As I got back to my hotel room to settle in for the night, I saw a post in my local homeschool group.  In the 2015-2016 school year, there were 83,359 registered homeschoolers in the state of Florida.  Down from 84,096 in the 2014-2015 school year.  83,000+ registered homeschoolers!

However, this number does not include 100% of homeschooling families in the state.  Some Floridians, like mine, are registered with an umbrella school.  In the state of Florida umbrella schools are private schools so we are counted in the private school numbers.

The Home Education Annual Report, published by the Florida Department of Education Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice, has the break down of registered homeschoolers starting with the 2005-2006 school year.  Also included in this report are the top ten districts with the most registered homeschoolers.

Back to convention news.  I finished walking the Exhibit Hall today.  Now it is going through the information that I picked up today and making decisions.  Most of the time we don’t buy anything until the second full day, which is tomorrow.  I find that it helps cut down on the impulse purchases and also helps to see everyone’s prices.

I made it to one workshop today.  Andrew Pudewa’s session on “Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Individualized Education”.

He kept us homeschool moms (and dads too) laughing throughout the workshop.  If you have never heard Andrew speak before I highly recommend listening to The Arts of Language Podcast!

The plan is to attend more sessions tomorrow.  It is always hard to choose which sessions to go to because there are a ton of awesome speakers.  For those that I don’t attend and for continual encouragement throughout the year I buy the audio files.

Here are some photos from our day!

Have a blessed evening!