Saturday, August 8, 2009

Gearing up for Co-op!

This will be the fourth year for our homeschool group to have an organized co-op. It's the best thing that could have happened to our group. Co-op is so much fun for the kids and moms. I love going and seeing everyone each week and forming relationships that might not have happened if we weren't in co-op together.


Before the big co-op started there were many small co-ops going on each year, but they were not open to CHA. You could only be in those co-ops if you were invited. Now we have the big co-op and ALL of CHA is welcome to join. We were in several small co-ops in the past, but it is hard to be in different co-ops for your kids when you have big age gaps. My kids are 8 years apart. So I would take Dakota to one co-op and Elijah to another and they weren’t on the same days so that meant going out several days. Having a CHA wide co-op is so much better. It brings us all together and no one is excluded.


We have a bunch of great moms who offer all sorts of classes. My kids have taken a long list of classes that I don’t think we would have gotten around to at home. Dakota has taken Dave Ramsey Financial Peace, guitar, art, biology, chemistry, IEW, Jensen’s Format Writing, photography, US Gov, physical science and more that I can’t think of right now. Elijah has taken some great classes too, all about ponds, famous Americans, science centers, presidents, 50 states, art, guitar, piano, math games, and science experiments and again I can’t think of all the classes. Below are a bunch of pics from various classes.


This year Dakota will be taking journalism, real life, and oil painting. He will be teaching a computer class for the second year.. Elijah will take 50 states, considering God’s creation, FIAR volume 4, endangered animals, arts and crafts and art.


I’ll be teaching 50 states, journalism, FIAR, and Soda Bottle Science. Now it’s time to get busy and plan those classes. My friend Alana and I are doing FIAR together so we have planned out which books and what we want to cover; now we just need to collect stuff to make those classes happen.


If your homeschool group doesn't have a co-op, you might want to consider starting one.

Dakota made our co-op website and then added to it so all of our homeschool group is online with the website.

You can check out our website to see how our co-op runs.
http://www.nelcha.org/



This is Elijah and a friend in science class working on animal classification.

Elijah in an art class.

Elijah on the left end. This was from Presidents class.

Elijah being a meteorologist in science class.

Science experiment.

Elijah and friends in board games class.

Dakota and his art teacher.

Dakota teaching his computer class.

Elijah in math games.

Jody taught in co-op before his schedule changed. This is a picture from his science experiment class.

Dakota in art class.

Don't you think this is a cute bunch of kids?

The sight word class had a wedding for Q & U. Elijah was not happy about being in that wedding.

Dakota in a math lab.

Elijah in an art class.

If there's a bug, Elijah is going to find it.

Dakota in a science class. Coke and mentos!


Jody teaching a class.

Elijah and friends hanging out around the big tree at co-op.

You can see we have lots of FUN at co-op. We are having registration this month and it closes on the 21st. Co-op starts September 10th so we will be back with our friends having fun in no time. We are looking forward to starting.

2 comments:

Mama Teaching 3 said...

We are so coming back after this semester, I think. My plate is just too full and too stressful for me right now! And I will be teaching a class with MY Kayla friend when I come back. :)

Enjoy the fun of co-op!

Musings of a Homeschooling Mom said...

I loved the pictures! I am so ready for co-op to start again! It's such a blessing to our family.

Jessie