ourselves that we have to have this alone time
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We have to wake up before the kids. We have to carve out a special time to be alone with God's word
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and she said you don't have to be alone. You don't have to have alone time to study the word
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especially as homeschool moms. We can, you know, we should be letting our kids see us studying the word
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It's okay. I mean, you know, yes, maybe you need quiet time to really dig it and study sometimes
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but you can do that, you know, at the kitchen table or you can do that when the kids are awake
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If you're using it as an excuse not to be in the word because you don't have that quiet time
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then stop letting that be an excuse. excuse, which I can be guilty of. It's hard to focus sometime, but..
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How often you're actually alone in our house? Never. Exactly. When I'm sleeping
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So you've got to find another way. If that's your excuse, then you've got to find a different way to do it
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And she gave a good tip. So Heidi said that she would get all of her kids, like they would
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have different notebooks of different colors. And like when she was doing her Bible study time
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she would just encourage her kids to be doing it alongside her. And she said they would all have their notebooks
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And it wasn't anything really super in depth, but just to almost kind of like journaling So read read this part of scripture And then in your notebooks write down what the Lord is teaching you So just teaching them to read and then reflect on scripture and to do that together and to let your kids see you doing that I thought that was good So after
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Heidi, we went to see Kathy Cook and she, so I saw her the other day and her session today was on
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how to focus children's thinking to increase learning and decrease frustration. Her big focus was about asking questions and that there's a lot of ways and reasons that we ask questions in our homeschooling
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but how can we ask questions to help our kids focus their thinking
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And our questions are really important. So she did something at the end where she was reading through Psalm 23
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And so the whole point is sometimes we ask the kids to think, but they can't focus because they don't really know
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what to think about, or they don't know what questions we're going to ask them. And so it's hard
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for them to focus that thinking. And this was in regards to reading, but you could do this with
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you know, a lot of different subjects. Um, so she, for example, she read Psalm 23, but she told us
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okay, I'm going to read this to you. And while I'm reading, I want you to listen for the places
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and the order that they're mentioned. So then she read it. And of course, we're all focused on
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what she, what we know she's going to ask us about. And then she does it again and, you know, listen for the pronouns that you hear
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And then reads it again, then ask questions about those. Okay, read it again
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Listen for the verbs. And so, you know, when you're focused on that, when your kids know what they're supposed to be looking for
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or what questions you're going to ask about an assignment, they can better just read with more intention
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So they're getting more out of it. And I thought that that was really good
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I mean, so many times, you know, I have my kids read. something, whether it's history or if it's a science lesson, but they have no idea what the
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questions are going to be that I'm going to ask them afterwards. And sometimes I know they read it
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but they're like, I don't know. I mean, because things can be a lot of information to take in
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So just having those questions in advance to kind of focus their thinking can really help
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Another cool thing that she talked about was, you know how when, like, you'll come upstairs from work sometimes and you'll ask the kids, well, what did you guys learn today? And standard answer, I don't know. Like sometimes you get that, which is not true because we obviously are learning something. So I thought this was a really cool tip that she gave. She said that when you're discussing something with your kids, a question that you can ask them is, you know, which one of you want to
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to tell dad about this tonight. Like let's say you just learn something new
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Which one of you wants to tell dad about this? Or even asking your kids, okay, who wants to ask dad what he thinks about this
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Or what are you going to share with dad tonight about what you learn? And kind of helping them think about what they're learning even more or get excited about
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sharing their knowledge with someone else. I just thought that was really cool. And a good opportunity we have since we're at home with them to help them kind of focus on
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conversations skills as well. Yes. So they're not talking to a rock. Yeah
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And so when they get quizzed by all the relatives, like. How's school going
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Fine. Yeah. I don't know. I just thought that was a good tip. You guys learning stuff? I guess
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We saw Todd Wilson after that. Todd Wilson is the smiling homeschooler
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And he talked about homeschool expectations. And he's just, he's always so funny
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If you guys have a chance to hear him speak or check out his resources. his a big point was you know sometimes we set our expectations so high and that's why we're
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disappointed a lot or we or we but I guess a better way to say it is we expect things to be easy
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sometimes like we expect like that homeschooling should look a certain way or everyone should be
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happy or we should um I don't know it should be easy or we expect that it's going to be super fun
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and exciting exactly how we plan it on a vacation. Yeah, vacation one example was good because you always build it up in your mind
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Like, this is going to be great. And then like five minutes after you get in the car, like their kids are already bickering and there's trash everywhere
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No one's happy. But his main point was like to expect it to be hard, right
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I mean, good things are hard and hard things are good. I thought this was so good
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So he said, you know, expect your kids to be outside of the box
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So, you know, we spend 12 years or so teaching our kids that are ways outside of the box kind of, right
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Because it's different than traditional school. But then we expect them sometimes when they either graduate or we're thinking about college to kind of go back into the box
