Homeschool Co-op How To

I have had some form of a homeschool co-op for many of the 17 years that I have been homeschooling. I love being around people, and I love the accountability and enrichment that homeschooling with a co-op has provided. 

Although space limitations have kept our co-ops very small, I dream of one day being able to meet in a facility where I could join with more families in my community to learn together.

In past years, we have only met once a month, but this year with no baby nap schedules to worry about and with fewer students to manage, I have two co-ops that meet every other week. This means that I have a co-op meeting each week. My children and I never have to go too long between an inundation of time with friends. Hooray for that!

One co-op is especially geared towards teaching writing and science and I am having a great time teaching the Apologia Flying Creatures class to my students. We scavenge for feathers, build bird feeders, and mostly draw, paint and read books. It is loads of fun. Meanwhile, friends who are better at teaching the upper grades are doing biology and general science with my older kids. It is a wonderful situation where we all get to see our children learn and have fun.

I recently joined Periscope, a very interesting app for live broadcasting, and my son and I have been making videos, with my broadcasts or with iMovie. The video here is a broadcast that I did on Periscope which explains exactly how to start your own co-op.

Some of the specific steps that I talk about in the video are;

Find a group to co-op with

Pick your subjects or classes

Meet together to create a schedule

Designate who teaches what and where you will meet

Then, just do it!

It isn't too late to start a homeschool co-op this year. It could be as simple as a play date with a particular theme, or as complex as hosting multiple classes. Book clubs, sewing bees and adventure clubs are all wonderful ways to get families together for fun and learning.




If you don't have a group of homeschoolers to gather with, check out the Wild and Free groups page here, or look up your state's homeschool association. Somewhere there is a group of families waiting for you to join them and learn together!

If you have questions about how to start a co-op, feel free to post them here, or e-mail me at jennpepito@yahoo.com

This blog post also has some great detailed advice on starting a co-op.

If you want a comprehensive book that explains how to start a co-op, check out this one.






This post contains affiliate links.

Early American History-Immigration and Industrilazation

This month our history studies have focused on immigration and industry in America. As we have wrapped up our stories and readings from Civil War era history, we have begun to explore the late 1800's and early 1900's. This was an exciting time for our continent. So many new industries meant new opportunities for hopeful immigrants.

The thing that I have most looked forward to in our year of history co-op, has been this month's meeting. At the beginning of the year, when we mapped out the plan for our co-op, I knew this would be a fun day for our children. Instead of the usual program of singing, geography and art projects, our children would have the opportunity to open up a real store as well as explore their diverse ancestry.

The plan was simple. Each family would pick one of their ancestors to study, and prepare a presentation based on that ancestor's country and history. They would also bring products which related in some way to their ancestry to sell for a small amount, in this way representing the small businesses and farming endeavors which these people undertook in order to provide for their families. 

We did this same project over four years ago, in the last community that we lived in, and at that time, we chose Portugal which represents my husband's grandmother. For Portugal, we sold veggies from our garden, and homemade sweet rolls. This time, we chose England, which is where my grandmother's parents came from. 

We started our country fair by having each family stand at their "store" and share their presentation. One of the best parts of preparing an ancestor presentation is the opportunity to learn about our family history. I listened intently as my son shared the interesting information that we had compiled after interviewing my grandmother. For instance, I had never heard that my great grandfather was the son of an English strawberry farmer near Kent. Nor, that his brave fiancé, after waiting three years for him to send for her, took matters into her own hands, and headed to Canada. She wanted to give him the opportunity to make good on his commitment to marry her.

They did marry, and had six beautiful children, one of whom was my own dear grandmother.

We celebrated our heritage today at our country fair by cutting up an old sheet to make "Nearly Proper English Hankies" which we sold for twenty-five cents, along with fresh homemade scones and tea.

The children listened eagerly to their friend's presentations as well. They heard reports from several European countries, as well as one from our darling little friend, who was welcomed here eight years ago by her lovely parents, becoming a first generation Chinese-American.

After the children took turns giving their presentations, the stores were open for business! My kids were excited for the opportunity to make a meager profit, one of the benefits of not offering allowance. 

They were also excited to spend their money at their friends' stores. The goods for sale were exciting! Hawaiian soap, Scottish shortbread, and Chinese fans were big hits with my kids as they eagerly divested themselves of their small change. I did end up raiding my husbands coin stash a few times, to replenish their coffers, it didn't occur to me to teach them a real lesson on economy when they, and their friends were so hopeful of selling their products.

Although this day was simple to prepare for; we merely did a little crafting, cooking and report writing in the few days preceding the event, it had a big impact on the children. Now they can have a small glimpse into the process of creating products and marketing them, and a taste of what some of their ancestors experienced as they crossed the sea in search of opportunity.

Quick and Easy Thanksgiving Unit Study

This is a very busy season for us and our history studies do not coincide with the landing of the Pilgrims in America. Even so, I love highlighting the reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving and the attitude of some of the original settlers of our country, so I set aside a day to focus on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. 

Chilly Little Pilgrim Boys

                         

The first part of our day involved pretending our living room rug was the Mayflower while I read stories such as On The Mayflower by Kate Waters, with beautiful photographs by Russ Kendall. We also read N.C. Wyeth's Pilgrims, pausing when they got to Plymouth Harbor to interject Samuel Eaton's Day, also by Kate Waters and Russ Kendall. A few days prior we had read Sarah Morton's Day, so we had the Pilgrim's pretty well covered in picture book form. While on the rug-ship the children also composed letters or journal entries in the words of their Pilgrim counterparts.

The Captain

                     

The children enjoyed reading the Bible, singing a Psalm and acting out the eventful journey, especially dramatic events such as a storm. Once the Pilgrims had landed in our stories, we left the rug and did a few crafts.

Intent On His Project

I found some adorable handprint turkeys on Pinterest, and since this was our quick and easy version, we made our turkeys out of construction paper that we had in the house. Unfortunately we were out of yellow, so our feet are a little pale. The example below, was obviously done by our little girl, as seen by the heart embellishments. We added some words describing things we were thankful for to the feathers, and voila, it was an easy handprint-thankfulness turkey.

Since we were also reading about Squanto and the other Native Americans who the Pilgrims encountered we then moved onto making Indian feather headbands. I used the scraps from the turkey project for the feathers and the kids stapled and made their own designs. Ella also took some scrap paper to make a corn cob.

                               

After all the crafting fun and clean up we ate our pottage, which was leftover vegetable beef soup that I had made in the crock pot last night, and then rewarmed this morning with a cup of lentils added.



                                                    
Our celebrations were fun and easy, and when lunch was over, and the clean up done, I sent the children out to play Indians in the bright sunshine. It was a nice break for them from bookwork and a memorable reminder of the life experiences of some of the first settlers to our country.