{"id":313,"date":"2015-11-23T22:32:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T03:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeofahomeschoolmomma.wordpress.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2015-11-23T22:32:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T03:32:18","slug":"fpea-special-needs-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crayonstokeyboards.com\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"FPEA Special Needs Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know you are at a homeschool convention or conference when you pull into the hotel parking lot and the lot is\u00a0filled with\u00a012 & 15 passenger vans along with vehicles pulling\u00a0trailers!\u00a0 Yes, there are a lot of homeschoolers who drive cars, trucks, and SUV’s (We do!) but at a homeschool convention\/conference you just see a ton of 12 & 15 passenger vans.\u00a0 That was the first thing I noticed when my husband and I pulled onto the hotel property Friday night.\u00a0 We attended the FPEA Special Needs Conference for Gifted and Struggling Learners,<\/a> in Orlando, FL this weekend.\u00a0 This is a fairly new conference.\u00a0 The FPEA has been holding\u00a0the Special Needs and Gifted Conference\u00a0for just a few years.<\/p>\n

I enjoy\u00a0homeschool workshops and when the FPEA released the speaker information I knew that I wanted to go!\u00a0 Hal & Melanie Young would be there.\u00a0 I met them at the convention in 2014 and listen to a lot of their podcasts throughout the year.\u00a0 If you haven’t listened to them before I highly encourage you to go check them out!\u00a0 They can be found on the podcasts app under ‘Making Biblical Family Life Practical’ and they have some of their workshops\u00a0in their store at\u00a0http:\/\/www.raisingrealmen.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Then Andrew Pudewa from Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)<\/a>\u00a0was there along with Heather Laurie<\/a> (I have just started listening to her in the past few months and she was also the Keynote speaker), Jan Bedell, Faith Berens, Felice Gerwitz, Holly Giles, TJ Schmidt, and Cheryl Swope.\u00a0 All great speakers!!!\u00a0 I will listen to the audio files of all of the workshops that I didn’t make it to.<\/p>\n

If you would like to listen to any of the workshops here is a link to purchase audio\u00a0recordings from the conference<\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t know if the awesome conference price ($30)\u00a0is still available for those who attended the conference so you should check that out.\u00a0 Also, FPEA members receive a 10% discount off of the full price of the audio recordings.\u00a0 So it made the cost of the audio files $25!<\/p>\n

The conference is set up very similar to the annual convention in May.\u00a0 There is a key note speaker and the\u00a0exhibit hall\u00a0is open for a few hours on Friday.\u00a0 On Saturday the exhibit hall is open\u00a0all day and there are 6 workshop sessions with a few choices for every session.\u00a0 There was a break for lunch!!\u00a0 I loved that they gave a break for lunch, unlike at the convention where all of the workshops are back to back all day long.<\/p>\n

I was a tad (just for a few quick moments)\u00a0disappointed on the number of vendors in the exhibit hall.\u00a0 There were around 40 vendors.\u00a0 I am used to the big convention in May and with it being the biggest homeschool convention in the US we are a bit spoiled with the large exhibit hall and lots of vendors.\u00a0 6 times the number of vendors plus some of the vendors have huge booths.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 I know as the Special Needs & Gifted Conference grows so should the size of the exhibit hall.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the goodies that I bought at the convention.<\/p>\n