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Hi Everyone,

I am coming up on my 6th year of homeschooling and am looking forward to starting HOD in the fall. My plan is to do CTC with my 11 y/o daughter, Bigger with my 9 y/o son and Beyond with my 7 y/o daughter. I am a little apprehensive about running 3 but I think I have them placed well.

So my question is, what to do about my co-op? We've been in it for 5 years now. It's a drop-off on Wed mornings from 9-12, three classes - music, art & gym, all fantastic teachers and excellent classes. The co-op is 30 minutes away but it's near my husband's work so he brings them in the morning and I pick them up at noon. With 3 kids, it's expensive, $500/semester so it's a good chunk of change. We love the families in it and they occasionally do field trips. I don't meet much with anyone outside of scheduled events but my kids look forward to it every week and would be upset if I decide to cut it out.

The down side is that for years I feel like I have been playing catch-up with having only a 4 day school week and it's been stressful for me and them. And if we do any kind of field trip we're down to 3 days a week. Since we also do AWANA on Wed. evenings (and I don't want to give that up) the whole day is pretty much shot from an academic standpoint. I've tried to squeeze schoolwork it but it's too much that day.

Any advice? I really want to give it up but I am afraid I'll be doing my kids a disservice. I'm more of an introvert and a homebody. Even though quitting might be better from an academic standpoint, I don't want to be imposing my preferences on my kids since they enjoy the company of this group so much.

Thank you!
Kathy

Why don't you go to a more year-round schedule with regards to school? Then you won't have to worry about only doing three days each week.

With that said. We do a similar class thing on Thursday's. My kids really enjoy going. But it's a fight to get them out the door on Thursday mornings! They refuse to do their chores or whatever school work I have assigned for them to do before we go. They fight me on getting dressed. Complain about what I fix for their snack/lunch. And fight about other random things.

So at the end of last year I told them I was going to think about it a lot this summer. What I've decided is that I'm taking it semester by semester. If I have to fight with them more than four times (once each basically) in a semester (I think they have 12 classes or so in each semester) then we were done. I'm through fighting with them to do something that I don't care if we do anyway. Something that in reality makes my life harder on top of the fighting and fussing.

Not sure this is much "advice" as much as it is commiseration

Is there any way you could find something they could do once a month?
That's what we did after a once a week schedule didn't work anymore. I personally don't like to get into schedules so jam-packed, although most of my children love it! I am also a homebody and two of my children are not. For us this worked. Although it did take some time to adjust.
We allow once a month for all and then my oldest gets an extra day added one-on-one with a friend. It's a special privilege we allow due to age and maturity.

We also do school on an almost year round schedule. This allows for us to not have 5 packed days of school. We do 4 1/2 regularly and less when needed. We also usually take a day off every month "just because" and they also get their birthday off. For us, it is less stress to start early and stretch the school year out, or to have a 3 day week May-July. Each "year" changes slightly.

I hope this gives you an idea or two to discuss with your husband to make your own.
Congratulations on starting HOD! I know you're going to love it.

Kathy,
We have done both HOD and co op for 8 years. Co op has complemented what we do in HOD. My dc love to go to co op. I have done Beyond and Bigger for 4days/wk. I have taken longer than a year to complete the guides, and that has been ok. It extends the guide by adding 9 weeks the next school year. Starting in Preparing, the TM is 4 days/unit/week. So, CTC will already be 4 days for 35 weeks. That guide will be easier to complete as it is only 4 full days.
Our Co op is every other week. On the off weeks we do Volunteer work or fieldtrips. I have found that as we go through the guide it gets easier to do so that we can get 5 days of Beyond or Bigger in 4 days. That isn't necessary or recommended. I only mention that it could be a possibility.
I think you need to prayerfully consider whether you should continue with co op. I am only sharing how it has worked for our family and using HOD. It seems that your co op will provide classes that will be offered by HOD, but just not on such a grand scale. Beyond & Bigger has child do body movements (sit ups, jumping jacks, etc) to memorize Bible verses. Now this is only a small amount of gym, whereas co op has a whole class. Within all the guides art projects are included about 1-3 times a week. They will work on 1 project for 1-3 days not 1-3 projects. In CTC they will be teaching watercolor. This has been a favorite of ours. Your co op will have a full class of art. HOD includes music with all their guides. In Rev2Rev, 2 guides after CTC, they have a composer study. In Bigger there is a hymn study that has been a favorite of ours. Your co op has a music class. Co op will provide deeper study of all the subjects that HOD has.
Our family has benefitted from co op beyond the academics, but it is cheaper and only twice a month.

