Mar. 2, 2008 - Our co-op
This is the 3rd year that I have been doing a co-op with my friend M and her 2 children. I always find it helpful when other homeschoolers explain how they do things so I thought I would explain how we "do" co-op.
We plan 3 units each year (Bible, science, a country). We may change this in the future but for now it works. We plan out our calandar first so we know how many days we will have to cover the material. We meet on Fridays so we take a calendar and plan what Fridays we will meet. We must take into account when each family starts and stops their school year, family vacations, Christmas break, etc. Then we just count the Fridays and decided how many will be used for each unit.
Then we "brainstorm" ideas for each unit. We usually do this over lunch. We tried doing it at a resturant once but it didn't seem to work so well. We choose the unit topics ahead of this "brainstorming" so we have had a chance to think about it and have ideas for activiites and books ready.
We then pick out goals, things to cover, and texts. We use mostly e-books for the main texts. I think they have proven to be a good skeleton for our studies. I get most of mine at www.homeschoolestore.com. They have lots to choose from and many that use lapbooking, notebooking, and copywork. We use a combination of these for our units.
After that we each take a unit or two and plan it out. We break down what will be taught on each friday, what materials will be needed, and what pages to print/copy out of our materials. This saves a lot of time when prepping to teach. We also schedule a wrap-up day for each unit (to put our notebooks together) plus a Family Nay at the end of the year. Family Night is when work is displayed and presentations are done for Dads and Grandparents.
Once all of this planning is done the planning sheets and schedule are printed out and we each keep a copy in our Co-Op Planning binders. If I knew/ was able to attach files I would put up pdfs of these sheets but I don't think I can.
Well that is our co-op planning in a nut-shell. I will cover what we actually do on a co-op day later. Stay tuned!
Comments
Mar. 5, 2008 - Thanks!
Posted by Kit
Thanks for finally posting. ;-)
Kit
Edited by Kit on Mar. 10, 2008 at 8:55 PM
Mar. 10, 2008 - Guess what?
Posted by Kit
Guess what? I took that fruit test, and I was an apple. but then, I took the test again, and I ansewered the questions exanctly the same, but I was a strawberry!! Weird huh?
Kit
