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.






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Nature Journaling

I have always tried to include nature journaling in my homeschool. I have a photo of my children, taken ten years ago, of them at a historic site journaling their lovely surroundings. Old notebooks are filled with drawings of trees and whales from those early days of nature journaling, and nature guides such as the Golden Guides were frequent companions on our forays into the wilds.

Our nature journaling has gotten a boost in the last few months with the addition of just a few amazing resources. 

The first resource that has helped us in our nature journaling efforts is the amazing artwork of Kristin Rogers which is featured in the bundles from the Wild and Free homeschool community. Kristin is a photographer and artist from Southern California who is an avid nature journaler and homeschooler. Her artwork has inspired more nature journaling in my homeschool, but it has also inspired me to take the time to nature journal. My artwork is pretty basic, and I often want to pass it off as that of one of my youngest children, but I have so enjoyed sitting with my children and visiting together over paints and paper, instead of just giving them nature journaling as an assignment while I go on with other tasks.

The other resource that has made nature journaling more fun in our homeschool is the beautiful resource from Simply Charlotte Mason, "Journaling A Year In Nature". This is an amazing resource which has given us some great prompts to guide our nature study. The journal is spiral bound card stock, organized by season. The hard cover and spiral binding make it very convenient for travel, and the heavyweight paper holds up well to watercolor painting. The journal is organized by season and has pages specific to different kinds of natural wonders. 

My son and I drew crabs in the section on animals and insects, and my daughter and I painted tall trees in the section on trees. The journal also includes inspiring quotes to give you "something to think about" while you are journaling. We took the journal on our recent ten day family camping trip and filled it with drawings and paintings of the natural treasures that we found.

We saw so much natural beauty on this trip; soaring trees and wafting ferns, tiny crabs hidden under rocks, and beautiful rushing waterfalls. I took lots of pictures, but we also enjoyed sitting quietly in the trailer after a day of exploration and recording our finds in our Simply Charlotte Mason Nature Journal. 

We have incorporated drawing and painting into every subject of our homeschool. We do written and illustrated narration in place of book reports, draw and paint narration for history subjects, and paint our way through science studies. Resources that help us become more proficient at recording what we are learning, such as "Journaling A Year In Nature" are a welcome addition to our homeschool.

If you are looking for some supplies to go along with your nature journaling, these have been recommended by artists that we follow.

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