Lora Beth - So many have suggested going year round, I'm going to give it some thought. And I completely can relate to behavior changes on days we're off schedule. I'm glad it's not just me and it's not all in my head.

Mikki - I would love a once a month group but despite there being a very active homeschool community in my area, everything I've found so far is weekly. We do birthdays off too and I love the flexibility. I like the shorter week idea with the one day off a month and doing non-traditional calendar school years. Thanks for giving me things to think about!

Tammy - Your explanations of the HOD classes were very helpful. I actually hadn't realized that our co-op would be repetitive in terms of what HOD has to offer. And volunteer/service is something has been lacking in my children's lives so far. I've already looked into a few options. I really feel like we need to realign some of our priorities.

Thank you so much for all the replies...they've been so helpful!

~Kathy

I have a couple of ideas, but since I'm also new to HOD, I hesitate to post them. We have a twice a week co-op that my kids love. I know that if I said, "we will do HOD this year, but it will mean no co-op," I would have to put down a rebellion. (No, my kids aren't perfect yet. )

I'm thinking that the fact that our year (Res to Ref) is planned out at only 4 days will be very helpful. We also have a shorter co-op year than our own homeschool plan, so I'm thinking we'll do 5 days any week that we homeschool but don't have co-op. Just those two things will buy me some, and then we can go a bit longer into the summer next year.

I'm also hoping to get done maybe half a day after co-op, or at least a quarter-day, so that some of the subjects will end sooner. If we can do half a day, I'll just do the left side Wednesday, then right side plus day 4 left side on Thursday, then day 4 right side on Friday. More likely, we'll settle for math and maybe a bit more each co-op day, so we'll finish them sooner and our summer left-over days will only be half as long.

It sounds like you have a lot to think about and you have had some wonderful advice.

I have a love/hate relationship with co-op. I don't need it AT ALL! I actually hate going because I feel like we could be doing something else with our extra day. This year, we switched churches because many of the kids that attend co-op also attend this church and attend their AWANA program on Wednesday nights. We attend AWANA on Wednesday nights as well and love it. That is what led me to consider no longer doing co-op. I also belong to a CHEC group (it is a homeschooling group) and they do things together too. For me, I told my kids this year that we only going 1/2 a day. I want more time off during the year and I want to be able to go do things. I don't want to feel like I have to school all year long. I get to a point where I just need a break! During the summer I want to be at the pool every day and I want my kids to be able to go do things when they want. We have a lot of kids in our neighborhood so I want them to be able to go outside and play as much as possible. That means that for the months of June and July, I can't have my kids doing school. This is just me and this is what I want for my family.

I also have decided that I want my kids to be able to go skiing this year during the winter. I want to take more field trips. I want to go on more mini trips - for example, we go camping here and there and we go the various museums trips that require us to spend night at a hotel nearby. I want to have more time to do nothing! I work from home and have decide that I will not be my kids chauffer. This past year we cut spring sports. It was the best decision I ever made! It really freed up our schedule to be able to go and do things together without being worried about having something conflict in our schedule.

More importantly for me, my goal is to get my kids involved in things they really like as they get older. My oldest seems very artistic. In a year or so, I fully plan to target that and push that area. That means that the co-op won't be feeding that. I need to find that elsewhere. With my son, he is so mechanical. I plan to target that! If we do lego club or something like it, we won't be doing co-op. I want my kids to starting doing mission work. You guessed it - if we do that, they won't be able to do co-op because this will take time during the week. For me, I personally want to phase co-op out. I wouldn't worry about doing your kids a disservice. You aren't. Many people I know who do co-op do it because they actually need something from it. For me, I wish I had never even done co-op. When I talked to my kids about dropping it, they actually don't really care. I am doing a half day of co-op next year because they have a drama that I can't find someplace else. We will be there for 2 hours. On co-op days, I plan to make the kids get up at 7:00 and have them start school by 8:00. We will eat lunch at 11:00 and then head to co-op by 11:30. This gives me 3 hours to do school with them. My hope is that this will give me the opportunity to have another 1/2 day on another day of the week. Plus, with my kids doing AWANA, that adds quite a bit to my kids schedules too. Next year is my oldest's last year of AWANA. It is bitter sweet. I am glad but not. I think what I am looking forward to most is that we will only be doing the HOD plans for Bible and that is all after this. Right now, I feel like we are a on bit overloaded of scripture memory work. My oldest is in T&T and she does all of the golds and silvers too. This makes it insane! Maybe once she finishes AWANA next year, she will be fine and my school day won't feel nearly as bogged down. But who knows.

