CHOIS

Barnes & Nobles Educator Appreciation Days are October 15-23. All educators with a discount card can recieve a 25% discount on all purchases, including personal. Discounts are valid in store and online at BN.COM/educator.

To get an educator discount card simply apply at any store and provide them with an ICHE Educator ID card, or a receipt from curriculum purchases with your name on it.

Happy Shopping!

The 13th Annual Idaho State Homeschool Convention was a huge success. We are grateful to God for His mercy and direction. Our speakers were all amazing. We especially want to thank Heidi and Jay St. John, and Steve and Jane Lambert for providing us with excellent teaching on the topics of marriage, parenting and homeschooling. Lives were touched, marriages renewed and homeschools refreshed. Their timely message was well received.

We’d also like to thank Mary James, Connie Risser, Ken Frederick, Linda Patchin, Barry Peters, and Mary Ostyn for providing our attendees with informative workshops. All of them were well attended and helpful.

We would also like to give a huge thank you to Abbie Kircher and her team of 30 teen volunteers who provided us with an excellent children’s program. Their presentation on Saturday night was a joy to behold and brought tears to many eyes.

William Estrada brought a few Generation Joshua team members and together they provided us with an incredible teen program.Their iObject Grand Jury study tried and convicted some mafia bad guys  and in the process of having fun important lessons were learned. Thank you, Will!

Thank you to the Depuy family for organizing our used curriculum sale, which once again completely filled a gymnasium. It was great!

Thanks to our vendors for bringing us wonderful products to make our homeschooling efforts blossom.

Grateful thanks to the many volunteers whose efforts lightened the load and enabled CHOIS to provide a great experience for everyone.

And finally, thank you to everyone who attended the convention. We hope that you were blessed!

Mark your calendars now for a used curriculum sale on May 31st, and the convention on June 1 & 2, 2012. Look forward to hearing our keynote speaker, Michael Farris, Esq. Chairman of Home School Legal Defense Association.

If you have registered for the convention and plan to attend the June 2nd, 1-6pm, Real Life Marriage Seminar could you please send us an email to let us know that you will be attending? We’re having trouble choosing the size of room to reserve, and this will help us very much. Email us at chois.marriage.seminar@gmail.com  Thanks so much and see you at the convention!

The convention Children’s Program registration is now closed as we have reached the maximum number of children. Please see our policy on children attending with their parents. We still have 47 spaces available in our Teen program.

All of the used curriculum seller tables have been reserved, so please come looking for bargains on June 2nd from 10-12:30!!

All of the used curriculum sale tables have been reserved. Please come shopping for used books on Thursday, June 2nd, from 10-12:30 at the College Church of the Nazarene gymnasium, 504 E. Dewey St. in Nampa, Idaho.

There are currently FOUR spaces left in our children’s program and 50 spaces in our teen’s program, as of  7PM on the 10th of May. Registration for the children’s program will be closed as soon as we run out of space!

Four children ages 9, 7, 5 and 3 from a homeschooling family in Notre-Dame-des-Bois in Québec, Canada have been ordered into public school for socialization. The Roman Catholic family, who have been homeschooling their children for four years, were reported to the youth protection services (YPS) for neglect and had a four-day trial in November 2010. The judge in the case, Judge Nicole Bernier, ordered that the children remain in school or in day care until YPS officials approved a plan for socialization. However, because of apparent bias against homeschooling and these parents, this is unlikely to ever happen. Read the rest of this entry »

In order to help CHOIS select the correct room size, if you have registered for the CHOIS Convention  please email us at chois.marriage.seminar@gmail.com and let us know whether you plan to attend the marriage seminar. Also, please make childcare arrangements for your children during the seminar as the CHOIS Children’s program will not be running during this seminar and some of the seminar content may not be appropriate for children.

The CHOIS Convention is bringing our keynote speakers, Steve Lambert and Heidi St. John, in to town a day early for our Real Life Marriage seminar on Thursday, June 2 from 1pm to 6pm. This is a free seminar for anyone who is registered for the CHOIS state homeschool convention. We are excited for them to address the topic of marriage as it relates to homeschooling.

We encourage parents to make arrangements for childcare for their children during the seminar. We desire that this seminar be a blessing to couples, and believe that marriage is the foundation of the homeschool family. Our speakers will be talking about many vital aspects of marriage, and we believe that some of what they will be discussing may not be appropriate for children to hear. We do not want our seminar attendees to be deprived of receiving information that will help their marriage to flourish and their homeschool to succeed, and so we have informed our speakers that we desire them to speak freely whether or not there are children present.

Our Children’s Program will run as usual on Friday and Saturday for those children who are enrolled. We allow quiet children to attend the convention with their parents and our policy can be found elsewhere on the website. Our Children’s program currently has only 36 openings left. Our Teen program has 53 openings left.

Register online now for the 2011 convention. Currently our Children’s program has room for only 40 more children. Our teen program has room for 53 more teens. We expect all of our used curriculum sale tables to be reserved this week. We will pull the registration form from the website when it is full.

Hope to see you in June!

Project Appleseed is a nationwide family-friendly rifle marksmanship course that uniquely combines the teaching of fundamental rifle marksmanship skills with the story of our American heritage.  Over 770 events were held across 45 states in 2010 and many are already scheduled for 2011.

Weekend Appleseed events present an ideal opportunity for homeschooling families.  Read the rest of this entry »

CHOIS Chairman Linda Patchin will be speaking at the Calvary Chapel Church in Idaho Falls on Friday, April 8th at 6:30 pm. She will be devoting a great deal of time to questions and answers, and will be speaking about getting started homeschooling, choosing curriculum, and planning a high school course of study.  If you are in the area, please make plans to join them.