Having a homeschool co-op near you can be such a blessing. You can share the load of teaching
your children; if there are other parents who have strengths in certain subjects that you don't have,
you can draw off of their strengths and just help each other. You can cooperate,
which is what a co-op is, but it can also be a challenge in
trying to figure out the rest of your week's work for your school schedule.
If you have co-op on one day a week, how do you figure out what to do the rest of the week?
[gentle music]
Welcome to the simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonya Shafer. Today, joining me is Laura
Pitney. Laura, thanks for joining us again. You've had a lot of experience with co-ops. –Yes ma'am.
–And you helped us a lot with our own co-op materials, the Charlotte Mason Together series.
Let's talk about how we balance a co-op one day a week and what we're doing the other days of the
week for our own schoolwork. –Yeah, definitely. That's a tricky balance, but one of the first
things to figure out would be what's the purpose of your co-op. Is it to get the full curriculum
done in one day with the other families? Or is it just maybe the enrichments or complements to
your main home school? So how would you define all-or-nothing kind of thing. –Well it seems
like the first thing you got to do is see which subjects are being taught. –Yeah. –Absolutely,
and as you said, some of them might be one and done. For example, if you do nature study there,
you probably can check that one off. –Right. You don't necessarily have to do it at home, but you
might. If something pops up during the week, you have the freedom to enjoy that time. –Absolutely.
But then there are other subjects that you're only covering a component of that particular study in
the group setting. For example, a picture study. They might show the picture, and we're going to
discuss it, or they might read the biography and discuss it and narrate it, but there's still the
component of displaying that picture for the rest of the week. –Yeah, and that would be more of the
complement, so getting maybe the main lesson, or part of the lesson at the co-op, and then using
the review or reinforcement during your home time during the week. –Yeah. –That's a great example of
that. –When you say during your home time, I'm thinking you can still follow the lesson plan
guides, and when it says "This is time for music study" during the week, if you already had the
piece covered during your co-op, you can still play that music in the background. –Right. Or
that's a great opportunity to ask good narration questions, or maybe have them act out something,
or draw a picture, just depending on what it was. But it's a good opportunity to draw out of them,
something they remember. –So another almost a little touch, another review if you will,
just to make so it's not, "They do that at co-op, we don't do that at home." –Right. I think that's
the beauty of the co-op setting. It's like you said, using the strengths of the other
moms and families that are there, but then you get to gain confidence as you bring it into your
home and still stagger it where it needs to be in your schedule. But then you're growing and your
abilities to ask good questions and connect with your kids. Because sometimes you don't always get
to directly connect with your kids in the co-op setting, at the time, because usually there's
a lot of things happening. –Yeah, you might be teaching another class while they're in this one,
or you're teaching this age group and your older ones are elsewhere. –Right. So I definitely
think there's value in still having music study time in your regular schedule at home as well,
and if you got the main lessons at the co-op, it's a good time to connect with your kids,
because I think one of the goals we have is that we want these picture study and music study and
poetry and all of this to become a lifestyle for our children and in our homes. So relegating it to
"That's something we do there one day a week," is going counter to what our goal is. –Right.
–Another thing that you can do at home is the home, we call them Home Extensions in
our Charlotte Mason Together co-op materials, where we give ideas for those extra touches at
home. –Right. And there's a lot of freedom in that, because if you've already got your
main lesson done, and then you maybe really were drawn to something that was taught, those Home
Extensions give you ideas and, I don't know, more lesson plans, if you will, for how to go deeper
in that subject. So they're very beneficial to, again, just pouring more into your child over
those topics. –We don't want to overload. –No, not at all, not at all. –It's not like we're
doing the whole lesson again. –Right. –It is just another little reinforcement, so as you said, I
love that word complement. The two can complement each other. So let's think through a few other
school subjects. We've mentioned music study, and how you can do the focused listening time at the
co-op but then at home, we're going to listen to that music during the week and have other
ways to respond potentially. –Right. –We talked about picture study, where you're displaying that
picture all week long and you can still talk about other aspects that the children notice.