The one thing that I do know about co-op that does drive me crazy is that as kids get older, my co-op doesn't have nearly as many elective type classes or things that are interesting. I wish they did but they just don't. They structure those classes so that kids can take things they need so that moms don't have to teach them. So for me, I am looking for phase co-op out. There are other co-ops around me that do have more interesting things for older kids and that aren't all day long. I may look into those. For example, there is a co-op that offers speech and debate. It starts at 3:00 PM. I could just sign up for this class only if I wanted too. I think this would be something very interesting to do and it would really teach the kids something different. But my kids need to be done with AWANA before I even think about it! I do know that I need to take each year one day at a time. I pray about it. And I wait on the Lord to lead me. I will be praying for you too. It is tough to make changes. But if you feel the Lord leading you away, I would stop. This year for me, I know that my son is going to have an adjustment getting used to all of the extra reading and writing in Preparing. I want to have 5 days for school for him for as long as I need. This was a huge part of my decision to start phasing co-op out this year. I also feel like HOD does such a great job of including "fun" in my school day, I truly don't need an co-op. My kids learn more and learn it better with HOD anyway. For me, I could say goodbye to co-op all together with absolutely no hesitation. If I could have found a place to do drama, I would not be returning. But I am fine with doing the drama and limiting my time at co-op.

We are also in a once-a-week co op that offers PE, and other elective classes (language, music, art are among them). I also feel that this is a great opportunity for my children. I was torn a couple of years ago but have found that for the relationships and experiences my kids gain, the co op is a great use of our time, even though doing it means we will not get through our HOD materials as quickly. Yes, it is some repeat, and it is also some redundancy as we take private music lessons and they learn there everything they would learn in the co op music class. But I still see a great value in doing it. I think in another year or two, as my oldest moves into sports or other activities for the JH level, the co op may take up too much time we need for other things, or we may decide we want to have more time at home, or more time to pursue things like what Nealewill described. But for now it is very valuable so we are staying in it.

How it works for us: As others mentioned, we just do the younger guides 4 days a week and take more than a year to do them. There are a couple of months that we school but we don't have co op and during those months all kids are expected to do a unit in a week's time. 5 day weeks means we do 5 days and 4 day weeks (my oldest) means she gets one day off. Generally I choose her day off during the week based on whether we have any appointment or music lessons that will eat up part of the day. When co op is going on we do 4 days of school per week which means my oldest still completes her unit in a week's time and the younger two do not. The oldest does not get any days off school when the others are doing it. So the younger 2, on the 5 day units, are always on the same day of their unit but not necessarily day 1 = Monday. Sometimes if day 5 is a Monday there's difficulty with remembering things like the memory verse or spelling words, and then I would carry those over to an extra day if it was needed (spelling test is actually day 4, but it's the same, if day 4 was Monday they might have difficulty remembering because co op is Friday so it's been 4 days since they've seen it). Otherwise there's no problem with carrying the unit across a weekend and not finishing it in a week. It's a problem if you're OCD about it, but I have learned to let it go. If your child is on the younger end of the age range of the guides, then there is an extra year in the elementary/JH. As in - there are 9 years from K-8th grade and only 8 guides. So this means that taking more than a year to do the 5 day/week guides is no problem at all. In fact that's what Julie (sister to Carrie, who wrote the guides) does also, though not because of a co op.

I hope this is helpful.

O think co-ops can be a blessing, but some times they are more work than they should be. In the spring, we do a homeschool choir, so I tried a co-op in the fall last year. It was okay, and I originally planned on doing it again this fall. Then I saw the class options for my oldest and realized it wasn't a great fit. None of the classes would add anything to my daughter's education really, so we decided to not do it. We do have a very active homeschool facebook community in our area, so their are regular park play dates, field trips, etc. So instead of a co-op, we will just do more of those this fall.
Personally, I would talk to the kids about it and explain the pros and cons of the co-op and see what they think. Also, explore other social options outside of the co-op and see if there is something that is a better fit The classes your co-op offers sound like fun ones that don't totally overlap what HOD has, so it might be a good option. In the mornings they are at co-op, you could get some errands run, schedule any appointments for yourself, etc. so you have the rest of the week mostly at home for school work.