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Home-Schooling Workshop Aims to Provide Answers

A day-long home-schooling workshop will take place Saturday, May 9 at East Richland Evangelical Friends Church in St. Clairsville, featuring a panel discussion with home-school parents and graduates, and a variety of workshops led by local home-school experts focusing on everything from methods and curriculum to compiling transcripts for high-schoolers. The workshop is free and open to anyone interested in home schooling.

This is the third workshop organized by Kendra Kendle of Bellaire, who started it as a way to answer the many questions she received as moderator of a local Facebook group for home-schooling families.

“Within our Facebook group, we would get so many new people that would join, and they would all ask the same questions. So, I thought, let’s set up a public forum where people can ask their questions all at once. … It saves a lot of time,” said Kendle, who has her hands full with five children ages 9 and under, three of whom are old enough to be home-schooled.

Starting last year, the workshop became a project of a home-school cooperative to which Kendle belongs, the Ohio Valley Christian Home Educators, which is the oldest home-schooling organization in the area. The growth of the OVCHE in recent years – beyond a close-knit group of families – prompted its leaders last year to organize as a nonprofit, Kendle said. The president is Martha Clarke.

About 50 people attended last year’s workshop, and Kendle expects the same number or more this year.

“It’s a nice size event for something local,” she said.

The workshop opens at 10 a.m. with a question-and-answer session and panel discussion.

“We try to really diversify the panel and get home-schoolers from different angles,” Kendle said. For the first time, the panel will include two high school graduates, Jordan Connor and Rachel Clarke. It also will have parents who home-school older children while parenting toddlers and infants, a parent who home-schools and works outside the home, parents who home-school children with special needs, and a long-time home-schooling mom whose children also have attended public and private schools.

One of the more popular sessions for new families to attend is a general overview of home-schooling methods by Kendle.

“There are many different sects of home-schooling. … A lot of times, (new people) will hear all these names and are like, ‘I don’t know what that means. Who is Charlotte Mason? I don’t even know who that is.'” Mason developed a home-schooling method that centers on teaching the whole child and using “living books” that are written in narrative form.

“People often will ask for curriculum suggestions, but that is very difficult to answer. We have to understand their philosophy, why they’re home schooling, before we can make those recommendations,” Kendle said. In her workshop, Kendle discusses six popular classifications and then recommends curricula for each one.

Other workshops include testing and the law, pre-reading literacy skills, nutrition and wellness, preparing teens for college and “Dad to Dad,” for men who work outside the home while their wives run the home school. The dad workshop is led by Kendle’s husband, Richard. Participants may choose three afternoon workshops.

Light refreshments will be served, and participants are asked to bring a sack lunch. Following the workshops, networking and a used curriculum sale will take place. The event ends at 2:30 p.m.

For information, call Kendra Kendle, 304-391-5215 or email kendra kendle@yahoo.com.

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