Let's talk about poetry. –Sure. –So what might the poetry lesson, well I'm going
to assume during the co-op I'm just going off of our Charlotte Mason Together lesson plans,
in the co-op setting they are reading through a new poem and they are discussing it.
So how do we complement that at home? –Well I think one of the things that you can do is
practice maybe a poem they want to memorize. They could even take the time to illustrate what they
saw in their mind when it was being read at the co-op, just to make another connection. I think
one of the beautiful things about doing a co-op is the opportunities the children may have to recite
or speak in front of other children. I think that gives good life skills. –Yeah. Good public
speaking practice, absolutely. –So that may be something you want to practice at home, obviously,
so that there, you set them up for success, to where maybe they want to recite it in front of
their peers at the co-op. So just practicing and memorizing and possibly reciting at home is a way
that you could do a Home Extension for poetry. –Yeah and in our lesson plan guides we've got
poetry scheduled twice a week. Once for reading a new poem and once for practicing it. –Yep. –So you
could easily use those two time slots to do those types of things at home. –Yeah, it's a great idea.
–Okay, let's talk about hymn singing. –Yes. –To me, this is an easy one. –Right. –We're
going to sing the hymn at the co-op, we've got it scheduled for two days a week, so the other day of
the week right sing it at home, no problem. That's an easy one. –Yeah. –Handicrafts. How did you work
that out with your co-op? –Yeah so handicrafts are challenging but not impossible. So when you're in
a group setting, you have a wide variety of skill sets, of ideas, of creativity, so we've done it
different ways, and I think this is just figuring out the flavor of your co-op. So we've done one
specific skill as a group, so all the children, all the parents, we're all conquering whatever
the handicraft is together. –So like crochet. Everybody's going to do crochet. –Correct. We're
going to work on learning the stitch, all of that together. The downside to that is some people are
more advanced, some are beginners, it's hard to keep the pace with everybody together. –Yes.
–So you may have to break up into groups based on skill level. There's just,
there's got to be some margin there to figure out how to accomplish the lessons if you're wanting to
keep the pace with everybody. Because some kids get bored, some are frustrated, so it's just
finding the right balance with that. –And especially in something like handicrafts,
because it is so skill-based. –Right. –Where you know, picture study is not skill-based.
–Correct. –So yeah, this could be very. –And you may have children that pick up on it right away,
and then you may have the mom that's like "This is so frustrating." –Exactly.
–Figuring out the right balance I think is a little tricky but not impossible. The other
way we've done it, which has really been the happy place we've settled on, is we just do,
we all are doing the same skill. So let's take crocheting for example, but the mom,
or the parent, is overseeing their own children. So if you have a family that has crocheted before,
they can do more advanced stuff, and then the mom is there to help. If you have beginners,
then maybe some of the beginners will kind of, the mom beginners will tag team to figure it out.
As the leader, I would walk around and help answer questions and supervise,
and if somebody got stuck, I would help them. So that's when the lesson plans came in handy,
and our videos, to where if I didn't necessarily know the skill, I could educate myself and then
be able to help them. –And you could pair them with one of these experienced moms. –Correct,
but the key to that was that specific mom was overseeing their own children, so they
would bring the supplies they needed, they would troubleshoot, it just took the burden off of the
one leader having to help everybody. –So it sounds like you really just said, "This is our handicraft
time." –Yeah. and you are each responsible for what you're going to do during that time. –Right,
because handicrafts is usually one of the first things to kind of fall off the list during your
home schedule, you know? It's just hard to make that time to sit down and do the handicraft,
so giving that time allotment during the co-op time, it's just the mom guilt is gone, because
we know we can do it at co-op. So that was kind of where we landed. –Yeah and I would assume then
that because they were overseeing it, in a sense, that was an extension from the home. –Correct,
reverse. –So yeah, it really goes both ways. –Yeah, yeah, okay. I love that. All right,
and I assume the same thing could be done with art instruction? –Yes, yeah. So depending on,
we've done that, we've alternated where we maybe did handicrafts one quarter, semester, term,
and then the next one was art instruction, so same format. –Yeah, okay. Let's go to literature.