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And that made me think about that because, you know, I don't know if I've talked about it before in like the past couple days because I've been just thinking about a lot of things during
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convention as I usually do. But sometimes you worry like, well, as my kids grow up, are they going to be
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able to find a job? Or I don't know what my kids want to do right now. How am I going to train them to
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have a career someday or how, you know, what are they going to do like for, for college or whatever? But
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remembering that they, we're going outside the box right now and maybe even when they get older
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you know, their career path or even their school path isn't necessarily going to look like it looks
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for the world. Now it might, you might have a kid that really wants to go to college and they want
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a traditional job and they want to do something that is like that. But they might not. And that's
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okay right I mean we doing outside of the box things and we shouldn expect them to try to fit into the same mold as everybody else And that was just comforting to me because like I talked about yesterday even with like the gaming industry or
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something, you know, it's, it might not be something that I think is like a typical path or I look at
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my own life and I've lived it out. Right. I mean, I went to college and I, I went to school. I
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I had a normal, like a normal traditional type job for a long time, but now I'm doing something
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completely different that I would consider is outside of the box. I mean, left work to do something
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that, you know, was scary and was different. But it's hard for me because I feel like that was
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risky. So it's hard for me to think about my kids being in that position. But the other good
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encouragement was that God has his hand on everything and God has a plan for our kids, right
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So that was another really encouraging thing this weekend to hear so many moms say that their kids grew up
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They graduated them. And even though they didn't feel like they had it all figured out, God had it figured out and knew the path that their kids were going to take and worked it all out
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Obviously, like we have to do our part in helping our kids grow and thrive and figure out, you know, their talents
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But sometimes we don't know like what we're doing now and the seeds that we're planting and the groundwork that we are like
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God is probably going to use that in ways that we don't expect. As long as it's biblical, that's what our jobs are, is to lay that foundation for them
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We have to consider to or continue to trust him and just lean on him through everything
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That's always a big takeaway from this convention, that you just, you know it
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but you just have to hear it over and over again, especially when you're at the end of the
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homeschool year or it's, you know, the end of the season. And it's just a great thing about coming here because you
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you get that refreshment and you get that encouragement from other moms who have been here and
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done all this. Yes. So after that, we split up after that because I've never seen Norm Wakefield
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speak and that's one of his favorites. And then there was also a session on the five, four
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habits of like a joyful homeschool mom. And I was interested in that. So I sent him to that one
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And I went to see Norm. So do you want to share what you learned from
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Yes. Yeah. I will. Okay. What happened when you? Well, I went into class and it was a larger class
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I was the only father, dad, male. Which we expected in this session, right
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It was a class full of women. I got a lot of looks, a lot of cyberglances
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The speaker looked at me like, are you in the right place? She didn't ask
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I was waiting for asking. me. I think they all figured that because I busy myself getting my little notebook out
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a little tiny notebook, a small spot I to find on the shelf, right? And I got my pen and I just like
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put my head down and I was ready. So, yes, this session, she started off. The title is
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the joyful homeschooler embracing the four habits of happiness. Way number one, forgiveness
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Yeah. I like that. Father, forgive them. for they know not what they do
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She talked about Jesus forgave everybody for their sins. And that is a great model for us to forgive anybody who's wronged us
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because if we are holding on to that, it's going to embitter us
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and it's going to make us harder to forgive small things, and we can't let go of the big things
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No matter what's in your life, and you forgive and move on and pray about it
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Second thing, four ways cultivate joy. thankfulness and everything give thanks for this is the will of god in christ jesus concerning you so be
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thankful for everything she mentioned that your kids see you being thankful when something happens
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in your life or any of even bad things happen in our life be thankful the lord is there with us and
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thank him for whatever season you're in and that shows joy uh create calm this was she had several
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points on this one. Come with me to a quiet place and get some rest. And that's when I believe Jesus is
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talking to disciples after they are going out and preaching, feeding the masses. He took them aside to a
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quiet place and he recognized that even his disciples, just like himself, needed rest to recuperate
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recharge so they can continue what they're doing. Like what you guys, you guys, like what homeschool
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parents do with their kids. They need to have a time to recharge sometimes and not just go, go
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go, go, go. So don't push your family too hard. Don't go crazy schedules all time, back to back
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everything. You know, add a little gap in there for if things do go wrong, you don't have back to
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back items or just a recharge point. And then the fourth thing, hope for better days. Okay. May the God of
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hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him. So you may overflow with hope by the power
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of the Holy Spirit. So she talked about planning little treats and little fun excursions for your
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family. And that adds hope for fun times in the future and builds a sense of things that are
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exciting to come. While you were there, I was listening to Norm. Can I tell you about Norm
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Norm. He did, it was the curse of the standard bearers was his session. You know, standard bearers. You know
