The Great Homeschool Convention is where a lot of homeschool family’s meet up, and go to these classes that give suggestions and different ways of homeschooling. There is also the Expo Hall, where there are a ton of booths that have all of these homeschool books and other things you may want to buy.
There were three classes that I went to that were really interesting and impactful, and it was really cool to see other peoples views on different things. One of the nicer things about this place is there is no designated class you have to go to. If you are not liking the one you are in, then you can leave and find a different one that looks good to you.
Another thing, bring snacks. There is only one place to buy food in the whole convention, so it is really nice to be able to pop something out of your bag if you are hungry.
First Class – Leave the Schoolroom and Travel the World, Tips and Tricks for Travel
I found the name of this class ironic, because that is exactly what we do, but what I went is because I wanted to see how other people traveled. The lady who was speaking was really funny, which always makes the class more enjoyable. She had a chart for wherever her family was going to travel, and the things on it were, transportation, housing, groceries, and fun.
Airline Expenses
Alright, the way she dealt with the most expensive transportation, flying, is points. A lot of people have a bunch of airline points and dont know it. Also, if you use certain credit cards, you can get extra points or discounts or whatnot. The next thing is which airlines are the cheapest to fly on? There are also apps or websites for figuring these things out.
Taxis or Rental Cars?
Once you get your airline figured out, you have to chose what you are going to do when you get to wherever you are going. Are you going to rent a car, or just get a taxi whenever you need one. Taxis are usually much cheaper, but also it is smart to rent a house that is in walking distance of the main things in that area.
Housing
Next is housing. If you are staying in a hotel, then you could also use points, but for rental houses, she suggested someplace that is within walking distance of the main things in that area. Price wise, it depends on what hotels are in the area, and what time of year it is.
Second Class – Bob Smiley, Can You Laugh During Family Devotions?
In case you dont know, Bob Smily is a hilarious comedian. We had previously gone to his comedy show the night before, but today he was doing a class on family devotions. Aside from being a famous comedian, he is a father of five boys, and he had a lot of good story’s that he sometimes put as jokes.
He said that family devotions doesn’t have to be a 15 mon thing where you all sit down and read a certain chapter of the Bible, but it can be anywhere at any time.
He had a good story about his grandma when he was five, who took him to a gas station to get some snacks. She said that if he could go in and tell her which size of the slushee thing got the most value, she would buy him anything in the store. So he went in, and he looked at the three sizes, small, medium, and the Big Gulp. It said that it was 59cents for any size. So he went over and said that he’d got it. He said, “Its 59cents for any sizes, so the one with the best value is the Big Gulp.” And she said, “Exactly, that is what life it like. Jesus paid the price, but you have to choose what your going to do. You can chooses the small, or you can choose the Big Gulp, and get all that you can out of life.”
I thought that that was so awesome, but also since he was a comedian, he made it very funny. He said that when he was on a tour with some other people, they liked to watch him eat stuff that they buy at the gas stations. But he totally set them up, because he would be like, “Oh, I hate the things with the cream in the middle, there so gross.” So they would make him eat them, thinking he didn’t like them, when actually he loved them.
Its not very funny written down, but he said it in a way that was so funny. Another one of my favorite jokes that he told at the comedy show was when he took one of his sons on a camping trip, just him and his son. When they arrived, Bob Smiley realized that his son was reading the story of how Abraham took his son up the mountain to be sacrificed, but he had stoped before the story had ended.
When he asked him, “Wanna go on a hike?” He was like, “No, I want to go home.” It was hilarious. Anyway, I thought that he was a really cool guy, and I would defiantly go to see another one of his shows.
Third Class – Dinosaurs & Fossils: Amazing Evidence for Creation
This class was not exactly what I had expected it to be. I had gone to it, because I had not really seen where the dinosaurs fit into the Bible, and I thought that this might be able to explain that. They guy who was speaking, had a view that the world was not millions of years old, only thousands, and also that dinosaurs were not killed by a giant asteroid smashing into earth, but rather by the great flood.
I had a lot of questions about his theory, so first let me explain to you the main points of what he said.
When you think of a T-Rex, you think of a giant meat eating killer. Well, he thinks that rather than the T-Rex and other large meat eating dinosaurs be carnivores, but rather herbivores. Meaning, they mostly ate plants. He gave us this analogy. A bear living in the forest eats 99% plants, but a Polar bear eats 99% meat. In the Bible it says the all living things are to eat the plant of the earth, or something to that effect. But in the polar bears defense, it lives in the Arctic where there is not a lot of plants, so I don’t know if I agree with that theory. When God sent the great flood to wipe out everything on the planet except for Noah, his family, and two of every animal, were the dinosaurs there? When looking at dinosaur fossils in rocks you usually see them in this pose.
This is called the dinosaur death pose by scientists, because most dinosaurs are found in this way. This is the position that a chicken, dead or alive, would go to if put in water. So this is evidence that the dinosaurs drowned. The reason that dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible is because the word, dinosaur, was made in 1841, a little while after the Bible was written. There are about 50 basic dinosaur types, and if Noah brought to of each animal, then he would have had to bring 100 dinosaurs on the ark. The ark could have easily carried that many, so that is also a plausible idea. If you think about it, all of the biggest animals are extinct. The giant sauropod, the largest land animal, is extinct. Big things live in the past, and little things live in the present. S
Since most dinosaurs are so large, they probably had to wait longer than animals today lay their eggs. They maybe had to wait 10 years to lay their eggs, so over a long period of time, the slowly got smaller and smaller, until you get what we have today. Another argument that our class speaker made was, was there actually a time of dinosaurs, or did dinosaurs live with man?
We have found as many species of mammals buried with dinosaurs as we have found dinosaurs. So this could mean that there was no actual Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous periods. But we have also not found human skeletons with any dinosaur skeletons, so which theory is true. If Noah did take the dinosaurs on the ark, then there would have been some this came off the ark, right. What I think is that you know how some animals can only eat one kind of leaf? Well, possibly after the flood, all of those special foods that were there before were gone, so the dinosaurs dies off before much happened.
Do dinosaurs have feathers? I dont know, but there are a lot of birds fossils that show that they have feathers. Humans breathe through their nose and out their mouth right? And they have a lot of dead space in their lungs. Reptiles use their liver to breath, which is very inefficient, but birds have no dead space in their lungs, so they can breathe a lot more efficiently. But did birds actually evolve from dinosaurs? He said no, but I am not sure.
There was this one story about a giant T-Rex bone that was too heavy for a helicopter to lift, so they cut it in half. But then they discovered that the middle still had red blood cells, and only the outside was fossilized. You would think that that wouldn’t survive millions of years, but maybe thousands. I am still not sure if I believe all of what he said, but it was interesting to see a different point of view.
I loved the Great Homeschool Convention, and I am hoping that we will be able to go next year.