Best Ideas from the Heart of the Matter Online Conference

If you didn't get a chance to attend the HOTM Conference, you don't know what you missed! Despite the occasional technical glitch, it was still a lot of fun and well worth it! I heard about half the speakers and look forward to hearing the rest via download in a few days.

Angela from HOTM asks this morning what are the best ideas we took away from the Conference. I took away several, but wouldn't you know that this morning I can only think of a couple!

~ Timelines - I got two great ideas for timelines at the conference. We plan to do a good bit of notebooking this year, and I was already planning on using some timelines in our notebooks, but was probably going to end up just doing them stacked like regular pages. Amy Pak of "Homeschool in the Woods", however, had a great picture of how to do accordian-fold timelines for a notebook, so simple it made me go, "duh!". Leave your first page intact, but have all your remaining pages trimmed by about 3/4 of an inch, then use packing tape to tape them together, edge to edge, so that you can accordian fold them into place. (Trim the edges so that the additional pages don't bind up against the binder rings.) This way, you can fold out the timeline into one visible entity that works together.

Another timeline idea was either from Amy Pak or from Linda Hobar, I don't remember which. I know this idea is in Linda's "The Mystery of History" book, so maybe it came from her talk. For a large timeline that's easily storable, buy a pattern cutting board from a fabric store, and use the blank side of it. You can make a very large one this way, with lots of room for pictures and labels, yet it folds down very thin and can be stored in a closet or behind a door with little problem. I love this idea!

~ Card stock savings - Folks who use lapbooking and notebooking in their studies often like to buy card stock because it's sturdier and comes in lots of colors. The best idea for saving money on this came from a participant in one of the chats, but I don't remember who. The big craft stores carry card stock, and "the big 3" (A.C. Moore, Michael's and Hobby Lobby) pretty much always have a weekly 40% off coupon in the Sunday newspapers. Use that to buy your card stock and you will save a considerable amount!

Be sure to check back with HOTM to see what other great ideas the other moms took away from the conference - there certainly were a lot, I hope that others can share them so we can all benefit!