NAEYC: Initial thoughts

Well … we have arrived! We made it out of Connecticut JUST ahead of the coming nor’easter … flights were smooth, we were lucky. Now, we were expecting Atlanta to be a tad warmer … today was definitely chilly. Forecast looks promising for the rest of the week, so I’ll still get to wear my flip flops, hopefully!

We are very excited to be here at our first national conference. After checking in and getting something to eat, we headed over to the Omni Hotel to check out the “Tech on Deck” discussions that were taking place. (You can read up on that from Tressa’s post here). Afterwards, we headed over to the “Georgia World Congress Center” for the initial opening of the Exhibition Hall.

First thoughts from today’s experiences ….

There is so much to LEARN … overwhelmingly so! Between “Tech on Deck” and perusing the massive conference program … there are so many sessions that we want to participate in (and many are taking place at the SAME time). At least there are two of us – so we can divide and conquer!

There is so much I WANT … overwhelmingly so! Visiting the Exhibition Hall was overwhelming at first. We are glad we took an initial tour and visited some booths, because you could easily spend a whole day there. We started to make a wish list of things that we liked for our own school – it is great to be able to touch, feel and experience the products and talk to the vendors.

Some exhibitor booths are very LARGE and interactive

Insta-snow with liquid watercolor and opal glitter for a cool sensory experience

Making BioColor ornaments

There is so much to EXPERIENCE … I want to be able to take it all in. My digital camera will be at my side for the next few days, because it really helps me to capture and remember everything. And we are so glad to be able to share this experience and things that we learn through the rest of the week with you!

You can check out ALL the conference photos that we take throughout the week on ourFacebook page!