A few weeks ago I posted the question on my blog that stated I was looking for information about Co-ops. I wanted to know what worked, what didn't and how different ones were structured. I got absolutely no feedback! I don't know if people who read the question had nothing to say or were afraid of who might read their responses.

Anyway, I did visit a co-op which was nice and organized, and everyone was very welcoming, but I only knew one other lady there and the drive of over 1 hour was too much for me to make on a weekly basis. 

So 7 like-minded moms in my Homeschool group decided to get together and see what we could come up with. I love my Homeschool group. I have met a lot of great people in it and there is an ebb and flow as old friends move onward and new friends are made. But there is also a lot of variance in our group (we maintain contact via yahoo email and have over 160 members). There are teens down to toddlers and different interests, styles and geographically we have members spanning three good size towns and several large counties.  When we have our weekly gatherings, we usually end up with 10 to 12 families involved.  But the families involved differ depending on the event.  

So back to the five moms that gathered around a kitchen table a couple of weeks ago...often meetings in this group get sidetracked by the different styles and desires of the group. But we had worked hard to find just a few families that got along with one another, had children of comparable ages and had a comparable vision.  I was absolutely amazed at what we were able to accomplish in about 3 hours time!

We decided to keep our group small to begin with. We wanted participants who we could count on to participate. We also wanted children and parents that got along. During our three hours, we decided what classes we wanted to offer, who would be responsible for what, what our schedule would be, what fees we would ask for, and some overall guidelines about things we wanted and didn't want. 

We are very excited and have another meeting coming up where we will go deeper into the details. We worked hard to keep on track at setting up the general guidelines and the big picture and we are very excited about our plans. I will post our general outline in another post.