CHEO Conference

This past weekend, we attended the CHEO (Christian Home Educators of Ohio) conference in Akron, OH. On Thursday was a Family Discipleship seminar by Matthew and Maranatha Chapman. The key points I came away with, that spoke to me were:
1. Seed produces after its kind. If the parents are selfish, the kids will be selfish. Conversely if the parents are givers the kids will be givers.
2. Home environment should be a safe place.
3. God gives grace to the humble
4. Conversation should always edify, even in jesting.
5. We have to die to what we want. Life is not about you, it's about Him.
6. Don't complain, we make a place for the enemy.
7. Life is messy. Its about how we approach the spills.
8. Make sure you have the hearts of your children each morning.

Friday, my husband was able to join me for the day as well as my eldest son. We saw some more great speakers.
One of the speakers talked about homeschooling with preschoolers. My take-aways from that were:
1. Children are a blessing from the Lord
2. There is a time for everything
3. Keep a solid routine - not necessarily time-based, but routine. Morning devotions followed by breakfast, followed by .... etc.
4. Don't give up on nap time too soon. Even if it's just quiet time on their bed.
5. Keep "Activities in a bag" or a list of what the littles like to do on hand
6. Focus on the ministry (personal) to your children, less management (impersonal).

Two of the sessions we attended that day were by a sweet couple named Jenni and Matt Cox. They struck me as the type of people we would get along with great provided more time to spend with them. Here are some points I got from them:
1. A wise man chooses his destination and accepts the path. A fool chooses the path and accepts the destination.
7 Purposes of Marriage
1. Partnership
2. Power
3. Pleasure
4. Pro-creation
5. Protection
6. Picture of Christ and His church
7. Peace - place of trust and sincerity.

After attending our sessions on Friday we realized we didn't focus too much on home schooling sessions, so Saturday we tried to hit some practical home schooling sessions. We heard J. Michael Smith talk about measuring home school success. He used 1 Cor 15:58 as the standard for judging success.
Here are his 5 pre-requisites for success:
1. Be part of the 'my beloved'
2. 'this work' - the work of the Lord
3. 'be steadfast' - be excellent
4. Be immovable
5. Abounding in the work of the Lord - overflowing
And the outcome is that your work will 'not be in vain'.

Lastly we heard Steve Demme talk about strategies for understanding one another. We've had lots of sibling conflict and rivalry going on in our home lately that I was really looking for some ideas on that. Steve talked about these points:
1. Pray for your wife and family
2. Learn each others love languages
3. Communication
4. Personalities
5. Birth Order


I have some other notes taken, but that was the main stuff I walked away from the conference with. I really enjoyed the whole thing and look forward to going again in the future. We also were able to purchase the remainder of the curriculum we needed and are looking forward to packages in the mail. The boys are already asking if we can start school early.... ahh, if only that would last!