Reading aloud a good book to a younger age group, I think that could be done one-and-done
in the co-op time. There wouldn't really be a Home Extension to go with it unless you wanted
to dig deeper into something that was said in it, but that would be optional. –Right.
–And for the older kids, they could use one of our new literature discussion guides, the Great
Books Discussions to actually do that during co-op time. For the little kids, I think in my own case,
having one book going during co-op is not enough. –Correct. –We would want to have our
own family read-aloud that we're doing on the other days, and it doesn't have to completely
coordinate. –Right. –In fact it'd be good if it was completely different from the one that's
happening in co-op. –Yeah, I would agree with that. We've done it different ways, but exactly
what you're saying makes sense. We've also done it where we've gotten the seasonal-type things,
plugged into maybe the read-alouds that are the one and done at co-op and made some special
exceptions, maybe a tradition day, or tried to coordinate what was happening on our calendar,
if that makes sense. So that's a good opportunity to plug in for that as well, but the times we've
done a read-aloud book with the older kids in the co-op, it's been so fun to see them connect
and talk about it. But then our family read-aloud is still our own family read-aloud, which there's
connections there too, so it's really a beautiful thing. –So it's not, I don't want to give the
impression that we're doubling up. –Correct. –That we're increasing the workload for the parent. It
is rather we're doing the same subject in on two separate tracks, if you will, and the co-op track
has only happened in the one day a week. It's the other days of the week that we've still got our
literature component going at home. –Yeah, that makes sense. –So it's not like let's go to co-op
all day, and then we're going to come home and do our own lessons the rest of the day. That would be
overload. I assume you didn't do any of these Home Extensions on the same day. –Co-op day was co-op
day, and so you know, whatever day that was, then the other four days we would do our regular home
routine. –So as we talk about that regular home routine then, let's talk about that schedule.
One of my big concerns with doing a co-op that focuses on the enrichments,
and you know we've talked about this before, is Charlotte talked so much about using different
parts of the brain as you go through your day's sequence of lessons. And that picture study and
music study and poetry and handcrafts, those add such nice change of pace. If you take all
of those out and put them all on one day, are you left with only read-and-narrate during the day?
That, to me, is counterintuitive. –Right. What I've done, because I one-hundred-percent feel
the same way, we need those breaks. We need those enrichments in our schedule to help keep everybody
lively and focused. So I've still planned, like if we're going to read and narrate, then we're going
to review art study, and then if we go do math, and we might sing a hymn. So I really still try
to incorporate at least the time slot that would be the enrichments class. It just may be a gentle
touch to use a different part of the brain, and then that way we can get back to the other
focus studies. –So it might not be as long a time period as what is specified in the lesson guide.
–Correct, but it does do that little switch for the brain. –Yeah, I like that idea. That's great.
Thanks for helping us think through how to balance co-op and time at home. Do you want
to just give any encouragement about people who are thinking about participating in a co-op?
–I would love to. So when I think about the reason why you do a co-op, I really think there's so much
value in the community. Sometimes you just get so isolated with your home and your children and
just the daily grind. Always, when you're dreading going to co-op you're so happy once you get there.
There's just something about being connected to other people and having that community and support
that you don't always realize you need that. But you need it, and so I would just encourage
anybody considering either starting a co-op or whether they should join a co-op just to pray
about it and then to weigh the benefits against maybe what you feel like it might take away from
your home. But you should at least give it a try and plug into a community. –You and I
have talked before on another episode about what to look for if you're looking to join a co-op,
so we'll leave a link to that in the show notes for everybody. Thanks so much Laura. Be sure to
check the show notes. We will leave links to all kinds of stuff to help you, to that episode on
how to choose a good co-op, we'll leave a link to the Charlotte Mason Community website where
you can find a good Charlotte Mason styled Co-op near you, and we'll leave links to our Charlotte
Mason Together co-op materials. If you are looking to form a co-op or you are running a co-op, these
materials should be a big help to you. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you next time. [gentle music]