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A standard bearer, someone who leads a group with common standards, such as like the leader of a denomination, leader of a club, leader of a political party
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one who carries the standard for a group. So he talked about who that like typical person was
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And then the whole thing was the curse of the standard bearer So a curse being something that brings or causes great evil or trouble And you know he gave a couple of verses which I didn write the verses out but a curse that falls upon all who do not love and treasure Jesus above all others And he kind of compared that to the image bearer So standard bearer versus an image bearer An image bearer being a person who carries the image of Christ and someone who
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identified by the love of Jesus. So this person is getting their significance from Jesus. They are
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getting their power from the Holy Spirit. They are connected in fellowship with people. They are
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acting by glorifying God. And his big word was living to love. And that was actually the name of one of
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his books that we picked up afterwards, Living to Love. I think it's Living to Love with Jesus
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I think is what it's called. I hope I'm not getting in that wrong. But we did pick up that book
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And, you know, his, the big takeaway from him was that we need to abide in Jesus's love
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We need to love people. And we need to pray every day that Jesus's love will shine through us to other people
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And he talked about, you know, praying every day. Like, Lord, you know who you are going to put in my path
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and help me to, you know, just love them through me, basically
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Thank you for those people. You know, I'm excited to see who you're going to let me love today
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And I thought that was just really neat because if we want to be image bearers, you know
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that means that we are living spirit-filled. We are living as the image of Christ
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He talked about the verse, John 15, 8, I am the vine, you are the branches
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is he remains in me will bear much fruit. And he said, well, typically we think that bear
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bear much fruit means to produce. But bear in this, when you translate it and look at that
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actually means to carry. So I am the vine. You are the branches. The branches aren't what
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produce the fruit. The branches carry the fruit. So he just kind of explained that as Jesus
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produces the fruit and we carry. it. And I thought that was, I never had heard the verse broken down like that before. And I thought that
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that was really, really good. Yeah, he was a good speaker. I'm looking forward to reading his book, too
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Yeah, so always a joy to listen to him to speak. Yeah, and then we finished up the session. We
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went and sat in on another one of Tricia Goyer sessions. And she is really fun to listen to you. Out of
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eight years of being at Teach him diligently, I know I've heard her name, but this is the first year we've
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actually gone in and sat in on one of her sessions. And I'm really glad
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we did. It was really good. She is a very busy woman. She writes a lot of books. She does
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90 plus books so far? She has adopted, I think, seven children. She has three children
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biological children, and does work with Crisis Pregnancy Center. She just, and she, you know
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balances it very well. So her session was on finding balance, faith and efficiency, and
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homeschooling. And so she, you know, just gave a few good kind of scheduled
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tips, kind of how things have worked out for her. One of the really good things that she said was that
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you know, worksheets are not always needed. And she was kind of just talking about not always having to do
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things like filling the time up with things that you think you should be doing. Like you think you
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should be doing all the worksheets. But if you have a kid where you can just answer the questions out
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loud, you know, you don't have to sit there and fill in all of the worksheets or all the papers
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because why were worksheets created? Usually because you had a teacher with a room for
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full of 30 students and they needed to have everybody fill out a worksheet so they could see
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their answers and see their work. Well, when we're homeschooling, you don't have to do that. We have
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the luxury of having conversations with our kids. And that was good for me to hear. I feel like I've
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heard that before, but sometimes you just get stuck in the mindset of, oh, I have to have my kids fill in
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all the answers here or we didn't actually do school or... Traditional school. Yeah. But really talking
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through things and having those conversations is it's good if not sometimes better. And, you know
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the other big thing that she really stresses that faith should be the priority. So just again
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that encouragement and that reminder of what are we doing in our homeschools that has eternal value
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and are we prioritizing that above everything else that we think is important. So it was a great
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session to finish the conference on. And I did pick up one of her books as well. I'll show you guys
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I think in my other video, just some of the books that I picked up from the convention
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So if you haven't watched that, go check it out. And also, if you missed the other two days, Josh and I did recaps of our session then
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We are exhausted because it has been a long weekend. So I feel like maybe we're a little bit more awake for the other sessions
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But I hope you guys still enjoyed watching today. and you maybe got a couple of little nuggets of encouragement or inspiration out of it
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Like I said, we really enjoyed the convention and encourage you to come check it out
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Teach them diligently. It's our favorite, but homeschool conventions, you know, lots of different options for those around the country
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You know, if you can find one where you're at, they can be really helpful, really encouraging. So check out that link in the description below
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Hit that thumbs up if you guys like this video and consider subscribe
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in my channel for more homeschooling tips, encouragement, and just to follow along with us as we move
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into our next homeschool year this fall. We will see you guys next time. Thanks for watching
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